The world turns around us in ever frustrating ways. Go into a store and though the prices are all the same for we customers our means, ways and modes are all different. The old are hunched and slow, bent over the handle of the shopping cart. The impotent are crunched and low, wearing outfits that reek of a lacking fashion sense. The virile are straight and brawny, bursting from their clothes. It's too easy to note the trends within the scatterplot—who will purchase what. The doors are guarded and the goods are watched. Employees run to and fro. Each of us wonders, where is our place? Perhaps it's right here earning wages or back home with the kids or you're chilled out and off the clock. In all cases however we're encompassed in a strange world by manner of the open invitation for commerce and economy.
Society exists in a state of flight—the cars run hot and roar down streets. Freeways wind overhead. Everyone is going their own way. But have I gone mine? The road passes from mind. Perhaps I should go into accounting. I'll track where you've been and what you've done. Every step of the way we leave a trail. There's no hiding in this place. But strangely very few care to look. The cars on the road are changing. E.V.s are starting to show up. Calculate for me the rate at which they overtake, considering their increase in production, rising gas prices and the falling cost of renewables. Those are the kinds of questions I can look forward to. My therapist canceled on me. I have no girlfriend. I live at home and a college degree is my one and only way forward if I don't want to be sucked into the black hole this society has placed under me. Decide, choose, make a call; who are you going to be?
Psychological – Mind/Body Function – We're always eating. At every hour of the day someone's in the kitchen—it's the heart of our modern day. While lights go out in many places ours is eternally lit. In the ancient world this was called the hearth. Note how our body is our hearth—it never stops. Even as we sleep we breathe, digest and think. Billions of cells go about their way without informing you. You're the king of a magnificent microcosm. But all of its parts are not the same. Touching yourself you find some places are hot and some are cold. How I've managed to keep mine together is an enigma. I exercise, feed it whenever hungry, sleep regularly each night, and bathe it. I've yet to be struck by tragedy—I can go for runs each and every day.
Spiritual – Engagement of Mind – Our original state is wonder. As children we question and look into everything. We tear apart and rip into whatever's handed to us. Our mistake as we age is falling into passive decay. Instead of constructing further models, evermore sophisticated and eloquent, we're tempted to deconstruct and attack the sights before us. The mind can become cantankerous and self-obsessed. Dejection is a spiral. Constantly I'm trying to find songs that inspire me—I can't get any writing done without them. It's not that the world is ugly. Ugliness can be found any and everywhere. It's that we choose to be ugly in relation to it. The more beautiful you can will yourself to see, portray, enact and conduct the more life there will be.
Romantic – Intimacy and Love – I have a dream of a woman's face before me. Her eyes are closed and she's listening to me. I whisper into her ears my love for her and examine the details of her face. She has a tattoo down her chin—it's entirely inked in. The black bar extends to her cheeks and even her eyelids. Half her face is black with pigment. She's a blonde and her lips are peach. I kiss her gently here and there and everywhere. But I can only guess what she holds. Beautiful, slight and inviting I know only that I've been let in and entrusted to act with utmost care. I pray to god that I could reach inside and bloody my hands on her thoughts. She has a language she uses on me—she's been training me. This is how to ask, that's how to reply, here's where to go and this might make me die.
Familial – Love, Support and Friendship – Though society measures me in cold ways I find that those close to me tend to choose encouragement. They signal to me when I'm looking good and what I've accomplished today and how I should feel and that my brain is really big. This isn't a normal way of speaking. People outside pass right by. I'm targeted by these people as a priority—they would like me to be an authority. My power would in some way become theirs. Our shared means and motives would increase. With that much more at our behest we'd reach new heights. Not I or mine. There's a wedding in there somewhere, either up or down, before or soon, parents or siblings or newly weds or in-laws. Life makes little sense beyond commitments. Do you really want to go on in randomness?
Peer – Mentorship and Community – In my home there's little disorder. My cats are always around seeking food, places to sit and fun to have. My family and I go about our usual business. The fault lies entirely beyond the doors of my home. Out there I see no reason for anyone being anywhere. I can't understand why people have chosen to work here or there. Where my place is makes no sense to me. Most people dive in without stopping to think. I however pause constantly and infuriatingly to jot things down. I can't let anything be. In proximity to my peers I've felt the greatest emptiness, a blackness where a fire should have been, a cold pit that was my own chest and head and body and soul and all that filled it was one thought, I'd rather not be here. As alone as we are we still end up feeling the desire to be alone. There are some places and groups and people that are a bad idea. We're not all meant for each other.
Perhaps we need an antidote—something that makes us understand it's all fine. Every thought of a mind is just a thought and it's understandable because minds make all kinds. I think I've already admitted to a great variety of thoughts but very soon now I'll open another door and let you find yet more. The war on loneliness is so very large, it's a universal war because that's how much we can fit inside our heads. It's fought in every world and every plane of existence—every which place the mind runs to hide. Future, past or present we'll chase after it and grab it because that's precisely what it wants. I'll hug it and smother it and give it a rub of my knuckles. I love ya and I hate ya and you're the dumbest motherfucker. Can you stop being a sorry little fucker?
No matter how bad it gets I know one thing; you'll be back for more. People think it's gotten as bad as it can get, that there's no way to turn it around, and yet here we are past the expectations of every cynic, pessimist and nihilist. The existentialist is merely the plight of a person too detached from the motions they must take. Down and down they peer into the frozen wastes of inaction. If they were challenged, if they were pushed, if they were found out they would be destroyed. It's better to be a sobbing suicidal mess than an absent-minded dolt bemusing himself with his nausea. You must respect yourself but before that respect others. They want a story to tell, a memory to recall, a joke to laugh at, a night to remember and a companion above all. Be something for someone and forget the woes.
I am INCENSED by one of the proposals that have been made to treat loneliness.
Some people have suggested that lonely people spend time with robots who will be their simulated, mechanized pseudo-friends
I am older than you. I think I told you that I am 64. (The concept sickens and terrifies me because my "raison d' etre" (French for "reason for being") was my hot, flashy youth -- I was once in a rock band)
In any event, things like automated, phony friends in the form of robots are the sort of things that in my day only existed in dystopian novels.
This is why I hate the digital world. This is why I want to fly a plane over silicon valley and drop bombs. (I am just joking. Besides, I like you and I wouldn't want my personal air war to hurt you.)
Loneliness is lonely but togetherness can be lonelier.