Ideas And Arms
A lot of people—loud people, who like to crow about it—are well versed in what’s wrong with us and there’s lots of reasons and layers and complexity. I like these games. I’m good at them. I can think and talk until my arm is gone—muddy up the causes and conditions until there’s absolutely no link between me and what gets stuffed in my fucking mouth. Benzos, doughnut holes, shots of Jack. Where’s my arm? Can’t see it through all the poverty and multiple fathers and that step-brother sucking my dick. Not so simple now, is it? Can’t just quit. I’m expressing a repressed need that craves self-destruction. There’s people in here that want me dead. Guy in the closet has a gun to my head. It’s complicated. I’m uneducated. Too educated. Too smart for my own good. I think too much. I’m a sensitive soul and my self-destructive acts are merely echoes of a larger global catastrophe. It’s not me. It’s my brain chemistry. I’m trapped in the grasp of archetypal patterns of behavior. A swarm of unconscious factors described in thick books by brilliant men explain away selves and wills and freedom. Magritte painted a pipe but it’s not. Paintings aren’t for smoking, dumb ass.
One time, after a good round of hurling blood in his bath tub, Skip asked me how I did it. “How?” He was furious. “How do you do it?” over and over like a drunk broken record. “What? Do what?” I asked. “Stay sober. How is that even possible?”
I don’t know.
That’s my recipe for success. I have no fucking idea.
Oh, I get it you junkies and drunks and lazy fat asses. It howls through my bones like a midnight storm and a wild pack of dogs. But ideas are, after all, just ideas—thoughts in and around your head that ultimately possess no substance. They are made, like you, of nothing. And there’s a place beyond all the grandiose ideas you use to ground the pathetic story in which all your failures make sense (sniff sniff).
“Beyond” is wrong. There’s a place prior to all the ideas you bat around to explain each other. It’s the most fucked up mix of scary and awesome because, prior to your ideas, you’re able to grasp in a comprehensive way that you don’t know shit about shit and I mean nothing—you’re fucked—but out of this soil of complete and utter fuckedness blooms the strange flower of knowing you can do whatever the hell you want.
Being fucked and free are connected. Let it blow your mind, smarty pants.
The facts are the facts. We either drink or we don’t, we eat or we don’t, and we exercise or sit on our asses. The rest is just stories, which is cool. People like stories. Stories are what people are for. But, honestly, we don’t know why we do what we do. I don’t know why you’re dead and I’m alive, Skip. I have no fucking idea.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Reader Comments (19)
This post is the one for me.
It all comes down to that - to choice. We can either drink or not. Simples.
All the back story does is make us feel entitled. I don't want to dismiss anyones pain - I have my own to deal with - I know it isn't fun, but I also know that my response to my pain is my own responsibility.
I'm sober and I'm clean. That's my response now. I chose it.
re Skip, and your general question -- i don't know why either, but i'm still sorry.
"out of this soil of complete and utter fuckedness blooms the strange flower of knowing you can do whatever the hell you want." - That resonates.
I think about shit like this when I'm in a graveyard. I look at all the headstones, all those stories and feelings buried and gone. It makes me want to yell louder and shut up at the same time - I feel myself tipping on that tightrope of 'what's the point?' and 'I matter! Look at me!'
For all the yammering on I do about sobriety, I don't really know how I do it, either. Maybe because for now not drinking feels better than drinking did at the end. Maybe I stopped drinking because of this: "And there’s a place beyond all the grandiose ideas you use to ground the pathetic story in which all your failures make sense." I realized my career as a drunk was just one big fat story I told myself, and story plots can be changed.
And I realize my sobriety is also - like everything else I do - one big fat story I tell myself. Getting okay with that is a work in progress. For now it just feels good, and feeling good is enough. Today.
And the people who don't make it? I'd like to say I understand, but I don't. I went right up to the edge of the darkness, and I came back. For now. That's all I know.
-Ellie
yep. yep. yep.
I wonder if Vincent's head could explain it to you. Worth a try, I'd say.
Silver stole my quote. i'd tattoo that shit somewhere if i wasn't so damn indecisive.
fucking brilliant and i love it.
I wonder all the time how I stay sober when others struggle so much. Not to say that it is a cake walk for me, but I know that it is easier for me than some. And all I can come up with is just lucky, I guess. Or blessed. Or stubborn. Or some combination thereof. Whatever the reason, I'm grateful.
Kind of like hearing an amazing song for the first time or seeing an invention that makes you hit yourself in the head with jealousy because you didn't think of it first... This post is like that for me. I wish I could have been the one who wrote it. Well done buddy. Respect.
This is the perfect companion to the last. Thoughtful, the good kind of resignation.
That's what I say when people ask me how I quit smoking. I just did it one day, decided it was time and put them down. I loved smoking, too. As for the rest of my stories, I can tell them all I want, but only I really know what they are.
BHJ, you continually amaze me. Not just for your writing -- which is incredible, I think we can all agree. But more for your willingness to own up to the fact that you don't have the answers, all you have are thoughts and ideas. Too many people think they have the answers, and they're full of shit.
Lots of Crazy Shit has happened to me in my life, but in the moments I find myself wallowing in it, I grab my brain and shake it to remember that the Crazy Shit doesn't define me. It's the choices of what I do with all that Crazy Shit that make me who I am.
Keep talking, dude, because I can't quit listening.
Yeah, this is it.
Well said.
I like the resignation. Have you turned forty, yet?
I do like stories.
Now if only we could quit eating.
"Being fucked and free are connected. Let it blow your mind, smarty pants."
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose....
You're right: either shit or get off of the pot.
It's easier to hide behind a good story well told than to actually do something to remedy a situation. To convince other's you are that story - that you're more than you are.
To embrace the inertia of your existence.
And sometimes, the ones who act like they have it all together and know everything there is to know are the ones who are the most lost of all.
It's nice to hear someone admit they don't know the meaning of it all and they accept that.
As cliche as it may be, the journey to the answer is where it's at.