2012 TOP 10 RECORDS SO FAR

When I sat down to write this post yesterday, I was ready to straight blast on Frank Ocean's channel Orange. I was going to say how much less interesting it is than his 2011 mixtape, Nostalgia, that he sounds like Musiq with less soul, and that after the Weeknd's murderous 2011 mixtapes, everything else "new" in R&B just sounds like "old" R&B. I was going to say that, as if by a deliberate formula aimed at mediocrity, great beats were always paired with weak choruses, and vice versa. I was going to conclude with the admission that I have eaten crow on album review before (808s and Heartbreak; Watch the Throne), and that I would give this one a few more listens before I really made up my mind.

What can I say? I'm glad I didn't write that bullshit!

Just the same, even though channel Orange is more than OK in my book now, I'm going to continue with the plan of sharing my favorite new records of the year so far. If, for whatever reason, you want to hear anything other than channel Orange sometime soon, go with one of these.

Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far) (Yes, in order):

Chromatics - Kill for Love

Turned on this record at the beginning of the year. The streets have never looked the same.

Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

 channel Orange's P4k reviewer said that Frank Ocean is one of the best singer-songwriters working today. If you want to believe that, don't listen to a Fiona Apple album.

fun. - Some Nights

I hate saying that I liked this band before they were famous. But. I did.









Beach House - Bloom
Passion Pit - Gossamer
Theophilus London - Timez Are Weird These Days
Baroness - Green & Yellow (for when you want to hear the exact, constitutional opposite of Frank Ocean)
JJ - High Summer (EP)
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Mount Eerie - Clear Moon

July 18, 2012

If you've got a few bucks, condition (1) is treatable.

1. Sobriety
2. Hunger
3. Arousal
4. Satisfaction
5. Fatigue


As a writer, you experience many physical conditions that adversely impact your productivity: the loathsome among them is Sobriety. Hunger comes in second, dispelling the romance of the starving artist. If you have tried it, you will have noted that it is better not to have Hunger. Third place belongs to Arousal which, while not unpleasant, is fully distracting (you want to want it) and can only be resolved by measures that lead directly to the fourth and fifth conditions, Satisfaction and Fatigue. Nothing is so devastating to the creative drive as Satisfaction. Fortunately for art, Satisfaction is still very rare and fleeting and misplaced. Fatigue, on the other hand, appears in a sort of harmless abundance. Until you literally fall asleep drooling into your keyboard, Fatigue poses no real threat. Hide the clock in your taskbar, drink another cup of coffee, stop doing the arithmetic on the hours you could still sleep if you go to bed right now, and Fatigue might slow your progress by a factor less than a runny nose. Depending on the nature of your work, you may even find that writing becomes easier with someproximity to dream space.

Your mileage may vary.


TUNES TONIGHT:

MANY OPERATIONS OF THE ETHICAL MIND

NOTE: These are just a few thematically proximal things I've been thinking about today. I call them "operations" precisely because I still work through the thought processes, here. My mind is not made up about any of this. I welcome input.

Rape Jokes

Of course, I would spend my last waking hour last night defending Daniel Tosh on the internet. It was the only reasonable conclusion to a day I began waking at sunrise in the grass outside my apartment building—a day that was never going to make a lot of sense. Tosh, I read, had recently prompted a morass of outrage during some stand-up at the Laugh Factory wherein he tells the audience that rape jokes are always funny. A woman in the audience pointed out the obvious: they are, in fact, not. As a comedian on stage with his sense of humor stepped-on before the whole audience, there are probably very few ways he could have responded to her. As it turns out, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now?” was not one of them. OK, even in the context of comedy, where envelopes are supposed to be pushed and people are supposed to be offended pretty often, this is still the fuckest uppest thing to say.

So, I mislead you earlier when I said that I spent that last hour defending Daniel Tosh. I don’t care if you hate him, love him, or masturbate screaming his name. The story itself isn’t all that interesting to me. What interests me a great deal is the character response, beginning with this oneshared by a friend on Facebook.   

I replied: I'm not sure how solid this argument is. The idea that rape jokes are not like regular jokes because they "turn a traumatic experience into something people laugh at," makes them sound EXACTLY like a regular joke. I mean, over the years, I've heard jokes about slavery, murder, third world dictatorships, and pretty much everything else. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I gagged, sometimes I rolled my eyes and muttered "white-privileged, cisgender asshole" at the tv. But I never wished for an entire topic to be taken off the table. Humor would suck if it was allowed to make a few mistakes.

Just to clarify, my counter-argument had two parts. The first was that the argument provided for why rape jokes were never OK was not a strong one because it depends on the claim rape jokes are inherently different from other jokes, but it fails to demonstrate so effectively. There has to be some trait about the topic of rape that separates it from all of the other awful shit we joke about for anyone to expect us to treat it differently. Identifying that trait is essential making and understanding the argument.

The second part was broadly about humor itself and whether any topic, no matter how offensive, should ever be beyond consideration. Even when it is harmful for society as a whole, I have reasons why I want art to be insulated from this level of criticism. I’m not sure if that’s a conversation I’m ready to have right now, but whatever. Let’s try.

-----

 Contrarian Ex-Vegetarian

I eat meat again. It had been six years. When I am asked why, I say, “I think it’s important to periodically reexamine your life choices.” No one seems to mind that this is not an answer, least of all me.

So, why was I ever a vegetarian in the first place? Well, it goes back to a trip I took with Heather in the spring of 2006. I took her to New York, then to visit my family in Texas; altogether, we were gone about a 5 days, I think. It was during that trip that I really noticed how difficult it could be for Heather, a vegetarian already, to find decent food in unfamiliar environments (keep in mind that this is before anyone had Google Maps on our phones). Often she could only eat the sides at restaurants. A few times she would order menu items appeared to be meatless only to discover some questionable, unlisted ingredient or sauce and have to scrap the whole thing. 

That was just New York. Texas was worse.

My life privilege thus exposed, I became a vegetarian as an act of protest—protest of the unfair treatment of vegetarians—or, as Chelsea would later term it, a “contrarian vegetarian.” Over time, a basic ethics evolved. To my carnivore friends, the ones who thought I was crazy, who asserted our right to eat animals by sovereignty of nature, I could say essentially this: if we can now thrive in life without destroying other living things, do we not have a moral obligation to try?

This put me in a bit of an ethical pickle now, doesn’t it? How do I reconcile the disparity between what  I still feel is a very good ethical stance and the actions I take now without feeling particularly bad? Well… I haven’t so much as reconciled it as I have put it away. When I think of my previous ethic, I recall that it came from a perspective that every action in life should be consistently, philosophically grounded. I don’t exactly believe that anymore or, at least, I don’t think “philosophy,” itself, is merely what I once believed.

Of course, some common ethical concerns could sneak through this very big loophole. This, then, is how I could justify spending money on beer instead of giving it to the needy. Strange perversities sneak through as well: there are large parts of my body I would now like to grill and eat.

Am I kidding?

-----

The Ethics of Ethics

 

I wonder at the end of the day if I have been ethical enough. Have I acted with appropriate responsibility for myself and society? Have I done enough for my fellow man to consider myself one of the good ones—not just enough to compare myself to others, but to live up to an anonymous, higher standard?

Have I been feminist enough today? Was it antifeminist to criticize a feminist stance, to defend misogynistic themes in comedy because of some weaknesses in the arguments against? Or did I do right by feminism by demanding a higher level of rigor from an argument that could have otherwise skated by on presupposed agreement? 

This is how I feel right now writing this: haughty, guilty and exposed. I don’t like rape jokes one bit; it would be easier for me to believe that they should never exist. It is possible that a stronger argument would make me believe it, but right now, I just don’t. That sucks.

So, what do I tell myself at the end of the day? I tell myself that the only truly ethical stance is to keep wondering, to never feel that you’ve done enough. And in the meantime, try not to do harm, and can still recognize yourself from your enemies. I think, for now, that should be enough.

TUNES TONIGHT: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DYWwqYl0yA&feature=related

ALCOHOLISM AND APOLOGIES

I have to admit, I don’t really get addiction. Sometimes I drink enough that it prompts half-worried conversations with friends and family, but I am not, in a classical sense, an alcoholic. In a romantic sense, maybe, as in sometimes I drink so much so often that it makes for a bad optics, raises questions about the long term-health of my body or of deeply suppressed psychological trauma (but seriously I’m okay). But in a classical sense, in which one gives alcohol free-reign to negatively affect one’s life, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Because I know addicts.

One, a best friend-turned-girlfriend-turned ex-turned-friend forever, called me months ago from rehab. She warned ahead that she was at the stage to tell me that she’s sorry. I did not answer that call or the next one. I finally spoke with her today from the comfortable aesthetic distance of facebook chat, and after some strained small-talk, she let on that she was working up an apology.

“An apology for what?”

 “Whatever fckd off things I might have said to you during belligerent rants,” she said. “Sorry  =. /”

“Wait, so you’re apologizing for things you may have said without knowing what they are?”

“*that’s the joy of black outs,” she said.

I really wish she hadn’t said that, about the blackouts. It seem to come from a narrative that, due greatly to the influence of drugs and alcohol, she has been a total bitch all these years. How could she ask me to accept an apology that comes out of a place like that? I don’t see her that way. I would not have spent so much time and love on her if I saw her that way. Sure, she was mean sometimes, but she was also often right. And let’s be honest with ourselves: booze or no booze, sometimes friends are mean. Sometimes we’re petty and selfish and insecure and cruel and we hate and frighten one another. Whenever we are still friends after the dust settles, it is because there is so much more to us than all of that.

And besides, that time she pulled a knife on me for calling her the wrong girl’s name in bed, homegirl was stone cold sober.

As far as I can tell without prying, the final-straw stages of her alcoholism were a lot darker than the blissful/tragic city nights that make up my recollections of her. What it comes down to, is that I don’t want our entire (mostly inebriated) history delegitimized just because she eventually spiraled. Good and bad, those times were significant and real.

And sure, Sara says her apology is more about her and her healing so I should just accept it, or whatever—but isn’t that just the kind of selfish expectation people should apologize for?

FOLLOWING MYSELF AROUND FOR A DAY: A DIARY

I saw you in my dreams this morning. I had woken up at 7:30 to make sure Sara made it off to work on time, but by 8:20 she had momentum of her own and I was losing a battle with the incredible gravity my own bed has after a weekend away. I closed my eyes to gather my thoughts. When next they opened, I found myself in seen-and-done-it-all Columbia walking through campus on a warm, cloudy day. You called out to me from a across the mall. You looked the part, too, dressed down in sweat pants and in glasses with your hair pulled back. When you hugged me, you were 20 again. I slurred, “Is this reality? I can’t tell anymore.” You promised me that it was and, because you were you, I believed it.

-----

In the pretty 10:00 light, which enters our apartment through the trees and shimmers with their leaves on the living room floor, am I moved to reflect on my weekend in my college town. What more is there to say about Columbia that hasn’t been said already? Some good conversations, some mean gossip, some former lovers, some future ones, some cool people, and more with egos bigger than their contributions to society. But more than anything, my Columbia is about the limitless, undying love affair we have with our friends. As much as I love the big parties, my favorite part usually comes at the end, after Julia has kicked out everyone who doesn't know her last name and the rest of the crowd falls away when the beer runs low. Then it’s just the few of us in the living room laying all over and around one another, bleary-eyed and high and sensitive.

And yet, at breakfast there is a nagging sense of unbelonging that makes my protestations a bit briefer each time Sara is ready to leave. The streets don’t quite look the same. My social world has reorganized itself along new axes, sometimes newcomers I’ve never heard of who view me suspiciously as I return the favor. There is a part of me that feels like that that town is cursed with over, that St. Louis is blessed with happening. I know how fucking stupid that sounds.

THE ONLY PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION

"I almost did it this time," Erick says on the phone as I wake up in the afternoon sticking to the sheets. I get the May sun pressing me down through my bedroom window. I recall that I woke earlier to a raging thunderstorm and look outside and think it must have been a dream until I notice that my girlfriend unplugged the TV. "I stood in front of the mirror for two hours this morning with a large knife I got for $4 yesterday at Walmart, when I asked if you wanted to go with me to pick up some things and you said you were busy with Sara."

"What were you looking for?" I ask.
"I... I wanted to by a knife," he says.
"In the mirror."
He says he doesn't know. He hasn't slept in 26 hours. It's been a couple of years, but we've had this phone call before. I'm tired and annoyed and I'm scared to be angry with him. he tells me that life is painful. That I must really hate him to want him to stay in so much pain. The way he describes pain, you would think he invented it.
"Have you been taking your medication?" I ask.
"What's the point?" he says.
"So you can live your life."
"What's the point of living my life," he asks.
"I know things have been rough lately," I try, "but it hasn't always been that way. It's hard to see it right now, but there is enough good possible to keep trying."
"But what's the point?" he asks.

I am fully aware that have been asked the meaning of life; a human life very possibly hangs on my answer. As any aspiring philosopher, I had hoped to confront the problem of suicide in the manner of the greats before me: from a comfortable life, the safe aesthetic distance and several levels of abstraction that insulates me from the subject allows me to view it with piercing objectivity. A single pithy-yet-elegant sentence would enamor students for centuries, though few would read my mutli-volume work (maybe Principia Philosophica?) posthumously inducted into the philosophical canon.  In other words, I never meant to be tested with something so urgent, so physical and real.

I am not ready. I can't speak for Erick. I, too, have bumped up against the problem of suicide. I, at least, haver reasons to keep going:

• It's weird: I think Cougar Town is good enough to marathon watch on my phone, but not good enough to make my girlfriend watch on a normal TV. Maybe that’s an issue I’d like to stay alive to explore?

•  There are going to be at least two more Avengers movies before everybody starts talking how old Robert Downey Jr. looks in 3D.

• Think of all the advantages I've been given. Look at me: I have extremely supportive parents, the chilliest of girlfriends, an IPhone that streams Cougar Town for free, and I seem to get more handsome every single day. It would be an insult to ordinary people if I killed myself anytime soon.

I'm sure Erick has his reasons to.

So instead of answering him, I biked to his house and threatened to call the cops if he mentioned suicide again, told me to remember that he loved me, or spoke of himself in the past-tense again. I’ll spare you the agonizing  details of the two hours that followed, but the medical costs of a two week stay in a mental institution turned out to be the deciding factor.

My friends--to sweet, sweet deciding factors.

WHY "WHAT DO YOU DO?" IS THE LAMEST QUESTION ON EARTH RIGHT NOW.

So what do you do? I do pretend to enjoy it when I'm asked this and I usually answer that I am a writer. When they press further (because no one has anything interesting to talk about—more on that in a future post), I usually give a broad description of the kind of copywriting I usually do. Yes, I write my own stuff, to answer their next question. They think it's cool probably because it sounds enough like work but without bitchy bosses or inflexible hours. Sometimes, a more "established" acquaintance will say, "at least you're not a waiter, right?" Whatever. I always knew it would be this way. Still, the ubiquity of the question demonstrates what occurs when a younger generation steps up into its fathers' society and, I think, underscores the need for us to develop healthier ways of looking at ourselves and others.

When I was in high school, "what do you do for fun?" was the default, small-talk opener amongst peers. In college, "what's your major?" or "what do you want to be?" took its place. Already, a shift was underway from seeing one another as people with rich inner lives to units of economic production. And yet each of these questions, trite and cliché, at least aimed at uncovering some sort of sympathetic truth. To ask them is to inquire into the nature of a human being. Since college, "what do you do?" is the unsurprising victor of the small-talk wars. I am told it will remain this way for the rest of my life.

Of course, this was not the first thing on my mind when I tied to read Chrisopher Hudspeth's "19 Tips of Females in 2012" (Note: introducing it as I have is in no way an attempt to legitimize this slipshoddery as worthwhile reading. It is not. I could write a rage-filled book with no punctuation about what's wrong with masquerading this glorified anthology of vaguely misogynistic tweets as an "article."). My first attempt to read this stalled at tip #4:

"Just because a dude has a Nikon camera and is decent at Photoshop does not make him a photographer. And more importantly, posing for him doesn’t make you a model."

The question this leads us to is an obvious one: what does make him a photographer? There are a number of legitimating criteria—consider things like taking photography "seriously," actively engaging in its history and craft, or regarding it as "the dream"—that become increasingly abstract by our mid-twenties, when, basically proficient at everything that interests us, the obstacles between "the hobby" and "the real" never feels greater than one evening of single-minded devotion.

More often, rather than wade into the quagmire of serious philosophical thinking, people employ the single expedient of commoditization: to wit, you are a photographer when someone pays you for photographs.

Anyone who has ever seriously attempted to make art has bumped up against this kind of resistance at one time or another. Even Paul Varjak is asked of the infallibly loveable Holly Golightly of 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's, "Are you a real writer? I mean, does anybody buy what you write?" That Varjak is a prostitute is, to my eyes, beside the point. To society, to the Empire, it is the entire point. It is obvious what that makes Miss. Golightly.

It is obvious, also, what this makes the thousands (millions?) of aspiring artists and activists derided constantly for their perceived unwillingness to get "a job" while trying to make it. But under the conditions of the society they've inherited, some reluctance is entirely appropriate. For better and worse, the upbringing of a young intellectual builds, slowly and meticulously, her identity. At a time when she owns very little besides debt, it is the only thing that belongs to her and the thread that ties together her every experience. In a culture where she is defined as a person by the task for which she is mostly highly paid, we ask her to compromise her identity for minimum wage at McDonald's? We ask her to define herself as a fast food fry cook so that the next guy she meets at a party who asks her what she does before he asks her name will immediately identify her as low class and lacking in guile? It is preposterous and especially cruel.

And I know that the world can be cruel at times. I know that the economy is an unsympathetic reality to which we have all, more or less, agreed. I am not suggesting that naïve petulance is acceptable or that artists starve ("Hunger actually makes it really hard to concentrate." - Science). I just believe that if we must continue to extol the virtues of the "American work ethic," let's stop making our jobs the only thing we need to know about one another. Then maybe the next Picasso will bag your fucking groceries.

Tunes Today:

AMERICAN SPIRIT

There is no need to put this cleverly: nothing makes me gag harder than American chest-thumping. That said, it is hard not to be at least a little proud of the first few comments dropped under this morning's Newser article about the latest Al-Qaeda eThreat.

The threat, which comes on the heels on reports that many (most? all?) Mideast Al-Qaeda propaganda sites have been inexplicably shut down for weeks. Currently unsupported rumors that this could be the work of a Western hackivism group like Anonymous initially captured the public imagination positively. If the intent was to disrupt Al-Qaeda's ability to reach out, we can infer that it is somewhat successful. However, some fear that down sites exacerbate the challenge of the intelligence community to monitor the terrorist activity. Either way you look at it, the threat itself, which intriguingly calls to mind a print ad for a Hollywood blockbuster, was weird turn. Nearly a week after the sites were taken down, this image was posted in many of their places:

The timing of the sites going down to their replacement by these images suggests to me that the former was not an altogether deliberate move on Al-Qaeda's part. The word from the intelligence community is that "there is no specific or credible threat to New York at this time." At any rate the image, a little cheesy, and its message are somewhat chilling, even to we Americans who don't reside in The Big City. So please partake in my pleasant surprise at knee-jerk response from the Newser community, many of whom I have very familiar with over the few months on the site:

JackNelsonSteward: Do we have here the modern, social media equivalent of, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US "? ... or is it al Qaeda's attempt to elicit the "Sky is Falling!!" response from our Security State, y'know, giving DHS and the NSA and ... God only knows WHO else ... some exercise?

04052063: "no specific or credible threat to New York at this time." The NYPD later added that in response to the alleged threat they will now be tailing more Muslim men without credible evidence."

Jingo: "With any luck, they will get mugged in NYC

Ivan: I am extremely scared and terrified. I'm gonna lock my self inside and only come out to work and SHOPPING! I will never question anything media or my government tells me.

Starvethedead: "Coming soon again in New York." They can infiltrate security and fly planes but they can't use proper grammar?

Ifbit replies: The War on Errors is rife with casualties.

Finkster: These bunch of creeps need to be annihilated off the face of this Earth

This is a job for Green Lantern....:-)

Oh, you're all heroes in my book! In short, we seem to have replied first with the same nonplussed and sarcastic wit expected of us. Call me jaded, but I for one find that incredibly reassuring.

B.S. 1000

It is universally acknowledged that in addition to a major, all undergraduates major in bullshit. It does not have to be this way. Every student has imagined aversion of herself that never misses a house party or a reading assignment. Thankfully, every technological advance of the past 20 years has, in some way, made it easier to imitate preparedness for class on a half hours' notice. 

This is not to say that the old referents we have of university life—I picture, here, young men in school-colored sweaters carrying a stack of thick books for young women in hoop skirts seated in silent, venerable, library rooms—is entirely outdated. Why, to "live in the library" has become a somewhat trendy badge of honor. The day a security guard got fired for locking a girl in after closing, may very well been the proudest day of the lucky sophomore's life. To become such a fixture to the site of serious learning that your personhood is disavowed, that you are forgotten entirely, that you become part of the architecture, can be worth the strangest of cool points within snobby, young, literate social circles

I would say, however, that all our age of instant access to knowledge encourages a new standard for the kind of skills it should take to merit a degree. Bullshitting is, I say with no squeamishness, is one of the fundamental life skills of the liberal arts major. If by your last semester, you can't orate competently for half the morning about a book you've never read, you would not pass my class. Period. If you cannot piggyback off of a classmate's comment, derail your Lit course with a 30-minutes discussion of social-psychology and make your teacher thank you for it, you aren't ready for a degree. Period.

Because, let me warn you, young professionals have bullshit down to a science.

Tunes today:

SOMETHING HAPPENED--IT WAS HORRIBLE AND OVER MUCH TOO QUICKLY

When blogging these days, it is advisable to always do your best. Give your post a clear theme, for instance. Maybe offer a thesis statement humbly masquerading as a Seinfeldian observation of modern culture. Open up a favorite book and steal a few lines you like. Don't attribute the quotes. Don't say: this is important, my thesis, so read it with care! That way, if it sucks, no one will know how much you mind. Most of the time, it will suck.

Take lately: I haven't written a new post in three weeks, but thanks to a few kind "Stumblers," and that I comment often on the many blogs run by friends, acquaintances, and writers I both hate and admire, my readership has undergone a steady but unprecedented bump. I am a little uncomfortable with this. With very few exceptions, I do not write for a general audience; I write for the narrowest selection of my friends. My last post, for instance, WHAT MORE HAVE I TO SEE THAT I'VE SEEN ALREADY?, had all the cultural relevance of a tweet (Twitter circa 2006, pre-social activism, when every life-detail could be proclaimed as a controversial, post-privacy, evolutionary statement). And because it was the newest post, people viewed it. A lot.

Suddenly, I feel the pressure of needing something to say.

-----

I've read a lot of blogs lately by people sort of like me—we are mid-twenties, educated, and uncertain—that have attempted to reflect on what being like me means. There is always a market for article cobblers who tap into some sort of zeitgeist (he word itself has become unspeakably lame). Blog factories are addicted to it. Thought Catalog, as much as I enjoy it, is guilty of indulging geist-riders to an unsavory extent. In its own way, it is perhaps an art from to sum up what [mid-twenties, educated and uncertain] are thinking. Like a lazy standup comedian, blogs like TC thrive by corroborating what we already believe about the mid-twenties reality. At best, readers leave with a little insight into what they believe, how they believe, and why. More often, I fear they leave with something new to take for granted, or go apeshit in the comments section. 

I have gone apeshit in the comments section. I've gotten more likes for it than anything I have ever shared on Facebook. The market is there and its need is big and hungry.

Fueling the market is an underlying agreement that we, the people like me, are at least in it together. But what are we in together? If I am to draw an axiom, through induction, about people like me from the way we talk about our lives on the internet, it would be this: we are defined by small regrets. We regret our liberal arts degrees, the amount of time we spent online, the records we bought because our friend suggested them, the global issues that became memes that we once worried over, the coeds who wrote shitty fiction and heard what they wanted to hear when we said they "might have potential," the nights we made a pact to "say YES to anything." Most of all, we regret 70-90% of the people we've gone home with and 100% of the people we've loved. Romantically, sexually, spiritually we must only be capable of bad moves.

I don't deny that this is an awkward age; we all expected to be stronger, slicker, and less longsuffering by now. I don't deny that there is even something beautiful about our awkwardness, how clumsily we move through the world, how frankly we love and how we bruise when disappointed. But I am dismayed, truly, by how ready we are to put it all into perspective.

 I encounter too often people like me who try to sum it all up and close the books on an age they consider to have been the thrashing of their lives. I have seen too many once interesting people make up their minds to take themselves seriously.

Here I am at twenty-something, looking back on the last bunch of years. I made a lot of mistakes. I have been arrogant, reckless, and cowardly, and naïve and I have burned bridges, squandered opportunities, woken up I jail cells and hospital rooms, and humiliated myself, my kind, and my loved ones. Other days, things were not so bad. And if I could reach back and erase only little bits, I would try not to do so. Somewhere, in an alternate universe, there is a me who did not do those things, but I do not know him. He is not the me that I have slowly come to really root for and like. If I could, would always let myself be scared and hurt. If I could, I would only erase the times when I was cruel.

If I have a comment to add to the dialogue on our geist, it is this: I think that one of the biggest traps of your mid-twenties is thinking that you have yourself more-or-less figured out. I know that it seems mature to know yourself, but it just isn't. Keep trying. Keep fucking up. Keep letting it hurt.

Even if you know yourself, just ignore it. It's not good to always know the truth about yourself. It's better to lie to yourself just a little, I think. It's brave to try to surprise yourself. In fact, you should do your best. You should tell yourself that you can still do anything. It's always a lie, but it's usually a good one.