This Blog Is Only For The Benefit of Myself

I'm too tired to be anybody's new friend.

I can tolerate and even enjoy the company of old friends, good friends, friends with a benefit, friends of convenience, but not new friends. They want to know everything and I am too tired to talk.

Even post-insufflation.

A Prediction:

Part the second.

The room is stocked.

Mouse pays heed to Englishmen.

The rock musician as an expression of the archetypal warrior-poet. The mention of Celtic oral tradition might inspire xenophobia, perceived racism, et al; best be avoided.

A fence is a stronghold's extension.

There is great rudeness in appearing uninvited; guests must be allowed entrance first. The mind is a city-state or nation. Foreign influence = the words/works of others, in essence, intrusions. Contamination is not a bad thing, itself.

I Never Was Attached To That Great Sect

Opposite Word of ataraxia:
"difficulty, disquiet, excitableness, furor, strife, turmoil, uneasiness, unrest"

 He walked like this:
- sticking his side to the wall, leaving dark marks at the cuff,
- averting his eyes as to pass unidentified

In fact he wished not to be addressed at all; but this was a trait common to all mice.

This Is Not An Autobiography

This is a story about a boy called Mouse.

Mouse had not left the house in three weeks, and it was during this lapse of sense that he chose the name for himself. His motives were philosophical – so he said, and we have no reason to doubt it, as he was a young person and young people have chosen to reinvent themselves forever and always.

Another word for his attitude could be “indolent”, or “self-indulgent”, or “premature”. Mouse himself wouldn’t have denied it. He described himself in these terms, too, without seeming defeated or proud. He said, “This is what I am, and there is nothing right or wrong about it.” Then he would have probably presented his views on morality or lack thereof and quoted or misquoted a German thinker or ten.

But this is merely an introduction, and I have been warned against talking about the fact itself just yet, lest I, the Author, miss my monthly pay for “narrating in disorder”.

It begins thus.

This knobby-kneed, spectacled, vaguely harmless, decidedly mousy young man had been born Charles James Whitby. He was sixteen years old, and had been bullied half his life. Of the other half, we can say he was part worshipped, part ignored; the injustice of this wrecked his brain, exaggerated his perceptions of the social variety, and all in all bound him to very specific instabilities.

Of attention, we could say he was starved or force-fed, never healthy or content.

Unlike many other only children, who are coddled from birth to young manhood, our hero was, by his parents’ own admission, raised not to indulge in emotional silliness. That is, he was not raised with love or kindness, or at least not particularly. Instead he was forced on books and rooms that smelled of naphthalene, on ascetic meals and adult conversation.

It seemed that James and Claudia – for those were his parents’ names, both failing pedagogues, had forgotten that he was, indeed, a child and not a grown spirit in an inversely tiny vessel. Play was not indulged, but corrected, and given that he had no brothers or sisters to speak of, the boy-turned-mouse found loneliness a reality.

It didn’t take long for him to become himself.

It was only inevitable.

They expected him to be brilliant and detached, and with their expert conditioning he churned the right responses. For all they knew, their son was being raised correctly, and if this was true, he would surely someday be happy.

But he wasn’t, and they never found out.

They were too deep in their heads, charmed by the dead rather than the living, by science minus the wonder. Their separate minds were happy places, and it was good that they knew nothing worth knowing. They would have suffered otherwise. Suffered more, I should specify. Like everybody else, they were utterly convinced of the tragedy of their lives. Their woes were by far the most unfortunate; their trifling fights wove stories.

It was a wonder they didn’t enjoy theatre.

Of course, this was when James still lived, and Claudia still dyed her hair once every two months, and Charles-then-Mouse still had his trousers ironed every morning.  

i haven't written in months and i fear i've forgotten how. it's become too tedious, as i find myself increasingly uncreative, tethered to the works of others like a burr or a leech. i'm unable to shift from the themes etched in me (the nature of knowledge, the goodness of doubt, a certain bitterness in regard to family and the law, et cetera). i've come to hate them. i don't want to touch them again.

 symbolic saturation could be the cause; it's bad for the brain to see much in anything. in order to preserve my sanity i will try to not think at all.

 style and structure (a mere organisational capacity) appear to have left me, as well. my knowledge about them has blurred around the edge (drenched, rank, unreadable) (the week-old paper used in a litter box, due to a lack of money or motivation). i cannot think of similes. cats make terrible people and should be forcibly castrated.

it is apparent that i am effectively shipwrecked, but it's been easier to come to terms to it than i expected. a person incapable of expressing a particular sensation in a manner understandable to others is not necessarily deficient. he or she would be unfit to be a poet or politician, but that is all.

the one thing i can do is write dubiously honest love letters about nearly everybody. they are all ridiculous and go like this:

"...and then you'd ask for cigarettes. of course i would give you one. i'd think you were a fair-faced fellow, like antinous or saint sebastian, and for a minute i would love you. crowned in light, leonine, easily tempted by theft, murder and the joy of being right; you only feared getting caught. and what else would you be frightened of? i know i would act on the inclination. 'the world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. the curves of your lips rewrite history'.

i wish it were easier to generate attachment. i get bored too quickly.

my interest is limited to boy-kings.

i once thought i knew a messiah. he had everything, knew everything. but then again we all have the world. all young people do, in the sense that we're immortal until we die, that the ship's unsinkable until it does sink. it's a nice thought. it lets us do things. i know i wouldn't get up in the morning if i didn't believe it.

i told him he was dead. hollowed-out. dry. like firewood. it was true.

he didn't get it. (he got it.)

if he was dead, i was diseased. twin maladies do that to people. they make them go mad and not be able to go to sleep unless they have done what needs to be done and i should not be writing about this because there is such thing as a perilous condition. as well as perilous outcomes.

the situation is dire. i have nothing on me. no money, nothing in the box. crumbs in a pringles tin. brown water in a bottle. the word VINDICATION scribbled on a wall, between a crude drawing of st sebastian, done by arrows, and the phrase 'simon knew he would die'.

I Barely Knew Ye

Pépin,

I told them you were dead.

You're welcome.