quiet suffering
moving-forwardI haven’t written in a while, but I also don’t have anyone to apologize to since nobody reads this anyway. Life has been interesting the past few weeks, greedily sucking on the last strips of summer before we hunker down for another cold semicircle around the sun. I can’t even remember what I was writing about last, but the biggest change is that I was laid off. I’m still processing what exactly transpired, but it’s a learning experience and hopefully toughens me up for future bullshit. There is some psychoanalytic component to it, they never said the quiet part out loud, but I think I was “out” before I was formally pushed “out” — my manager was lazy and absent and useless and my (deep state and probably actually kinda racist? Not to throw such annoying allegations out there and disavow personal responsibility, but there are a decent chunk of useless and less competent individuals who did not get similar treatment) stakeholders cut me out and made it difficult to do my job and fought me on countless petty details, so information stopped flowing, and of course, I became more and more siloed and less able to deliver, so they then were able to accumulate enough pretext to let me go. It was like some weird five or six month long protracted torturing process administered by startup bureaucrats and Ivy League circle jerk old pals under the banner of efficiency and social impact and caring about our users. And, my own antics in March didn’t help either — messing with my medication as my relationship hit its climax of disintegration, triggering manic episodes in which I flirted with coworkers and “friends” and permanently made things awkward — ands part of me thinks that is the Real, the unspoken thing that led to this outcome. They never mentioned it, though, they never talked about it, there was never anything ever discussed, so reason and legal liability dictates there were other factors. And yet, the queasy suspicion remains.
As for the “friends” who I spent countless sentences stressing over, knotting myself over and over in overexertion of apology, they can go fuck themselves. There was a realization I came to: these people are not exactly good people! In fact, activists might have some of the worst pathologies of the lot, a sort of narcissistic tendency and entitlement in which they think they deserve to be the hero or Joan of Arc, that they are uniquely anointed and worthy to be that person that brings about dramatic change. In reality, many are prima donna well-heeled upstarts auditioning for leading roles in the political theater that obfuscates the true process. Hundreds of millions, billions of dollars flowing and shuffling around, giving life to entire cottage industries that are just bloated (e)mail and phone lists, that browbeat you into taking some action that gets their pal who will owe them one, and if it all works out, their sinecure is secured. I was not treated with empathy or kindness, really, I was cut out utterly at a weak moment, and what’s even more embarrassing about this is they are actually pretty lame and boring people! I love to debase myself over and over again, some strange sadomasochistic compulsion to humiliate myself in front of dullards and uglies and self-involved insufferable 20-somethings unintentionally making a mockery out of the brutal reality of your sacred and sincerely-held beliefs. There was no kindness and they can go to hell, so all this has condensed into something more black and crystalline: bitterness. And some bitterness is OK, as long as you monitor your vitals and don’t let it build up to unhealthy levels. But finally, there is peace, I’m no longer trying to solve this Rubik’s cube! Adieu to all of the opportunists nepotism babies and unkind.
Aside from that, I’ve been writing more going to this alcohol-fueled writing group, and have been receiving a fair amount of attention from girls. I’m not exactly Don Juan but it’s a big city and people are horny and I guess I check enough boxes for some of them, summer throbs hard and wet and tight and makes you act out (fuck). So I guess there’s some extra bounce in my step there, some extra confidence and poise that is helpful for any man really; everyone should be able to be loved and held and fucked and desired and complemented and accepted. The incel thing is truly a tragedy since their use of such backwards and Darwinian frames to explain a qualitative phenomena, they’ve precipitated a reaction in which they made their own anxieties and analysis more true — women react and throw barbs back and adopt the same language and mirror the same analysis in some sick cycle of hate, a perpetual loneliness machine. And here is the crux of the thing, the myth of Pandora’s box: some ideas and things should never be introduced into the world, systems are dynamic complex and unpredictable, and even the political tensions don’t lead to the outcomes you’d expect. And so, in some grand irony, the incels have created incels of themselves, when working on gaining some recognition of their need for basic tenderness and love would’ve been far more fruitful. Anyway, this is to say that it’s been nice to spend time with people who like me and want me and whom I like and want back, to meet some funny and interesting souls with their own neuroticisms and anxieties. NYC is a literary city, there is so much human life bursting from the seams, the density of people rubbing in and on each other in so many different modes and means.
I’ve also started school, part-time, but the Marxian analysis unfortunately is not what I’m interested in right now. I’m not interested in theory, I’m not interested in economics, statistics even. I’m interested in art, humanity, culture, the soul, faith, divinity, beauty, what fills your heart and makes it warm and glow and comforts. That is really all there is to life, and to see all these countless statistics about the death of the humanities and the abundance of STEM types and an abandonment of what it means to humanity is so tragic. Will we remember how to be human, as deeply, as lovely and tinged and coloredly, with all these technical improvements and perfections? Will this double movement towards technical perfection and away from human inner complexity (or rather, a deliberate flattening) leave anything worth building for or cherishing after the production is full-tilt and the rivers full-poisoned? And even if this program is Marxian, and it’s the analysis grounds much of how I view the world, it’s not what I want to be doing right_now_. But, alas, the money has been paid, so maybe I should try to see it through and see what comes of it.
And luckily, I’ve landed another job already, and the old questions remains — how to build a community at 30. I’m working on it, I’m not sure I’ve made much progress, but hopefully the new workplace and school provides new opportunities. It really is important to pursue what you’re interested in once the common ground of youthful partying dissipates and people pair off and you uproot and move. I think about my ex all the time, not the most immediate one, the brilliant, probably unfaithful one that psychologically fucked me up, since I know she’s out here, in here little bourgeois yuppie circles. She had a good solid crew, and I’m sure she still does, and I feel silly for not having one. And I guess there’s a realization that it is actually harder for someone like me; women do socialize more and strike up friendships more, they are in a very true sense the rock of our society, and men can be seen as these dangerous outsiders … and, not being white doesn’t help either, or part of some other close-knit ethnic group, which is a bummer. At the writing group there is one (1) other brown guy and this guy was so incredibly rude and dismissive, and I know it’s this disgusting coon-like posturing that some of these South Asians adopt when around other people of color, as if to distance from our brownness and elevate and ingratiate himself to the whites. Colonial mentality. I’ve met other pathetic little Uncle Toms like this before, and the ultimate joke is on him, since I’m fucking one of the gals and his coon-like desi ass can get stuffed … in some cosmic sense I wish a giant laser beam could vaporize these types of people because there are very few pathetic and viscerally disgusting betrayals than that kind of rat behavior. Anyway, this is to just sketch some of the social dynamics and the relative ease and unease with which I can build the community I’m looking for, and a recognition that there are some things that have nothing to do with me that make it more difficult than for others.
The important part is to not become bitter, to put up with the quiet suffering bravely, to endure the lonely hours and the nights stuck inside without plans, the subtle and unsubtle snubs, the rejections and flakes and the dismissals and the shallow churn of feet clambering on top of each other to escape the barrel we’re all stuck in. I’m working on it.
Anyway, I’ve been getting emotional listening to Kanye West again. I might owe this man my life, we grew up with him and sometimes I feel like he’s the only person at his level who’s genuinely alive and feeling right now. We don’t deserve him.