Like a pillbug, I hide in my psychic retreat


Perhaps it speaks something of my day to consider that the moment of truest, most joyous splendor was the moment following my healthy evening constitution (eat a whole grapefruit right after lunch if you seek such an epiphany) when I sat on my bed and took of my pants and pulled off my Adidas which are overly tight around the top of my heel. I’m not sure why this is. The shoes are the proper size and I’ve tried loosening the laces but the shoe itself clamps down uncomfortably on the top of my foot, and by the end of the day taking these shoes off is an exhilarating respite. Anyways, this moment of coming home and disrobing was the highlight of my day. Build your presumptions from that if you’d like.


My day was like a Tale of Two Cities. Almost.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Although, more fitting would be: it was the less worse of times, it was the worst of times.


Today was my lump of {fill in the inert substance} day. I have days like this but today was, and is, extra bad.
My estrangement from humans was thoroughly unprecedented. My mind is plagued, my soul is ravaged. Today and this week I’ve been of the human race, but not with the human race. I can find no reason or motivation whatsoever to join this rabid pack of bipedal gluttonous and spiritually vacant creatures with their vain fixations and ignorant certainties. My patience is always tested. In fact, my life is a constant stream of patience exertion. Lately, the test has worn so thin that I’ve torn up the Scantron and stuck the #2 pencil into the bowels of Fate himself. I want no part of this.


When I say today was my lump of ___ day, I mean this because I’m entirely non-reactive to my world, to my environment, to others. I would say lead is probably the most fitting material I can come up with in my my chemically untrained minerologist mind. See, I’m trying to convey that days like this I am entirely dead. I’m lifeless. I cease to belong and join; a pall of numbness and indifference coats my interactions. Each interaction is troubling and a bit unfathomable. I watch the world skitter by with a bemused and uncomprehending sense of WHY and HOW. I do not understand, but worse, I do not wish to. I retreat into the darkest recesses of my alienation. How can I compare myself to a material in such a way that would portray beautifully what I feel courses in my soul? “Lump of coal” is a popular phrase, but I wouldn’t say that. Coal is flammable. It is potential energy. Iron is magnetic, it is a vibrant element. Rock is not nearly as dead as it sounds. Rock is molded by the eternal whims of nature. Rock is life, life lives in it and energy buffers it. No, I thought lead was better. As far as I know, lead is relatively inert, does not ostentatiously interact with the environment, and left to smolder in a dark corner where it will not greatly evolve or experience chemical changes in the race with other elements.


Today I was lead.


This week I am lead.


Inert. Neither attractive nor unattractive.


My lump of lead was me. Distant and unreactive.


Friday frivolity was in the air. People get so worked up over the stupidest shit. Friday, whoopee. What does that mean anyways? Two days of no working. Wow. Like it matters, you spend most of the 2 days sleeping, watching television, shopping, jacking off, spending more money per hour than you made the previous week…yes, the weekends are fabulous. Let me have more. Weekends are unstructured and undisciplined nuggets of hell. We don’t know what to do with ourselves so we wallow in some delusional enjoyable activities and then pretend to dread the return to work on Monday. Today was Friday and people would not shut up. Like the dude at the bus stop the other day, no one at work seemed able to tone it down today. Blah blah blah. Even normally busy people could not shut the fuck up about carmageddon. Carmageddon is the worst humanity has to offer its heirs. Carmageddon is cultural smalltalk scribed blatantly across the psyche of a bored culture. How does this shit even begin to seep into our consciousness? it is a non-event, a non-issue, a non-thought. Yet it has possessed the minds and souls of people in this town (which ain’t saying much) and even across the country. Carmageddon…god, who cares. I don’t even live on the Westside, I do not care. Too many white people there….you’ll never see them shut down the Long Beach Freeway for repairs. LOLZ. The Long Beach Freeway is a piece of shit freeway that services cargo trucks going to the Long Beach Harbor through the poorest (ie, Hispanic) parts of Los Angeles. No one cares what kind of shape that freeway is in, and it’s bad, believe me.


Today, the estrangement.
People talking about carmageddon and about the weekend and foodie lunchtime treks.
I just wanted to vomit.
On the way home, it wasn’t until I was near home, I realized I had sat on the bus without moving for almost one hour, lizard like!


There were a couple of women next to me chattering in Spanish and as I prepared to disembark, the realization dawned on me…I had been sitting there like a lump of lead for 30 minutes. I had not moved or spoken or turned my head. In this resolute social paralysis, I completely purged my mind and thoughts of all superfluous garbage and simply existed for the bus ride. This was my solace, my Zen descent away from this maddening civilization and artificiality. The dystopian inertia was drained from my body. This is how I resume life.


There are days I cannot swallow people and their ridiculous remains.


My estrangement enclosed me and wrapped me within a self-contained armored ball of misanthropy, like one of those pillbugs that crawl like little spindly tanks until you touch them, then they turn into little balls as if to fool the world they are not really living balls. When I was little, I would sometimes take a rolled up pillbug and toss it across the lawn as if to prove I hadn’t been fooled.


And I doubt, in my metamorphosized state of reclusive physiological armored retreat, I fool many.