The Wraith

I become a ghost when I enter the school grounds.

Maybe the effect is somewhat opposite of the ghost town effect.

Maybe I prefer it that way. And maybe I don't.

As for that, I am too tired to decide, if I ever do try.

The Clouds Left Over

It was pretty much pouring rain when I left this morning. Despite the fact that the freeway was backed up the entire time, and that I was in stop and go traffic all the way to school, I enjoyed it. Why? The rain has its own sort of insulator, its own obscuring quality, and it tends to make the world smaller and more personal. When you are sitting in the car in the rain, it is just you listening to the dull roar of the falling water. All the cars on the street kick up this mist on the freeway, and it persists as a wall around you as you travel.

The clouds are billowing fortress walls now. The air is cool, and everything is alright.

That, and two hips and a hooray for hedonistic Tuesdays.

What Now?

Remnants of a strange dream are lingering in my head. I was in Africa.

I was going down this river in a raft, with a guide. And well, there was a 50 ft crocodile leading the way. That was a little unsettling. For some reason, the guide didn't care. He said something about the crocodile, but I can't remember what it was. Or maybe I couldn't make it out over the roar of the river and the preoccupation with the huge beast in question. But eventually, we reached this small cascade, and all of a sudden the croc flips over and dies. I climb up its body and the guide is gone off somewhere, so I can continue downriver. Or was it upriver? Things have become strange and impossible now, and the raft is gone, and I am floating towards the shore, and what is on the shore of a river? Many lounging crocodiles, waiting for me to drift in. I knew it was a bad idea. Darkness.

I found myself further back, more upriver (or downriver) where there was this goddamn dog swimming after me. The owner kept saying something about the dog. I don't know why but I was more worried about the dog than the crocodiles. Well, my worries were confirmed, and the dog bit me in the balls. I don't even know how this happened, I just know the nature of the injury. The owner said, "Man, that's gonna hurt like hell for a while." Like I needed to be told this. In the dream I actually remember feeling pain.

Then there was something with cars and sleeping in strange tents. Wet clothes. Uncomfortable settings. Feeling exposed.

Eventually I arrive at this compound in the mountains. My mom is there waiting for me. She has a new job. WMD inspector. They called them like WOT's or something, but I don't know what the fuck a WOT is, so I'll refer to it as WMD. I accompanied her anyway, to make sure things didn't get dicey. The compound is actually a beautiful sprawl of a house owned by a regular family that didn't seem too suspicious. But you never know. So we searched behind paintings. We searched behind paintings for WMD's.

Jesus.

That Time Of Night

Sometimes I look at text on a website, and it looks so much smaller than I remember it. Or sometimes I get into my car, and I feel bigger then I remember, like I can't fit as well in the driver's seat, or I feel smaller, where I'd have to stretch more to the pedals.

These are some of the things I think of at this time of night, when the air is cold no matter what season, and the roaring freeway has died to a whisper, and the tangible quality of loneliness starts to set in and affect your thoughts; that kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with alienation, but a more instinctual, direct loneliness. The literal sense of being alone, when everyone is sleeping. And why consider them gone when they are just sleeping? They are still there, are they not? But maybe they really are somewhere else, independent of their bodies, and you can sense that. Or maybe its all associations and silly feelings, and the idea is just an illusion.

All that is not the point.

There is a different thought process at this time of night. Sometimes melancholy sets in. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you play some smooth music. Sometimes you wonder if someone is being murdered anywhere nearby. With the fading of light comes the fading of the great roar. The great bustle. When you do see or hear people at this time of night, their existence becomes very interesting, because there is nothing else to be distracted by.

The cold, dull oscillating boom of a plane passing overhead stirs a contemplation of who is inside. And who is in that plane? At this time of night? What are they doing? Where are they going? The sound a plane makes in the dead silence reminds me how infinite that sky really is.

Who is driving this car passing by? Are they alone? Are they gazing out into the darkness beyond the headlights, wondering the same things as me as I lay just 50 yards from their passing vehicle behind a thin wall? Do they see the light in my room? Do they wonder who I am? What I am doing? Are they taking the time to wonder like the time I am taking right this moment? Do the directions of our inquiries meet at a precise moment? Only to cross over each other and sweep over something else? Is there someone lying in this person's trunk?

What are people doing on the other side of the world where it is light? Where the great roar is in full volume? The bustle in full activity?

Dark blues. Brown yellows. Purple streaks. Black. Those are the colors of the night. Those are the colors of my thoughts in this point in time.

On The Philosophy Of Function

I own two Kendo sticks. Initially, I acquired them so that I can hit people. More or less.

But now their role has been radically altered. I know use them to save spiders from the bathtub. Go figure. But it does make sense when elaborated on.

You see, the stick looks natural for the most part, like an extended branch maybe...to the spiderian eye. Maybe they don't even think about that shit. I don't know. But I do know it is a hell of a lot harder to coax one onto a frisby or empty tubberware container. All you have to do is lean the stick down and have it right there next to the struggling spider. He will accept it almost gratefully as a surface that he can run up with all his eight little legs without slipping miserably down into the water below.

Now the stick is more than long enough to give ample time to get outside before the spider runs all the way up the base, which might be unfortunate for the user if the user is a little creeped out by the spider anatomy. Also, if the spider goes wayward, say around under the stick where he might be in danger of falling off and lost entirely, the user can turn the stick so that he is upright again. Sometimes the spider might even attach a web to the stick and lower himself to the ground, and in this case, the user can raise the stick and get outdoors so that the spider will not be lost that way either. Because what is a lost spider? It is a creepy liability that could see the creature finding its way somewhere very unsatisfying when it is least expected.

And then finally the user can reach the outdoors where he would fling the spider out into its own domain. Everyone is happy afterwards. There is no needless death. There is no creeping out. There is no distressed spider-climbing.

That is how I use the Kendo sticks now. They are very useful in this household, where spiders turn up frequently without announcing themselves.

Right On, Right On

Pygmies. Yeah. Pygmy dolls, attacking people. Maybe it was trying to be scary or creepy or something. I just couldn't stop laughing.

P for puny
y for yam
g for gangrene
m for mangy
i for illllllll, maaaan
e for energy
e for eat
e for eat
e for entemanns
e for elaska, oop
s for sike

I have an essay to write this weekend. Oh well.

Marooned

My head is throbbing, pulsing along with my beating heart.

I lie in bed, unable to get up. It is warm in here, and beyond the air is cold and unwelcoming.

What's more is I am weighed down with nonstop thoughts, rushing through my head one after the other.

It won't be easy getting out of bed.

I rarely enjoy mornings like this.

Under The Ice

I just got done writing a pretty big post about a lot of things. Sort of painful to write. Really cathartic, revealing, searching, a mess, whatever else it was. I save these kinds of things as drafts, because maybe it is too much to say, maybe it is best revealed in the future. That rare time when you are about to die maybe. A rare time indeed.

And to think, all these words just floating there in cyberspace separated by a simple designation, a simple choice of which button to press. What if someone were to get into this user space? Just read it all. What would they know? What would they find? Only I would know. But I'm not sure if I would care either. There's no telling how comprehensible it would be to someone else either, much less to me in five years. It is not just some I know something you don't, dumb, elitist attitude either. It is something else. A wonder. A wonder of all these things that hover there just right out of sight. These words, these thoughts, these feelings. What is there? And what is keeping it all from just rushing out? A membrane, that's what. There's a certain threshold, where the energy must peak and clear to give activation. Some people's containment membranes will give. They'll pour it all out and say everything there is to say, while others are thicker and more locked down. Mine being the latter. I mean, I've probably never said much of anything to anyone, using a universal scale. And that is painful in itself.

Under that thick sheet of ice is an enormous creature swimming in a vast blue sea, never before seen under it all, only sensed because of the barely discernible shape under the cold translucence, gliding back and forth like it is pacing. And all the creature wants is a little peace and love.

Hahahhah. A nervous laugh. I could do little to conceal the uneasiness. The uncertainty.

Just a tick away from marking this one as a draft as well.

Crackdown Ethics (And Stuff)

I've been playing a lot of this game, and I've been thinking about what I've been playing the entire time, and this fictional city's political/sociological implications, and all the like. Yes. This isn't some humorless critique, no, there is a smile on my face as I think of all this, and then write it down, because it would be funny if these scenarios were real. Sorta funny. Yes, it is funny, I have decided. It is blown out to extreme proportions, and that is pretty funny for anything really.

I mean, look at this city. There's no apparent governing system, other than the three maniacal gangs that seem to control it. How did they get their hands on this city? And these guys aren't just silly little street gangs, no, they're military-grade nutjobs is what they are. The streets are in constant riot and uproar. Echoing explosions and clattering machinegun fire can be heard really anywhere you care to stand. You can't go out for a coffee, or take your dog for a walk, because an armored car will pull up full of heavily-armed, eh, malcontents, and eh kill you, perhaps even maim you. On fire. I don't see why there are even people out walking in the first place.

But I mean, talking about these gangs again, there had to be some really genuine unhappiness here to inspire a man to pick up a rocket launcher and go terrorizing a whole city. What kind of city was this? What conditions were these people in to become so unhappy?

Then you have the Agency. Their building is a great tower of incredible architecture that looms over all the land, with terrifying red searchlights sweeping 360 degrees. You get sort of an authoritarian vibe out of this set-up. The police are ruthless. They roll right up, even running over civilians here and there, and fire away at these people, sometimes in the middle of a freeway, causing terrible pile-ups and fatalities. You've got the ruthless police and the even more ruthless gang freaks fighting day and night. It is like some sort of civil war, or it is one, I don't know.

Finally, there's the Agents themselves. Genetically enhanced monstrosities that can leap buildings in a single bound, and drop-kick semi trucks into the ocean, among other things. They administer a special brand of justice. Extremely brutal and savage and awesome. One can only imagine Agents in this day and age, with our societal worries and whatnots. Here is two teenagers dealing weed. Uh oh, here comes an Agent! What's this! He's carrying: a tanker truck! He hurls it at the teenagers, and detonates it right over their heads with an expert blast of his submachine gun! It explodes and sends them flaming high into the sky! Justice is served.

So what is justice in this city? Complete destruction? Furthermore, what's to keep the Agents from going totally berserk and taking the cities for themselves? God knows I've wanted a piece of that city for myself. I would go destroying an entire city block, full of innocents, just for the fun of it, and the boss calls in: "Agent! You disappoint me! The peace-keepers are going to have to take you down!" And I say, "Psssh, I don't care, I'll kill em all, then hang out on a roof until the heat dies down." And that is exactly what I do. It works fine too, because they need me. Say I do want the entire city for myself. No one could stop me. Maybe the Agency will breed stronger Agents to take me out. But what about these stronger Agents? They're stronger. What if they want the city? And then a stronger batch is breeded to stop these ones, and this continues in a deadly cascade of hell.

Ultimately, you have the strongest Agent of all, who is like a god. He can't be stopped. He takes the city with ease. But maybe he has developed his own thoughts about things. Maybe he knows a thing or two about an ideal society, or an ideal political system. Maybe he can be the fabled Philosopher King, like another Akbar, and administer a great rule of the likes that the city has never seen. Because just destroying all these gangs won't be enough. There will be more unhappiness and despair and they will all rise out of the cracks, to fight again. No, another solution is needed. Like a fair and just ruler who has the strength to pull the city out of its seemingly eternal civil war and who is also virtuous enough not to take absolute power, and maybe even give it back to the politicians, if there is any, when the time is right.

Yeah, that would be pretty funny.

Creep

The cold wind before a heavy rain combines with a chilled loneliness to create a special blend of frigid apprehension, an apprehension that is dulled almost to non-existence, but there, throbbing in the darkest corner. This is the feeling you might have when you are standing out there in the dark with nobody but yourself, surveying the street in a melancholic daze. The streetlights are a muddy yellow, and stand in a row as far as you can see, unmoving, as they should be, but at the same time you expect them to be swaying with the wind. You can feel the clouds hanging in the darkness high above. You can't see them. They are there. They have a great presence there, behind the sphere of polluted light, in the infinite black. Something is about to happen. Something cold. But what?

And then 15 minutes later is that stretch of freeway on the 5 that is bordered by fields, and is in almost complete darkness, if it wasn't for all the cars moving through. But even amidst all the cars, there is a sensation of this stream of blackness, of nothing, a lonely stretch that lasts but a minute. That's the one part of the trip that I remember more than the rest.

I seem to be comfortable in these settings, for a fleeting second, and there is something else, eating at the edge, not quite defined, and the comfort is gone.

I guess that's the sort of dominating imagery that symbolizes some of the more serious problems that eat slow and subterranean. The problems that I don't think are problems until they've done too much damage to reverse.

I almost can't help but watch the course of this abstract disease in morbid fascination. Then of course there's the realization that the material being corroded is myself, and then, well, the show is over I guess.

"Wow", He Chirped

I'm playing my guitar in the dark, right? Don't ask why, that's not the point to this story.

I'm pickin' away at those strings, the volume at moderate levels, just doing whatever.

Well, I finally turn the lights on, to go get on with the day, and I realize there's this cricket on my amp. He's just hanging there, upside down, just chillin' I guess. Right there on the grill, in front of the speaker. On my amp, my amp that has been kicking up a considerable quantity of volume.

I mean, sheesh. What a trip that must have been for that cricket eh?


I guess that's not that great of a story.


"What a day", I sigh. And serve myself more of that lifter, that elevator, that people-mover to wherever it is we like to go to to get away.

Almost

I had this fleeting epiphany for just a second, a birds-eye view of the overall structure of the social construct.

It cracked like a bolt of lightning, its branches the structure itself, detailed, vivid, revelatory. And it faded away just as quick.

It'll be back.

What was it I was going to say?

Ah yes...


Every Tuesday and Thursday I destroy my body and in its ruins I practice a distilled version of hedonism.

Now hedonism, in the long run, will destroy you, if you are not Dionysus himself. Though he's probably not a hedonist in the strictest sense. But in short bursts it can replenish, refresh, rejuvenate, and reinvigorate in its simplification and indulgence.

That and I got down from my moral perch long ago.

Truth in the Babble

"Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that's an honourable thing in its own way; well, but we can't even talk nonsense with our own brains! Talk nonsense to me, by all means, but do it with your own brain, and I shall love you for it. To talk nonsense in one's own way is almost better than to talk a truth that's someone else's; in the first instance you behave like a human being, while in the second you are merely being a parrot!"

-Razumikhin, drunk, from Crime and Punishment

Bullshit

So one of the few good things that happened to me yesterday, which was a sort of a god-forsaken yesterday that didn't contain much good things within, was that someone handed me a bubble-blower pen. You see, naturally I was stoked. A bubble-blower pen. For free. I don't even need to explain that. Bubbles aren't to be taken lightly, no pun intended. Oh and it was a Valentine's bubble-blower pen. You know, all red and stuff, with a smiley heart handle to the bubble-blowing wand. Totally stoked.

I didn't get to check it out until I got home, or moreover, the next day, when I woke up with it beside my bed, and when I had decided that I was going to do some bubble-blowing...in the room. Once the momentum has started, you cannot stop a bubble-blowing mood, lest you want heavy, heavy consequences.

Well I went to unscrew the top of the pen, and what is this? I can't even get it out of the base? What is this? Maybe it is just snagged on something. No. I check the transparent reservoir and what do I see? The wand is broken. Fuckin' useless. You can't blow bubbles without a goddamn bubble wand. And I thought things were starting to look up.

I ought to go and see if I can get an exchange. In an ideal world, every individual has equal opportunity, maybe even equal right to a bubble-blowing pen. If this is not the case, well then surely a revolution of sorts is in order. But we all know what happens when there is a revolution. There's different parties with different agendas within the revolution, and divisions form, and the revolution eventually begins to eat itself.

I mean, everyone remembers that maniac Robespierre.

This is bullshit.

Lead Head

I had this dream this morning. A series of dreams. They were...how can I say...debilitating? I couldn't get out of bed at 7. No, the alarm rang. I couldn't get up. I'm up now. It is 10. I'll have to go to the next class. The first is long gone. I couldn't have gotten up.

In the dream I remember the most vividly, I went lucid. I was at a window. One of those sliding door windows, looking out into the dark yard. The trees were blowing. And there were shadows. Something was rising out of the shadows. I turned away. Walked to the bathroom. I gazed into the mirror.

Oh...my face. I gazed into the face of a monster. It was lit up by the vanity lights. I could see the eyes, tortured, widening in horror from seeing this face. And the skin was pulling taught, farther and farther, the eyes as big as saucers now. I've never seen such a thing in a dream. My face, clear as crystal, this monstrous face.

I could not look away.

There were more dreams, all throughout the morning. What is it that has me up at this time writing these things?

I'm still tired.

By The By

You are the electric light.

The Quiet After The Rain

Oh god, the clouds today, the clouds.

They towered, they sprawled, they curled, they mushroomed up into the sky. Grey fission blasts, everywhere, anywhere.

I'm...very small, looking up, a turquoise speck in a rainbow metallic glass flow. This freeway...this sky...this is so...what...there's no words to describe this.

Not because it is indescribable, no. It can be communicated with pictures, with metaphors, with film, all vehicles that will reach you and open up their payloads, and you will know by virtue of indirect, transient telepathy, or some similar mechanism.

The sky, the cold crisp air, the still. I could stay out here for hours. I could try in vain to describe in words what I'll never grasp with language. Why try? You could place yourself there and nod your head. You might get a rough idea of what I'm talking about. But the words will only carry so far, and the waves will die out in the atmosphere, or will they even get that far?

And in my car today something that I might never understand was going through my head, maybe my entire body, something no single individual can understand, something of such magnitude, it would take the entire consciousness of the human population to comprehend, if it is possible to comprehend in the first place.

And this train of thought is just unraveling more and more the longer it gets, until I don't even know where I started.

And...ah.

AHAHAHAHAH!

Man I just had a great laugh. One of the better one's I've had in a few months.

It wasn't even due to some sort of comedy or anything created. It was just due to the happenings of life. Someone said something so stupid and so absurd on several levels.

Maybe I'm not being very articulate here.

You know when someone says something, or acts a certain way, and there are so many dimensions in which what they said or did was so wrong, that it all just sort of converges right into your stomach and bursts up into uncontrollable laughter? And your stomach buckles up, in a good way, and tears stream down your face. This is good stuff. It releases those chemicals. It feels good. It feels great. Afterwards even, for a little while it lasts. A natural high.

I mean, this is layered comedy...that writes itself, and you don't even have to pay anyone. Sometimes I am glad for the stupidity of some people.

I mean, that's sort of one of the pillars of good comedy in the first place.

I don't mean to be harsh. But Jesus!

Feels so much better to laugh than resent. Even if it is at the expense of someone else. I guess it helps to not know the person too.

They could use an eye-opener, that is, if they even realize what a fool they are.



Ahhhhhahahhah.

Further Downstream, Eh Marlow?

The latest in Philosophy: analysis of language, its meaning, how it creates reality for us, so to speak. And then what is consciousness? What is mind?

Seems we are diving further into ourselves, diving into who or what we really are.

And what will we find?

This Life, These Waves

Floating in a vast electrical ocean. The peaks and valleys are fluid and ever-changing with the blowing wind. We are lost, and finding our way. The answers are deep, far below, and high above. Fear and tranquility alternating with the environment, the stimuli; sometimes they become one.

Dark shapes below. A pod of dolphins? A gang of sharks? We can't know until they reach the surface. Or our kicking legs.

And these clouds make shapes, and everyone wants to interpret them a certain way. And all of their interpretations, their opinions, overlap to form everything...everything that matters to us, like the spinning blades of a fan forming a circle, just for a second, yet constant.

Words stuck somewhere deep in this space, failing to attach themselves to the exhalations coming from my lungs. Stranded! We've hit the doldrums, captain.

There is no Purgatory to get to. It has always been here.

This Electricity, These Signals

It is a tearing, a popping, a ripping of these sinews, these sheets of flesh; deep under, under skin and bone, muscles pulling apart, squeezing back together again to rip back apart.

I've just got this image in my head, this image that I can't get rid of, this experience, this wrenching, tearing of my tooth. Something is cracking near the root, cracking and tearing away from the flesh, and there is this ripping, this sound, this sensation, in my head, in my mouth, it masters all of my being; all of my energy, all of my thoughts have gravitated to this naked electricity, this brilliant crackling of concentrated pain. It snakes from the mouth to the stomach, and touches the heart lightly to leave a spiderweb of shock. It is beating faster, the heart. The current is constant and deep and exquisite. Every muscle is contracting, quivering, shocked at the signals they are receiving. My brain cannot believe these signals. It must be a mistake. Why are they still coming? I feel as if I am imploding now, my entire body collapsing into itself. And then great fever, incredible sickness, physical collapse. Cold sweat, the whitest knuckles, tremors.

Complete physical debilitation, exhaustion, all from a single point of stress. Pulling the totality of bodily energy out through a single pinhole.

To Grasp, To Hold, To Lose

Recent developments summarized right there. But it is cyclical.

The proceeds are a collection of thoughts and observations strung together today, with no concrete, logical connection or meaning. This is exactly how the day felt.

The sky mirrored my mood. It was flat, colorless, with the sun behind a cloud. Not quite overcast, and not quite sunny.

The morning was good. The day started off alright. There was a dense fog, and fog makes things beautiful. Whatever it shrouds, it shrouds in soft gray mystery. Even a car wreck could be made beautiful. The only thing there in the fog is the lights. The diffusing lights in the midst of great gray billows. And then a shape, and then you are gone, your life extinguished and whisked away like the surrounding fog blown back from the colliding metal.

There was a steel skeleton of a building being built in the distance, and the blueish construction lights glowed through the murk. Everything was easy on the eyes. Not easy on the wits, no, as shapes would come to meet you in short notice. Then the fog burned off, but the sun stayed subdued and so the day became ugly. It strangely accompanied the deterioration of my mood at the time, be it the catatonic gazes into nothing, thinking of something somewhere else, none of which I can clearly remember. There's black spots here and there. Not sure when, not sure how.
The Jesus Lizard would cackle into my ear. I would smile and nod. A strange apparition under the shadow of a blue hood.

Wraith, revenant, ghost, whatever. The chill reminded me that I was there. Time was passing so slow. Slow. Heavy.

I passed many people. Some of whom stole glances. Some of the glances in my imagination. I could not meet their eyes. This I say with a heavy sigh. The mutter deflates into a whisper.

I can remember gin. Warmth. Steel cords under my fingers. Noise. Dissonance.

Two students behind me talking: "Just a kick to the shin, and I could kill someone easily..." They proceeded to talk about ways to kill someone. I wanted to laugh out loud. Almost did.

In some cases I almost completely lack the faculty of vengeance.

The memory of the day is more like a memory of a dream than a memory of a conscious experience. What happened today? Where is this going?

A Vehicle For What Escapes Language

Sometimes I feel like our extensions, our art, our literature, our media are better than the real thing. But what is the real thing? The source of all these extensions I suppose. And then I realize that I am wrong. They cannot be better or more complete than the sources they stream from, because they are only a part, a representation of that source.

Sometimes I can watch something happening and feel that dull ache of an emptiness I cannot quite explain, and realize just for a second that maybe I have not truly experienced what is real, or what can be.

And maybe I am constructed solely of all these representations. My being maybe. But no, this is too bleak, too plastic, too meaningless to fully comprehend. I have experienced at least a taste of what is real...if nothing else.

But I must say, when the black tide does rise, it is comforting, if not completely satisfying to retreat to the extensions, which are suspended high above the surging waters. Maybe even a survival mechanism.

What's all this abstract talk anyway? Does this vehicle work? Does it confuse? Does it alienate?

Pahhh.

Schwing A Ding Dings

Dig it man.

The Trucker

He was an asshole.

Green cab, blue cargo trailer. He drove like a Californian, a destructive, selfish, mean Californian in a sedan or pick-up truck who doesn't give a shit about anybody on the road. But he drove a semi-truck. A fuckin' dangerous hybrid driver. A rare crossbreed. Someone who drives a large vehicle with a small vehicle mentality. He'll learn the hard way. Or someone else will teach him with their fatality.

He cut from lane to lane, whichever was going faster, without putting on his blinker. Without hesitating really. The problem with this is the sheer percentage of blind spot that a semi-truck has, not to mention the actual area it takes up on the road, coupled with its incredible weight.

He wedged his way up the merge lanes like the morning commuter assholes who can't wait in line like everybody else. Truckers aren't supposed to do this. They need time to switch lanes. Far in advance. I had been watching him for a long time now. Fearing his every move. The traffic dynamics were tense. Everyone was afraid of this guy. I got far away from him for a while, I thought I was safe. But he here he comes, wedging up the merge lane, and what happens? I am the one in front of him. And to my stark surprise, he pushes his way right into me, and almost forces me right off the road, or under his tires.

"Ohhhhh you dirty, dirty bastard."

He is ahead of me now. In all his opportunistic smugness. I must pass him. I must dominate.

And then: he is trapped! I get in the exit lane next to him and pass him up.

"Fuck you bitch!" I bellow out loud. And then I exit, and off he goes.

I thought about this. First in confusion, in slight embarrassment. Why? Why did I have to pass him? Was this vengeance? What are these petty games? It will never matter, ever. Let the bastard wreck himself. But then, I give in, I relinquish this obstructing rational thought. I savor the victory, the sweet vengeance. This is life, this seemingly petty race. To be the best. Why resist? This is how life sustains itself, survives. At the lowest level, it seems so ridiculous, but it adds up. It culminates into something essential.


Goddamn maniac truckers. Most of them are pretty considerate, considering. Considering all they put up with.

And then the argument becomes a circle.