The Obstructionist's Notebook

Mike Ran Away

Mike ran away from home. When I was a kid and the world was interlaced and orange and all you had to worry about was school and watching TV. Mike ran away from home because his mother-who worked-wouldn’t let him play little league or soccer or something. He ran away and older kids made him smoke pot and a dirty man tried to grab him and at night he hid in the playground. But it got cold. So Mike went home and at the end of the show, the real Mike (I think) came on the screen and told us to never, ever run away. And I didn’t.

When it's cold

Things will be better when it’s cold. When I can walk around in the snowy city with a thick jacket and a scar: then life will be grand, all problems will fade—how can anyone be upset when it’s so nice and cold out.

I know, I know, I said when it was cold that life would be perfect when it got hot, but, this time, I really mean it: I hate the summer.

Things will be great when I live on the water. Water is the beginning of all life, water preceedes us and follows us; there’s no way I could be unhappy if I lived on the water.

So, yes, I used to complain about the smell of the East River on my window, but, really, being landlocked kills me, is responsible for all my problems.

Things will be better when I’m older. I hope.

There are increasingly two kinds of people in this hyper-connected world of networks and communities: There’s the conformist and non-conformist—due to the circumstances mentioned above, there’s now little in between. There are those, like myself and others, who are alway trying to be different, in fact, need to be different. That’s not to say that this correlates to quality. It doens’t. Often the herd is right and our objection to it leads to mediocrity and worthlessness.
The other group, the conformists, are increasingly entering conformity not because, simply, it’s the path of least resistance, but because they’ve made a highly well-thought out choice to join the march. It’s the high-school syndrome playing out on a global level. And it’s fucking scary…

What if there were a religion that accepted God as inperfect? Just about all current beliefs revolve around the existence of a infallible being, as do all current disbeliefs. But what about a God that got angry and destroyed a few villages? What about a God that got scared and became too frightened to protect the weak? What about a vain god, a god that got jealous, and a god that doubted his abilities to attract women?

God, is it easy to buy into apocalyptic furor. Today, Oil shot up, unemployment skyrocketed, and the Dow Jones fell tremendously. What does any of that have to do with me? I don’t know, but I still somehow fear the worst. Things seem not right in the world, not in a ‘slump’, but just generally bad. I wish now that I had the slightest expereince with ‘Hard Times’.

I feel thoroughly embarrassed when friends attempt to introduce me to other writers, writing groups, or group writing projects. I must admit that I have absolutely NO interest in any of them; nor do I wish to talk about writing, or anything related to my own writing. I’m a writer of fiction, not a writer of writing. When I see supposed writers online talking endlessly about their own writing, how they write, when they write, what they write about, etc. I think “Why not stop talking about writing and actually do some”. And furthermore, how can you possibly give away what’s in your head before you’re finished mining it. Seems dangerous to me.

Take The L Train

The thugs jump around lighty in the light wind on the open platform like boxers, hitting like butterflys, not wanting to sting their friends. It’s been a long day. The young latin girls, their caps’ brims as stiff as the boys from before, whisper about the black men who whistled at them safely from a block away. God, the day was long. The furry man with a defeated frown tucks his hands in his old sweatshirt, protecting their dirt from the wind. It’s been a long life. The college kid who can’t afford the LES smiles at the night air, hoping a whimsical detachment will protect him from all of this. A long year.

A man is punished for a crime (something heinous) by being forced to fall in love with someone unattainable.