Ritual de lo Habitual

Posted on 10/21/2011 by ericmcclanahan

Fancy shoes

White after labor day? *Gasp*

I am sorry that I don’t have much to say.  Not to say that my life has been particularly uneventful or boring lately, but I can’t find a way to share it without just saying “And I did this… and I did this… and this.  Do you like me now?”

I am at work right now hiding in the office.  Outside the door is a table with about fourteen to sixteen financiers that I’m supposed to be wooing.  I don’t like wooing.  I’m not bad at it, I just don’t like it.  It’s not my style, and I feel cheap doing so.

So yesterday I slipped into a pair of high heels and walked a mile for the third year in a row to promote awareness of domestic violence in my community.  It’s a charity event spearheaded by the YWCA and the guys and I always have a great time participating.  It feels great (spiritually, not physically) and we always get a good laugh at each others’ expense.

I suppose that’s all I have to say at this time.  Sorry I’m not more forthcoming, but everything just seems so jumbled in my head, like a jug full of blocks; they all fit in just fine, but when you tip it over, they gather together at the spout and won’t come out.

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“Now there is not much left of me / at least not much I’d let you see”

Posted on 08/12/2011 by ericmcclanahan

I am tired.  I slept about five hours or so, and went to bed relatively sober, but these impenetrable clouds and the cauldron of tepid coffee in my stomach are oppressing me.  I want to sleep.  Not to mention it’s a fucking icebox in my office this morning.  What the hell?

I know, I know; I sound cranky.  I’m not, really.  I’m not much of anything.  Work-Me doesn’t feel happiness or anger or joy or cantakerousness; It just produces.  That’s what I do.  I’m a producer.

Next week I turn 33.  <— (I’m supposed to place some commentary on that statement but I have no idea what it might be.  I don’t feel anything.)

This is the fourth or fifth blog that I’ve begun writing in the past two months.  I start them and trash them, realizing that I have nothing to say.  I’ve been busy with my new band, working on a film for a friend, writing new material, working, and trying to find time to wedge my wife in my schedule at some point.  When I’m not busy, I’m languidly lounging in various temperature-controlled environments: movie theaters, shopping malls, my dismally frigid office writing and deleting blogs with the careless brush of a disinterested deity.  I sleep the days away out of fear; what trouble would I get into if I dared to venture into the world?

What do I have to say?  I stare into the expectant whiteness of this space and ask my brain to run off into the corner and bring back something interesting but it always returns with the same battered tennis-ball of my loneliness and directionlessness and sets it down before me, dangling its grotesque tounge greedily from its fetid mouth.  I don’t know what it wants, what it thinks it will be rewarded with for such a paltry offering.

Here’s a few pictures of stupid things that I’ve done around the workplace to entertain myself:

So, yeah, that’s some of the elementary shit I do around here to keep me from going crazy.

I really have nothing to say.

I’m going to stop this now.  I would like a nap.

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Monkey High Five

Posted on 06/19/2011 by ericmcclanahan

Crackers, cupcakes, spiders, and now beeswax candles.  How is it I can hang my dreams and desperation upon such trivial objects?  I am seriously considering finding a therapist.

Thursday I woke up around 7 to go to work and open the restaurant.  As I began I my office work, I noticed someone had placed a gift in my box.  It was wrapped and had my name written on it, though no name from the benefactor.  I unwrapped it to discover two hand-made beeswax candles.  I was perplexed, not only at the bizarre nature of the gift itself but also who it could’ve been from, and what prompted them to give me this gift.  I shrugged and put the candles in my box and went back to work.

It was shortly after that the brain began its destructive onslaught of abuse.  I started thinking about people in my life who were and are genuinely generous.  Just plain nice people.  There are many.  They give without motive, they show consideration at every turn, from the guy who calls me at random hours and invites me to free activities he’s stumbled upon or tells me about articles he’s read that I might enjoy, to the kitchen staff who make themselves delicious lunch entrees that aren’t on the menu and make enough to share with everyone, always plating a dish for me without provocation.  The bartenders who spend all day baking and bring in cupcakes or brownies or cookies.  My wife, who randomly picks up cupcakes for her co-workers if she happens to see the food truck while out on her lunch break. 

I tried to think of the last time I had given someone something for no apparent reason other than the act, itself.  Or the last time I called a friend just to say hi.  Or the last time I brought my wife something merely because I thought she might like it…

And I couldn’t recall.  I don’t think I’m nice enough.  I try to be considerate of the people around me, and I’m generous with my word, but I don’t feel that I’m kind.  I try to pay attention to my close friends, but those on the peripheral of my life (acquaintances, co-workers, bar friends) get the short end of the stick.  It’s as simple as recognizing that these generous people in my life think of me when I’m not standing in front of them, whereas I do not.  I’m slowly shutting down my social life.

There is a series of commercials on TV right now about mental illness, sponsored by a San Diego service that strives to bring awareness to the reality of this affliction.  In one, an older couple is recounting how the wife began to close herself off from her friends and withdraw into herself, and she and her husband at first thought it was a natural part of aging, but looked deeper into the phenomena and talked about it and discovered that she had mild depression and together they sought out help for her.

I think I need help.

Earlier that same morning, I was walking the last few blocks from the bus stop to work and I sneezed; a very violent, wet sneeze.  As I was wiping the viscous snot from my hand, I was disappointed that there was no blood in it.  I am so bored with my life that I want affliction, sickness, hardship.  I am coasting through an idyllic life (beautiful loving wife, great job, decent pay, good friends, good health) and I am miserable.

Later that same afternoon, I removed a dead sea-gull from the middle of fourth street.  I had stepped out to smoke a cigarette and saw it on the yellow line in the street.  People were slowing their cars as they drove past to look at it; pedestrians were either ignoring it or pointing at it in horror and disgust.  It was a pretty big bird, and no one had the resolve to do anything about it.  With a surgeon’s detachment, I went back inside, got plastic gloves and a large trash bag, walked straight up to it, picked it up by its broken, formless neck, and placed it in the bag.  I tied the bag off and threw it in a nearby dumpster, peeled off the gloves, washed my hands, and went back to work.

Is this who I am?  An automaton who can’t go out of his way for the living but easily reconciles with the dead?  Every day I wear the same emotionless expression, carrying on empty conversations with an endless parade of strangers and passersby, and feeling nothing. 

The only thing I feel these days is regret for feeling nothing.

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“You’re a beautiful, beautiful fucked-up man”

Posted on 05/09/2011 by ericmcclanahan

I am not good at being alone.  I cannot turn off my brain.  It doesn’t like me; much in the way we stab at the earth that houses us, it poisons me from within, degrading the vessel that encapsulates it.

I am not special in being a victim of this disdain, however.  It doesn’t like you much, either.  Any of you.  Most of the time, anyway.  It actually tolerates you on an individual basis rather well, but when you band together and think with one mind, it hurts its core.

I have been thinking in terms of physics and metaphysics, in terms of light and fog, of perception and reception.  “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”  If we cannot ponder such things as eternity or infinity, how can we wrap our heads around the finer insinuations of a definite or timed existence?  That question we ask: what happens to us when we die?  When the spark in my brain goes out, what becomes of the thoughts and memories it fueled?  And where does the spark go?  It boggles the mind to imagine the nothingness that must be death.  One minute, all the thoughts and feelings and love and pain of breathing; then, nothing.  The film stops, and even the screen blinks out of existence.  We are nothing.

Of course, we live in the memory of others, but eventually even they will also blink out of being.  Were we to tweak just a few lessons here and there, burn a painting or two, we can make any “immortal” figure disappear.  With our own vessel of knowledge, we may choose to include or omit whatever we desire.  What if I wanted to imagine a world without George Washington, or Albert Einstein, or Jesus Christ?  What if I made a world without death?

I watched a spider wander around my stoop the other day, and I felt a fear towards it that made me want to kill it.  It was almost instinct, but I slowed the impulse down enough to imagine why.  What threat does the spider represent, immediately?  It is not bigger than me; rather I am several thousand times its size.  It is not more intelligent than me, so it’s unlikely that it will manipulate me into harming myself or lure me into financial ruin through a real estate scheme.  Looking at this spider, with my subconscious mind screaming at me to kill it, I had to wonder what about it fostered this fear.  I realized that it is my knowledge of the spider that makes me fear it.  I possess a mind which has a dossier on the spider and reminds me that it is poisonous, it can and likely will bite me and cause me discomfort.  It feasts on other creatures, it has eight menacing eyes, terrifying mandibles, and eight legs.  Given the chance, this spider will hurt me, so I should hurt it first.  And to a creature of my size and supposed dominance, to hurt is to kill.  In fact, it seems barbaric to hurt a creature so much smaller than me without killing it.  It seems natural to kill it; to cripple it would seem cruel, deliberate.  To hold a flame to its side and watch it sizzle, pulling away before the point of death, is the precise definition of torture.  No, the only defensive action I could take in good conscience would be to kill it.

Of course, after it had given me an opportunity to journey down that rabbit-hole slide that resides so often unused in my mind, I couldn’t rightly kill it.  So I rose and went about my business, my brain already churning in the machinations of thought that brought me to my next conclusion:

Based on what I know of humanity, of human beings, it only makes sense that if there is something larger than us out there, with any modicum of intelligence, it would arrive at the conclusion, every single time, to kill us.  Knowing this, it stands to reason that there can be no God.  If there is a God, and He is the omnipotent and omnipresent being of which we’ve been taught, He would have smote all of humanity long ago.  Or He just doesn’t care, which is also a pretty plausible scenario.

And that’s what I think about when I look at the menacing spiders nesting on the steps outside my apartment.  I do enjoy watching them go about their business, though, and I wonder what they think of me.  Do they recognize me as a lifeform or am I just another structure to be climbed?  Can they smell my flesh?  Does it make them hungry?  What will we, insignificant spiders that we are, think of God when we see Him?  Will we smell His flesh, and will it make us hungry?  Will we bite Him, poison Him, cause Him discomfort?  Or has He been here this whole time, and we just thought He was another part of the furniture?

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Cupcakes? Really?

Posted on 04/25/2011 by ericmcclanahan

Here it is: another blog wherein an average, unexceptional object can send me through a metaphysical tailspin and find me on the other end holding a handbag full of self-loathing and unanswered questions.  This time, it was a cupcake.

There was a cupcake-shaped paperweight in my fridge this morning.  A red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting that had hardened into a weapon.  If a home invader were to attack at that point, I could have easily rendered him unconscious by throwing this projectile at his head.  Meredith had bought cupcakes for her office last Wednesday and brought the remainder home to our stay-in dinner date night.  I expressed interest in the red velvet cupcake, though that night, particularly, I wasn’t in the mood for sweets, so she took it out of the box and put it in the refrigerator for me.  Days went by and I never got around to eating it, and this morning I found it in its new petrified state.  I picked it up and felt its rigidity beneath my fingers and knew that it was beyond edible, and with a heavy heart I threw it away.

I felt like a total shit.

Meredith brought the cupcakes home as a gift, a treat, for the two of us, and I let it atrophy and threw it in the garbage.  Who the fuck do I think I am?  Do I not appreciate the gifts that are given me?  And that’s when I realized:

I don’t.

I don’t appreciate things that are given me because I’ve spent so much time and energy manifesting my own desires.  I can’t accept things that I didn’t earn or bring into being through my own force of will.  Particularly since moving to California, I have had very little given to me, and 99% of the empire that is my existence is completely by my own design and blood.  If I want a cupcake, at any given moment, I get a cupcake.  But when someone brings me one out of the goodness of their heart, out of nothing more than love, I can’t convince myself that it’s something I want or need.  Why?  Why can’t I accept the sweetness of my own wife, whom has never come to me with an ulterior motive, who wants only to love me the best way she can?

It’s happened with other things, too, simple things, that tear me apart inside.  Like milk.  She bought me some milk last weekend that I’m sure is expired now because I haven’t had the decency to drink it.  When someone gets you something out of the goodness of their heart, it’s your responsibility to accept it.  All her love is dying in my refrigerator, and I feel like a total shit because of it.

So I leave the house feeling this way and get on the bus where one of the passengers smells as though they have very recently pissed themselves.  There is no room to sit so I am standing in front of one of two passengers in wheelchairs, strapped in for the dangerous commute.  Now I feel like an asshole for flaunting my ability to stand in front of these two people (this has been a plague of mine for years; something is definitely wrong with me) and all I want to do is get away from the urine.  I get off the bus very early, about 13 blocks from my actual stop, and walk the rest of the way.  My earplugs are in and music is pumping into my brain, choking out the outside world, and I notice that everyone I pass is looking at me expectantly.  I think that I was still thinking about the cupcake, about love, about what it is to love and be loved and respect another person, and my face is wearing an outside mask of compassion, and everyone sees me as someone they could connect with or find understanding in.  I know in my mind that I have none for them, and this makes me feel even worse.  I get to work feeling like the most useless calloused piece of shit to ever walk the earth, then turn on the professionalism and drown it all out until the night gets so slow and boring that I can’t help but hear it again, growling somewhere from the recesses of my brain.

And as I sit here, coming to a close, wondering if there is a conclusion to be found in all this self-deprecation, my tongue is telling me that I would like something sweet tonight.  As it seems, I’d like to have a cupcake.

Why do I ever bother thinking?

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I can feel it growing inside me like the alien in that movie, Alien.

Posted on 03/19/2011 by ericmcclanahan

Everyday this week I have woken up with pain in my chest.  Like maybe something wants out…

I alternate between thinking I could really go for a deep tissue massage and thinking that if someone were to touch me I would shit on them, literally.  I need to join a support group, because I’m pretty sure I was raped at LensCrafters.  I bought two pairs of glasses and spent WAY too much money on them.  Oh, and I only have one pair so far.  The others might be ready next week.  I’m not holding my breath, except perhaps to push the burning in my heart a little further down.

I love that my iPod switches from Ill Nino to Charlie Parker seamlessly, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

I am getting married in less than two weeks!!!! I am freaking out!  You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but inside I am all screams and terrified eyes.  Speaking of screams and terrified eyes, I think people should be able to register as pedestrians.  I was listening to Mitch Hedberg this morning, particularly his bit that cars should be limited to three honks of the horn a week because people abuse it so regularly.  It got me thinking about the horn and its initial purpose; to alert other cars of your presence.  In conjunction with your blinkers and brake lights, it is part of the car’s “communication system”.  Unfortunately what most people to choose to communicate with it is “You’re an asshole!”  But it serves an actual purpose if, say, someone is backing out of a space and doesn’t see you over their left shoulder.  You tap the horn lightly, a sharp succinct noise sounds and they turn to see you and wave apologetically and thankfully that you were able to avoid a collision.  As pedestrians, we don’t have that.  All we have is terminally white eyes, bellowing the name of our respective creator, and the snapping of bones underfoot.  That’s why I think anyone who walks more than six blocks a day should be able to register as a pedestrian and be issued an airhorn.

Damn, that soapbox is tall.  And disorienting.  I need to sit down a while.

One more week of work until I’m on vacation for two weeks!  Very excited about that.  But what a week it will be.  We just hired a metric assload of new people and I need to make the schedule for the next three weeks before I go, including all the training and subsequent shifts for the newbies, not to mention onboarding everyone and teaching the menu class and all that fun shiznazzle.  I will be beat by the time my vacation starts, which won’t be all that relaxing the first week.  Fun, yes, but not relaxing.  The way it’s planned, each day leads seamlessly and mercilessly into the next until the wedding, and then the morning after I can relax.  Ideally. 

Seriously, how have people done this for hundreds of years?  This is exhausting.  I was in the shower this morning and suddenly remembered “Shit! I should write some fucking vows or something!”  And that’s another thing and please tell me I’m not the only one: I have most of my epiphanies when I am partly or wholly naked.  Whereas most people shower to clean their bodies, I get in the shower to remember shit.

Confession time: I don’t care about college basketball.  Oh, what a relief to say that out loud.

I am increasingly less patient with stupid people as I get older.  Has anyone watched Jerry Springer lately?  Am I the only person who thinks his set looks like a villain’s hideout from the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman series?  With its oversized fan and green steel bars, I keep expecting Caesar Romero to jump out of a corner in full Joker regalia.  It adds an extra level of the absurd to a show that is already outright fucking ridiculous.

Well, I suppose that’s all for today.  Hooray for early morning blogging.  I want sleep.  Or scotch.

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Ray Kroc Just Hand-Scooped Shit into my Liver

Posted on 03/09/2011 by ericmcclanahan

If anyone ever leads you to believe that 20 chicken McNuggets is a good idea, hit them.  In the throat.  Hard. 

So, a few observations from the past few weeks:

One: I am an asshole, which is a shame because I’m one of the nicest people I know, and I’m an asshole.  Because I believe in everyone’s right to have an opinion and feel free to express it, if one of my friends is laying into another friend, I let it happen.  We’re all adults, supposedly.  If you can’t take criticism then you probably shouldn’t leave the house, and if you wanted to express your opinions to me I wouldn’t stifle it, so grow a pair and cry to someone else.

Two: my wedding ring is a woman’s ring.  I really don’t mind; in fact, I think it’s very progressive, but it does remind me that I have very little from my father.  I’ve got his looks and his general distaste for my fellow man, but that’s about it.  My mother gave me the wedding band that she wore while with my father for 13 years on my 22nd birthday.  I remember her giving it to me because I went through about 30 emotions in 90 seconds and came out on the other end grateful for the gesture.  Friday I took it to a jeweler here in San Diego to have it sized up for my fat man finger and Monday I picked it up and put it on.  The work is shoddy; in trying to match the pattern on the outside of the ring it appears as though they let a child attempt the imitation, and the surrounding gold is coarse and abused.  I really like it.  It’s stunningly original; there’s not another ring like it anywhere.  However, it’s evident that it’s a woman’s ring.

Three: I live in an idyllic paradise where I believe everyone should get along.  This is not the truth of the world around me.  I cannot wrap my head around this, however.  If I put two people in a room together who have the unifying characteristic of feeling affection towards me then they should be fast friends, no?  No.

Four: Ray Kroc is an asshole, which is a shame because I’m one of the nicest people I know and I go around calling dead people assholes.

Five: I have no idea what’s happening in Libya, but I know everything there is to know about Charlie Sheen.

I am a prisoner in my skin.  I feel I’m more myself here in this blog than I am in person.

Everything above my ankles hurts.

Today was one of those days where I hadn’t used my voice until four o’clock in the afternoon and so the first time I spoke to someone I was startled by the way I sounded.  I spend a lot of time alone.

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Yeah, I’m THAT guy…

Posted on 03/01/2011 by ericmcclanahan

I don’t want to be that guy, but it’s not my fault.  I woke up today to hear my new neighbors playing awful music and laughing and being all “We’re so happy to be alive and cooler than everyone else.  Oh, us!”

I hate them.  All of them. So of course I open the door and start playing MY music.  Oh, hate…

So I get out of bed (the couch) and do some laundry and decide to do some online maintenance, and I open FaceBook and read some of the News Feed from my “friends”.  Political bullshit, look at my kids, God’s Unending Love, Kiki and RayRay are the Koolest evr!, My baby this, my boo that, My misspekgjhdb onn prpose wrds cuz im kewl.

Hate.  Hate.  Hate.

I am full of hate today.  Just a warning.

Here’s some stand-up comedy I did the other day:

I’m going to try to find my optometrist again.  Hopefully I’ll have better luck this time.

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Do Not Leave Near Open Flame

Posted on 02/19/2011 by ericmcclanahan

Unattended Children can drown in as little as one inch of water.

I have been left unattended.  Meredith flew to New Jersey for her East Coast Bridal Shower and before 24-hours had passed I’d bought 3 new knives, a t-shirt, a pair of shoes, a video game, a DVD, a pizza, a root canal, a bottle of whiskey, and two six-packs of beer.  I should not be left unattended.

Unattended Children will be sold to Gypsies.

I had an unintentional Zen moment yesterday.  I had gone to Rite Aid to get more Vicodin (which I so rarely take; seriously, I could open my own pharmacy with all the Vicodin scattered around my apartment) and parked in the corner of the parking lot.  After I’d gone inside to get my prescription filled and pick up other assorted crap (Odor Eater insoles and plastic forks; it really is a party in my head all the time.  I wish you could spend a few minutes up there; it’s awesome) someone parked a small truck in the perpendicular space next to mine and the bed of their truck blocked me in the space.  I noticed this as I was walking to the car, so I climbed in and started up the engine and the CD player powered on and greeted me with Mozart.  I sat behind the wheel and listened to classical music while the rain beat down on the windshield and waited patiently for the driver to appear from the store and move their vehicle.  It was a peaceful moment, a Zen moment, though forced.  Eventually the person did move their vehicle, and I wasn’t the slightest bit upset, until that same truck blocked the turn lane I wanted to be in and made me miss the first rotation of the traffic light.  Then I was upset.  My euphoria had worn off.

Unattended Children will be given an Espresso and a Free Puppy.

My smartphone is a smartass.  It keeps trying to correct my typing with words that are far more sophisticated than the ones that I use on a regular basis.  For instance, I type “crap”, it puts up “veal”.  Sure, I’m not a fan, but I’ve never had anyone scare the veal out of me.  I type “RSVP”, a rather common acronym, and it puts up “TACO”.  No, I don’t want you to TACO to my wedding.  So my friend texts me while I’m at Rite Aid and asks what I’m doing.  After dealing with a convention with 31,000 foot doctors earlier in the week (30,999 of whom were from a foreign country and spoke one word of English: beer), I was surprised to inform her that I was looking at Dr Scholls shoe insoles.  Why lie, right?  “Whatcha up to?”  fighting warlocks  “Really?”  No.  Except my phone told her I was looking for Dr Scholls insolent.  What a smartass!  Though it was ironic because I called all of the Orthopaedic surgeons “Dr. Scholls” while they were here, and I hated them.  They had an inordinate sense of entitlement for a group of people who looked at the human form the first day of medical school, screwed their faces in grimaces of discontent, then pointed to the bottom of it and said “I’ll just work on that.”

Unattended Children will be put to work in the Cheese Cave.

I went to dinner with a friend late last night, around 1am or so, and at the time it seemed a great idea to order a burger (a melt on marbled rye with sauteed onions and ooey-gooey cheese) with a side of macaroni-n-cheese and krab louie.  And wash it all down with coffee.  So I went to sleep shortly after 2am and started waking up around 5am; in my mind I’d created an alternate reality wherein I’d made a FaceBook event of my getting up at 7:30am and people were posting encouraging comments and their own sleep vs wake status, as well.  So I’m slipping between looking at the clock and updating the FaceBook page in my mind while my subconscious snores on, and this goes on for two hours.  Finally, at 7am I get up and take some Advil because my root canaled tooth is screaming in my head.  I lay down with the blissful thought that I can sleep for thirty more blessed minutes, but my elation disappears when my stomach punches me in the sphincter.  So I turn the alarm function off and shit out half my body.  That was how I started today.  And my heart burns.

I should not be left unattended.

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“When things start splitting at the seams and now the whole thing’s tumbling down hard”

Posted on 02/05/2011 by ericmcclanahan

I want to try a little experiment wherein I show you what it’s like to live in my head.  I’m going to write a post as I normally would speak and/or act around you, and that will be in this typeset, but I’ll also give you my thoughts and the things I want to say (the things I want people to know that I feel but can’t quite express) in italics.  This might give you some idea.

The other day I saw a woman in the grocery store clad in a power business suit, replete with sensible skirt and devastating heels.  She strolled down the aisle on an air of haughtiness that was damn near palpable as she passed; were I holding a stack of documents, they certainly would have been scattered as though I were a NASCAR spectator.  As her heels clacked away on the cold linoleum, I thought for a split second that she was better than me.  In one hand she held a shopping basket and in the other, a giant industrial-sized jug of laundry detergent.  That’s when I remembered that she smells bad at the end of the day, that sixteen hours straight of being awake and alive takes its toll on the human body.  I even went so far as to speculate that she might defecate from time to time.  Yes, we are all the same flawed machine that creates and secretes the same fluids and gross by-products.  In that sense, physiologically, no one is better than any other human mechanism roaming the earth at this time.

Sometimes I think that everything I think, feel, and do is because I’m supposed to.  Sometimes I feel like I’m just going through the motions.  I’m sad sometimes because it seems necessary to balance my happy moments.  More often that not, I don’t feel anything.  I am a perpetual motion machine, dragging myself out of bed each day to work, laugh, love, breathe and sweat, get through the hours and go back to bed.  I stopped measuring my days by the time I spend awake a while back and now do so with the time I spend sleeping.

I got an e-mail from my father today saying that he can’t come to my wedding.  It opened with a reluctant tone, explicitly stating that he’d been waiting until the last possible moment to break the news, hoping the tide would turn in time.  With that lead-in and our somewhat flecked family history, I was immediately concerned that the letter would be a condemnation against me.  It never was, but periodically throughout the letter I felt its tone sliding in that direction.  That apprehension affected me so that it took me an hour or so before I even began to wonder what the communique’s actual message meant to me: my father isn’t coming to my wedding.  I am more than disappointed.

I feel I can’t prioritize my pains accordingly.  For instance, the people with whom I could immediately share this news have no fathers, so it seems inappropriate to bring it up to them.  That it wouldn’t illicit sympathy from these orphans wasn’t my chief concern (though it was there in some capacity) but it just seemed to be another case of the haves bitching to the have-nots.  Additionally, I have no idea what all the shit going down in Egypt is all about but I can see that it’s intense.  How, in light of that, can I justify having anyone give a shit that my daddy isn’t coming to my party?

The sound is down at work.  Our video input/RF modulator is shot.  I sent someone to CVS to get another one but they don’t have the right kind in stock.  We’re listening to the backup MP3 player and the music on it sucks.  This is not news; the music in-store most often sucks.  I get spasms in my thigh sometimes that makes me think my phone is ringing.  It seldom is.

I’m not living with enough intensity.  I’m not loving fiercely.  I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.  I feel shiftless and purposeless.  Planning the wedding and honeymoon have given me a purpose in these past few months and in the next two, but that singular focus has driven out my passions.  I do nothing, in a practical sense to save money, and in an effort to remain focused.  I get distracted so easily, my mind wide open to the world around me and in a constant desire to be fascinated.  A butterfly could hold my attention for hours and send my mind on adventures unheard of in others.  I think about dying constantly.  I died six times yesterday.  I was hit by a car, a passenger on the bus shoved a knife in the back of my head, right under the knot where my spine meets my skull, I fell into traffic, I ate glass, the bus fell off the overpass, I took a bullet meant for no one in particular, just a confused, angry person with a weapon sending hate into the world; and I caught it.

I am panicking about the wedding.  The guest list is growing astronomically (I suppose I owe my father my gratitude) and the date is hurtling at us at incomparable speeds.  I need to get shoes for my groomsmen, I need to pay the entertainer the rest of his money, I need to arrange the rehearsal dinner, I need to collate the RSVPs, I need to get fitted for my tux.  Meredith keeps jokingly asking if it’s too late to cancel the wedding and elope and I always say “Yes, it’s too late.  We’ve already put down all our deposits and besides, once it gets here, it’ll be fun.”  In light of my dad not being able to afford (neither in time nor money) to attend, I am tempted to agree with her.  Why are we doing this to people we supposedly love?  My bachelor party shrank in duration, grew in size, then doubled in duration over the course of two beers with a handful of friends.  Here’s advice for the young: Don’t make plans while you’re drinking.  Seriously, don’t make plans while you’re drinking.  I’ve been reading a lot more lately.  I’m so lonely, and there’s no reason for it.  I have a beautiful fiancée who adores me and worships me and waits day in and day out just to see my face but I still feel lonely for eighteen hours of every day.  Sartre’s autobiography is speaking to me in his love of books and the romanticism of swashbucklers and the silver screen.  I hear myself in his words, which I suppose is rather boastful, but hey, I shit too so take it for what it’s worth.  I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely happy.  Or sad.  I just work and work and work and work and sleep.  In between I eat and I laugh and I smile and I love.  I do all these things and I do them well.  But beneath it all I can’t ascertain my actual feelings.

I sat near an old couple at Denny’s the other day.  The woman was the oldest living person I’d ever seen with my eyes.  Her spine was bent from the middle of her back and sloped her head and neck down towards her torso, making her diminutive frame even smaller.  By comparison, the man was a sprightly early 80s, I figured.  As I walked in, he was feeding a dollar into the stuffed-toy crane machine.  Ten minutes later he’s walking back to his table and his old lady (hehe) with two plush animals under his arm.  I was impressed, both with his skill and the joie de vivre that he demonstrated in playing a child’s game at such an advanced age.  Shortly afterward, my heart warmed in their wake, they shuffled out of my life.  I can’t picture myself as an old man.  As a kid, I enjoyed horror movies, but after a sudden emotional growth spurt I couldn’t bear to watch them anymore; couldn’t witness so much injustice.  Human suffering is something that shouldn’t have to happen.

I appear outwardly happy, and in that I am not sad, I suppose I am.  I don’t know anything anymore.  I want the world to love me, and moreso, I want to earn it.  I want to be loved for everything I am and not everything I’m not.  Since I got my teeth fixed people can’t stop telling me how great I look, and all I can hear is “it’s such a vast improvement over what you were”.  The more people find me attractive who knew me then, the worse I feel about that old me.  I hate him.

I feel I’m rambling now but there’s so much shit in my head and I can’t get it out.  It’s virtually weightless; seven hundred permutations of the same three thoughts: I’m lonely, I’m empty, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.  I am never at a loss for something to do with my time but when I look back over it I don’t see anything.  What have I done all this time and what can I hope to do in the future?  Who am I?  And why isn’t daddy coming to my party?

I want to be felt.

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