on cocaine

i am a free man... i am a lonely man. i am eighteen pages deep in nausea. concurrently i am thirty-two pages into notes from the underground. i may never finish either. of the first, i remember having been moved the first time i set out upon completion. and yet i remember nothing. eighteen blank pages collected and redirected to the pit of my stomach and the depths of my mind four and a half years ago. existential philosophy, the penultimate mindfuck if you will, had once taken me in, sheltered me from the storm. black and white movies with subtitles. late nights in a box, writing papers. trying to nail something down with words. nothing really counteracted the facts but nothing supported them either. the ideas were fleeting dreams only to disappear and resurface with the same heart-wrenching tinge of uncertainty. nothing i wrote would make sense. i refused to edit. i had become complacent with my perfect imperfection. i started a lot of stories. now they are trapped on a hard drive torn from its encasement, just like myself, waiting to be read. a loneliness had crept inside and made itself uncomfortable. i could not stand to be alone. i would lay down and wake up far worse, for where ever i found myself i was certainly not there. my mind leap frogs from one scene to the next and i cannot help but pick out the places and situations i speak of so as to give the reader an all too convenient look into a life i have chosen to share. the people walk by and purposely avoid this empty light in my eyes by noticeably staying as far away from my vacuum like stare. i wonder whether it be them or i who is afraid of this loneliness. i used to cry and feel human again or feel something close to definable again. but now i laugh to myself. alone, i put my feet up and look desperately from something to tear me from this mediocrity. a spectacle! yes, a definite scene. a who and what along with a where and when to give you something to hold onto, my friend. and then i realize something a little too close to reality for my taste. something a lot like well this must all be for me. something a lot like creating an individuality and then wasting away as some bitter old man who never has seen the places the others speak of. he did not want to go out there and be a part of anything. no one was inviting and so he sat waiting. never allowing himself to be the instigator. a swiss cheese american bundle free of fleas and flies because of an inherent disease. yes, that would be it. escape the bottom by making one's self so unapproachable that eventually he may float free from it all through an impermanent lightness of being one with the fluid embalming his separate self thus floating to the top and when the heat came he may escape to another, less viscous embalming material. another state of being trapped within another state and being just as wrapped up in himself and his story that the people would actually be able to forget so as to never have to admit that they too were just like him. had he never picked up a book he may be able to convince himself of such an existence and maybe still if he could put them down metaphorically to forget each and every word and like james joyce he may fly free from the nets. no, you are right, it would never work.