Loneliness

Self inflicted and -- fixable?

I could join a church, read the Bible.
I could memorize who's who in sports.
I could triangulate a market, use another pen name.
I could worry about global warming.
I could plead for forgiveness.
In short, learn to lie.

click to enlarge

I look at this stuff with a combination of pride and boredom. My experience of working for others was uniformly grim. Nothing was right except wandering  alone, however myopic, stupid, immoral, and penalized. The worst penalty of all is boredom, unable to savor a story written yesterday or 20 years ago that exploded in a volatile cloud of creative fuel. That's why I pushed forward, seeking another horizon to be attacked. Like all military conquests, it was necessary to kill people and break things. I killed my life, invested every dime that crossed my palm, burned credit cards, ignored flak from friends and family, subsisted on cold coffee, cigarettes and terrible food I despised, like a renegade, a filthy revolutionary in rags.

I bitched about it, far too often. I lost faith routinely, empty and beaten. The big wide world of prosperity and comfort mocked me. Decades stole my youth. Poverty is a badge of shame. No book sales. No movie sales. Crushing isolation.

I did, however, tell the truth. This is me.

"A third rate Romanticist has nothing." -- Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto
Go the hell away and bother somebody else. You're dead!

Actually, less lonely than I was a month ago. Neighbors stopped by often. They been extremely kind to me, took time to talk, helped me through a rough patch. Nice people.

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