"And they lived happily ever after."

The concept of "happily ever after" is a recurring one in Western culture, perhaps best exemplified by our idea of "Heaven."

T


he implication here, of course, is that the rest of their lives wasn't interesting enough to discuss once they'd made it through their made-for-movie crisis. They were no longer plagued with unresolved issues, unhappiness, or violence, so they had become boring. They'd entered the same great calm rewarding boneyard where old rock stars fade into obscurity.

When someone falls in love or breaks up with a lover, the gossip mills churn, and the surrounding environment becomes a more interesting place to dwell. But when a couple is happy and doing well, or when a person fears intimacy and lives as a hermit, the story isn't worth telling. Their friends feel safe but bored and soon seek excitement in drugs.

The concept of "happily ever after" is a recurring one in Western culture, perhaps best exemplified by our idea of "Heaven." It is presented as a bland ordinariness, a coma of satisfaction perhaps akin to the Hindu state of Nirvana. But within my own paradigm, such a state must be resisted at all costs. It is death. I want to save that state,

that suicide,
that marriage,
that heroin,
that orgasm
for when I actually have nothing left to give the world. So I must resist the lures of too much comfort, too much joy, too many friends. Instead I must seek to dwell on a constantly shifting surface of unpredictabilty, heartbreak, sorrow, and intense unexpected joy. That is my personal philosophy.

Happiness, you see, isn't happiness without something to compare it to. If I was "happy" all the time, then my mildest downturn in spirits would have to understudy for my greatest misery. I'd soon find them as unbearable as any other misery I've endured.

Misery is to evil as happiness is to goodness.

And how can a whole nation be evil if humankind isn't itself evil?

Stalin was a hero only because we had Hitler to compare him to. To my way of thinking, we'll never even really be able to judge Eisenhower given the context of the enemy.

Meanwhile, there is Hitler himself, presented as the ultimate evil the world has ever known. It's a blaspheme against our culture to consider him endowed with any humanity whatsoever. What is easily ignored by history is the fact that Hitler had no more of a role in the evil of Nazism than the nation that carried it out. And how can a whole nation be evil if humankind isn't itself evil? I'm sure I have been good friends with people -honest, caring tender people- who, given the charisma and the times, would surely have plugged right into Hitler's role, and history would have ended up the same. Should I hate those people? Should I hate humanity?

Because of the suffering of arbitrary others I get to be.

For all the woe, misery and destruction that resulted from the Third Reich, we are granted the present condition. Things would be completely different had Hitler and his Germany not come to be. I owe¹ my very existence to the mælstrom he unleashed. It occurs to me every now and then that six million Jews and countless millions of Russians had to die and nuclear bombs had to go off in Japanese cities in order for me to walk the streets of Charlottesville today. It's a sobering thought, but an oddly Christian one: because of the suffering of arbitrary others I get to be.

---

It must have come as quite surprise when Kelly discovered the deep dark secret: that I publish the stories of my private life in a public forum.

I


  drank gin and juice alone in the afternoon. Matthew Hart, you see, had left a half of a half gallon bottle of gin in the freezer. My thoughts kept coming back to the Kelly situation. She called me at work this morning and said a friend had shown her my musings. This wasn't news I wanted to hear. I was hoping to have an entirely real-world interaction with Kelly, and here she was knowing what I wrote about her. Of course, I knew this would happen; my musings are well known among the intelligentsia of this town. It must have come as quite a surprise when Kelly discovered the deep dark secret: that I publish the stories of my private life in a public forum. It's like finding one of my drawers to be full of girlie clothes or child pornography. But she said she could deal with it.

Still, I wonder, what happens when the news isn't so good?

I've sort of been unprepared for actually having a sex life, if you know what I mean. So today at the Seven Day Junior, I picked up some condoms along with a six of Beast Ice and a little container of machine oil (for my squeaky bike). The cashier held up the oil and condoms to show a friend and said, "Now this is the combination." I insisted, "But no...my bike is squeaking!"

---

I was standing before a secretary who was reading an alphabetized index, not able to find me anywhere in the listing.

B


efore going to work tonight, I awoke from such deep sleep that I forgot for a moment that I actually have a job at all. Even after I was awake, I lay in my bed in a state of delerium. I was standing before a secretary who was reading an alphabetized index, not able to find me anywhere in the listing.

Matthew Hart was up, hanging out with Monster Boy and Deya. To save her job as a Country Club hostess, Angela has moved to a later shift and now comes to Kappa Mutha Fucka at 2am every morning. Matthew has changed his schedule accordingly; he takes a nap at about the same time I take my prework nap so he'll be up and rested when Angela gets off work. I never see Angela at all anymore; she comes in while I'm sleeping and leaves while I'm sleeping and hangs out while I'm at work.

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Here's another journal to recommend, the very aptly-named Going Through the Motions. This guy has an amazing ability to string together choppy little sentences full of simple, bland observations seemingly calculated specifically not to enlighten. Gabby was the first to bring this journal to my attention, Alan of heinovision the second. Alan says this guy is "damn weird, whether he wants to admit it or not." There is something vaguely surreal going on here, I'm only now realizing. But it took Alan to chase it out so I could finally see it.

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Get a sense of what I was like exactly eight years ago and one year ago today.

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¹A full explanation of this relationship can be found in my August 21st entry.

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