i seem more alien to myself daily. i don't even smell like me right now. who could this character be sitting at the computer drinking venezuelan rum on monday morning at eight. for convenience sake, we'll call him me, but it's an unwelcome responsibility, a foisting-upon, surreptitious dowry of odious union. i got problems.

the unreality in this room is stifling. i, if i really am the guy memory suggests, have never had problems sleeping. but here i am unsleepy though armed with rum. i am healthy and not extremely depressed. as i think often on the burdens of being, i spend much time underwhelmed by the whole deal. there is sex, and that's usually good news. but that story ain't about me these days. "Animal love […] is the cordial drop in the otherwise vapid cup of life" (Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, 1803). and without the cordial drop it's nastier than warm flat Tab, with a hint of cig-ash. i relate to all things with the abject intoxication of a mourner, a glum chump.

c1386 Chaucer Miller's T. 518, I moorne as dooth a lamb after the tete. (OED)

bah bah, baby, give it up… or don't. cobwebs on my balls anyway. you see, i got no gal. i frighten babies, and not on purpose. i forget obvious things. i sucked the tape out of my favorite cassette yesterday. with the vacuum cleaner. it was dusty. my life, as ever, is a comedy of minor errors. they're not all my fault. people fall apart. their characters are weakly drawn. they are undepedable and rarely not distasteful.

people are puking and crapping all around me. people are made of scum. a horrid thing is the body. on the inside. everything just turning into crap or piss mostly. there's boogers and cum too. spit, ear wax. dandruff, stuff under your nails, smegma, pimple pus, and other pusses sometimes. and puke, of course. god only knows what else. the other stuff. the invisible shit. noises, words, motions, inexplicable constructions. memory, the world, the future. you've got to believe it all means something, but you'll never know exactly what. and you are regularly surprised at how wrongly you'd figured things out. knowledge is always a process, hopeless of completion. you will never know anything and you will die absolutely. and too soon, probably. your final terrifying moment will be spent saying "oh shit, i shoulda--" and that's it, your bubble flies off into space with faeces and regret the only epitaph

1611 Bible 2 Peter ii. 12 They..shall vtterly perish in their owne corruption. (OED)

…one day you flush and the vacuum sucks you right in. and there you'll forever be. constellated amongst your offal. no, that's hell. and the good news is, there is no hell. at least there's that. you pass on utterly, and all the bad falls away, utterly. and you are pure, finally. only because there's nothing. but there's nothing to say about that. and if there's nothing to say, there's nothing to be felt about it. inconceivable. so at least there's one thing in the world you don't have to love or hate infinitely. that's good news. your death is not. (at all.) you can't think it. you're afraid of things you can't possibly understand, so there's nothing you can do about it. so stop worrying about it.

you fear you are a creature you know very little about. moments when you sit, quiet and nervous, not recognizing yourself. wondering how the hell you could've said or done some thing (and you know…). you're a bad, strange asshole. but you're not going to hell. so live it up, kid.