as usual

"Nothing amazing happens here. Everything is ordinary. The huge factory that can be seen from our town, the Medical Mechanica Plant, all the adults got excited when it came here, like it was really a big thing. The white steam that billows out every day at the same time, it looked to me like smoke that signified some kind of omen. Smoke that spreads out and covers everything."

I stepped outside on a warm summer night at around 10pm. The last vestiges of light were gone. A swampy humidity hit my nose and I was instantly transported to the tropics. In the darkness, you could almost imagine the drooping trees in front of the condo were the outskirts of a tropical rainforest.

"Or like a panda with a mean face, or like sandals with pressure points drawn on them, or the smell of a blackboard eraser, or a Sunday morning where you wake up and it's raining. Well, I like him more than hard bread."

There is something entirely electric about the air on nights like that. Everything feels more alive, like a pulse beating through the atmosphere. You feel like you could reach out and hold air and in a closed fist feel it breathing. The comfort and convenience of just stepping outside is not lost. No coat, no gloves, no hat, no adjustment to cold or wind or dryness. The fireflies that danced around my thighs as I walked through the grass lit up repeatedly, and a pang of jealously at areas of the world where this was permanent, year round, hit me.

"At the time, I didn't notice the sirens that were coming towards us. I don't know where the lies end and the truth begins. I asked myself what I could do for Mamimi. I decided to stay by her side forever."

The fireflies were even thicker a few weeks later in July. Endless days of 90 degree weather, the sun beating down on black pavement during the day, the swarms of bugs at night. How alive everyone feels contradicts how slow and hazy it feels too. It seems possible to lie on the grass beneath the sun forever, listening to music, eyes squinting, faced upwards, the endless blue seemingly starting to bend and waver and melt. It's probably a trick of the long daylight, sunlight from 6am to 9:30 pm makes each day feel like it could last forever.

"You're Puss in Boots, the one who tricks the prince. He hides who he really is and pretends to be someone else forever. So in time he becomes that person, so his lie becomes the truth, see? He transcends the mask. Well, don't you get it? That's how he finds happiness. That's pretty good, right?"

The first time I smelled tropical air it felt like home. I can not explain this. I remember as a kid stepping out of a plane in Florida at age 6, breathing it in, and realizing it smelled different. Every time since then, wherever the world has taken me, any time that smell hits me, I get nostalgic, or wistful. It feels almost like something I need, I have to have, that not breathing it will eventually kill me. On summer nights I think back to sitting outside a hostel in Hong Kong as the city woke up around me, from 4am to 6:30 am, hearing the gradual crescendo of traffic and construction, the sun slowly inching up over the trees and skyscrapers. I once looked up if it was possible to keep a palm tree alive in Michigan. I can't remember when I decided I had a favorite type of tree, only that as long as I have been aware, that has been it. I used to wonder if I could climb them and look down on a beach from their tops. When I was older, I wished I could say as gracefully as they did when I couldn't keep myself still.

"Nothing can happen till you swing the bat."

Years ago I'd drive throughout town in search of something. I was never sure what. There isn't so much to see. Nothing amazing happens here. After decades the roads and buildings have all become familiar. Still, something about the warm air and dusk colors - orange and pink and purple hues lightly brushing each and every puffy cloud - loud music, windows down, made me think that even the most mundane locales could hold some beauty. But it wasn't enough. I made a promise to myself that I'd leave this place. I made a promise to live somewhere where the neon lights and sounds of the city stretched forever, possibilities seemingly endless, where feeling cold and overburdened with layers of clothing never existed, where night drives and walks were just another day, any day, any time of year. I was 17 when I promised myself that.

"By the time I realized it, I had already swung the bat. My palms still sting. I wonder if Haruko feels like this all the time."

As soon as the sun and warmth and dusk and fireflies are here, I am reminded that they will soon be gone. It's a perpetual sadness, that to enjoy something is to be reminded of its impermanence. Everything can be dragged down by a melancholic realization that it to shall pass. In winter, I long for summer to come. In summer, I dread winter. I feel the tug towards something that will not last either way. A lot of people would say this is some sort of intrinsic human condition, former posts on this blog certainly would, but maybe such a generalized point is largely without significance.

"When you're in a town like this all covered with smoke, you forget that there's a world outside. Nothing amazing happens here. And you get used to that, used to a world where everything is ordinary. Every day we spend here is like a whole lifetime of dying slowly. But now Haruko is here. That's how I know there really is a world outside."

We drove around town at 10:35 pm on a night not unlike the one a few weeks ago, or a few years ago, or a few decades ago. It is all the same and yet entirely different. My hand traced tiny circles around her thigh as she shared a new band she was excited about with me. She remembered that I used to do this, I used to love it. At each stop light, the fireflies seemed to light our way. "Turn here" they suggested. The top of the hill overlooking downtown was at once beautiful and disappointing, a reminder that it's the same view I've had my whole life, like a city that could fit in the palm of my hand, one that wouldn't breathe, unlike the air around us.

"Nothing amazing happens here. Everything is ordinary. We crossed the bridge as usual, and before we knew it the seasons had changed. Mamimi left town. She said she wanted to be a photographer. I don’t know what happened to her after that."

The drive lasted forever and not at all, like a summer day. Our car rolled to a stop before the front door of our home as usual. I smiled at her. I never used to smile on these drives; there wasn't anyone to smile to, nobody to see, nothing but the emptiness of a car on a late night drive. We walked in and kissed and swayed back and forth. For a second, I was a palm tree, gracefully moving, side to side, slow and rhythmic. I still fear winter, I still fear being trapped in this city, the pull of convenience and cheapness and familiarity and work. But maybe that's not the point. The person looking for something on those late night drives no longer exists. Something amazing happened here.

senescence for the individual, immortality for the group

a commonly crude nomenclature wielded by a large percentage of the population - primarily online - is one in which a negative thing is often prescribed to be "cancer." given that this is both an inconsiderate phrase given that cancer actually exists as a terrible and painful experience, and that this phrasing is often applied to things like "the video game didn't give her massive tits because cancer" or "i lost this video game because the other player is using a character who is cancer," both of which dramatically oversell the negative outcome of such results, one would have to be daft to not assume that stated nomenclature is rendered largely both meaningless and bad (do not make the joke).

one finds that there is an equally likely portrayed value, that, while not a pithy, rude phrase, conveys a sense of a slow, immaterial march towards death. that is; an entire house of popular culture, from music, to self-help literature, to tv, and more, commonly prescribes the idea that one must be constantly working at all times. this 'hustle' as it were, is key to acquiring the requisite money and standing to survive in the modern world, and said hustle never truly can be allowed to end if one wants to succeed.

what these two seemingly disparate ideas or phrases have in common is a stretch the present author, in this hereto notably infelicitous post, will make via a haphazard rendering of the english language and a medical discovery from the year 1961. it seems reasonable to conclude that the idea of working in perpetuity, until one dies, is actually a distinctly bad thing. that to suggest that exhaustion is essentially the normal state we must occupy in order to exist might be something that society at large should endeavor to avoid. some unfortunate 19 year old dude online might suggest that such thing is 'cancer' which would, while continuing to exist as a rather unfortunate and crude use of the term, be, at least in this case, nominally accurate.

of course, all of this is dramatically and fearfully destitute if the interpretation is not nominally accurate, but instead entirely accurate. given that cancer cells are the only human cells that avoid the hayflick limit, and that said societal value does end with an individual's death (after working nonstop), one might surmise then that the idea of working constantly will, like the immortal cells of cancer that are able to replicate forever, outlive the individual humans subject to said value; all of the latter eventually rendered obsolete, telomerase shortened, existence lost to senescence.

the fall before the pride

it was always the same growing up. maybe never overt, but there. a sort of boot-strap your way through life, never brag, never boast. no joy in who you are. it fit, in a way. you were without church but your parents were raised in very religious households, perhaps if they couldn't impart the gospel onto you at least they could impart other values. pride is a sin. in school your friends would brag during basketball games, you won thunder and lightning against the entire 6th grade once and in a game went off for over 20 points. one day at soccer practice josh told you were the best player on the team far and away.  you shrugged and thanked him sheepishly. it was just what it was. it was to be expected. you had to be good, perfect, beyond perfect, so why brag about what is expected? bragging was rude, callous, made others aware of what they were not or did not have. you remember the money that flowed into your hands for graduating high school, and your friend asked you what you thought, and you said you didn't deserve it for doing what was supposed to be done, and he agreed, he felt the same. you knew that carrots worked better than sticks, this was well backed by decades of research, but neither felt appropriate. you just were, and you shouldn't need a reward to be so. years later you'd try to square this with your politics. you still can't.

there is no pride to be had in who you are. certainly not in where you are born, nationalism a constantly absurd concept, you did not choose your home country from a video game drop down menu before you were spit out. you chose no traits, no characteristics besides what you chose over the course of your life, and choosing the right ones was just that - choosing the right ones, doing the right thing, and isn't that reward enough?

but maybe you went too far. you yearned internally for the clothes you wanted, the classes you wanted, a sense of desire, of acceptance, of someone, anyone to like you and the choices you made, to recognize it. you wanted a publication credit, a slip that said you graduated, something you could hang your hat on, and even if nobody saw it, perhaps that was for the best.

but it all fit. the lack of pride fit your parents, fit your privileged class, fit everything, and so it was the only path. you were whatever someone else needed you to be. when your friends carpooled throughout college and you always drove, you never asked for gas money. you mapped out the destinations and didn't even tell them you had, you put liquor bottles away while they slept, it was the right thing to do, and in their comfort, you found comfort as well, and that was fine. nothing you do should be broadcast, should be told to others, it should just exist, like you, quiet and studious, doing the right thing. pride is a sin.

in the years since, you have wriggled and compromised, or maybe grown, it's all postmodern anyways. the clothes you wear are your own now, the music you listen to your own, the books you read your own. you still want no credit for what is necessary, because everything is necessary at all times.

and so you found yourself in line under rainbow balloons on a warm, sunny summer day, wearing a rainbow tanktop and jeggings and looking all the world like you and your group belonged. and you guess that was always the hard part. belonging. you never belonged at the lunch table you sat at in high school, it was a necessity but you didn't relate to those who trade insults. you didn't belong at the job, at the house with your parents, you felt constantly subverted and shrunk yourself to fit. but there, in the park, it all was. people wearing anything, celebrating themselves, protesting against a system designed for thousands of years to kill them, and still to this day doing so. american flags decorated against rainbow flags, as if the contradiction wasn't obvious. you felt excited about who you were, pins and stickers and clothing that you struggled to wear up until the last year. you walked amongst a crowd that felt like in any other occasion could drown you and never felt unsafe. maybe it was the company. maybe it was the atmosphere. maybe you are still wriggling and growing a bit. maybe you just want to be liked.

but the internal dialogue remains. here are people that deserve their pride, their protest, their life. what do you deserve? you haven't received a raise in years, you haven't changed the world, you haven't graduated, you haven't been perfect. you can't will yourself to be proud, you can't will yourself a feeling that has repulsed you for so long, so you enjoy the moment and try to accept who you are, at the very least, because you have finally found those who have. with your wife, with your friends, in that crowd, who you were was good enough. the next morning, you tried not to look in the mirror and hate your body again, like always, tried not to look at your lack of accomplishments.

after your shower you noticed your pan sticker still on your shirt in a crumpled up pile of dirty laundry. the wristband hugs your wrist throughout the day as a reminder that maybe in an alternate timeline, some version of you who likes being you and wears it like a badge of honor exists, but you can't get over the feeling that it is undeserved. you admonish yourself for not cleaning as you sit on the couch reading something you could never write. this is who you are, and that is ok, and it doesn't need to exist for the world to see. nobody ever told you explicitly, but everybody always did; pride is a sin.

clean

you remember being called back to the bathroom because the sink wasn't quite clean enough. a spot of grime underneath and along the edge where the faucet met the hard counter managed to escape the futile digging of your fingernail-less attempts to dig it out, you had picked the keratin out every day since you were 5 or 6 years old. you'd joke that your fingernails are never dirty because they don't exist, peeled back to disfigured shrapnel. on weekends when you went away, you'd expect to come back to a room your mom had gone through and cleaned, prying open nightstand drawers and going through shelves. many an embarrassing grade was found this way by her. it was all under the guise of making sure your room - which wasn't your room, really, it was still your parents - was clean. when your 6th grade teacher opened up your classroom desk to show your parents during conferences that it was too messy you were driven to school early the next day so you could clean it, you didn't want to lose an assignment or forget to bring home a graded paper you got for your parents to determine if the grade was good enough (if it wasn't an A, it wasn't), at least that's what they told you about it when they told you it was too messy. jenny two desks over had a moldy burger in hers. the teachers didn't care about her though, neither did her parents, so there was nothing to clean. you'd be sad about this when you reflected on it later. clean is a state of class. in high school your mom would reach across and pop a pimple or fix your hair so your appearance was clean, unasked for physical contact your body naturally reacted to by drawing away physically, wondering if seeing her son pull away every time she reached out hurt her.

as you got older you wondered if it was about actually cleanliness, or perhaps it was really about control. the basement office at home your mom asked you to help organize had a betamax porn video in it your parents didn't 'clean' out, the used car you bought from them had an erotic CD in the glove compartment they didn't 'clean' out. the house of theirs is still pristine largely but then your mom sees the state of your car one day and asks if she can help clean it, if she can pay for someone to clean it, please, anything, it's too messy. either it is a judgement on you or an attempt to control the space you still occupy, who knows. as a kid you had a weekly schedule for when to clean the bathrooms at home, when to vacuum, it seemed like any other household chore setup but you suppose every house is different, you have yet to have had a single friend whose place is as clean as the space you occupied as a kid.

she still tries. cars, desks, she offers to come to your place where you live with your wife and clean it, she promises no judgements but you know that has never been true. every year she calls her mom and she comes down and they clean together, an entire house, organized and managed and tidy. like mother like daughter. your current place is full of post-wedding stuff and it is cluttered and you know the words that would escape her mouth walking through the door would be caustic and judgmental.

when you moved into your first place years ago you let your bedroom become a disaster. depression-aided apathy gave way to a carpet completely covered in trash and laundry and alcohol and tobacco stains, not a single speck of carpet showing. over seventy trash bags and two and a half weeks later one spring it was done. you surveyed the room before you. you were content with the state of it. your mom never would be. maybe the metaphor was there the whole time.

the thoughts are gone

The thoughts are gone. It went in waves, of course, like many things - a gradual decline. You stopped writing fiction, and then you stopped writing blog posts, and then you stopped writing emails, and then you ceased to be the one thing you always wanted to be. Many a post in this blog have alluded to giving up on what one might want or desire over the course of existence. Perhaps it's for the best.

There is no conditional "perhaps" in front of the best that previously happened. Through all the tumult and stress and foot stomping and regrets and critiques, your wife stood there in her dress and smiled and you smiled and a weird calmness - about singing in front of a crowd, speaking in front of a crowd, a permanence you for years derided as silly or even stupid - washed over you. There was a rightness here, like the rightness you feel when exploring the streets of Kuala Lumpur, tropical heat and palm trees and rotten durian all assaulting you, of watching a sunset from Darwin beaches, perfect colors splashed across a clear, warm sky, of drinks at a dive bar in Vietnam, company louder - just barely - than the 6 month old billboard hits, but this time it was about a person, not a place, not a time. Or maybe it was a time, a forever stretched out into the very horizon you sat and meditated on from as many corners of the world as possible. A person forever, not setting and rising but there embedded into you like the heart she has tattooed on her wrist. The passport has been unstamped since 2016.

There is a pursuit, at times, of so many things that it is hard to figure out what they are. A pursuit of reading and writing more, a pursuit of video games, a pursuit of travel. It's easy to dwell on the nil here, but harder to spend time with a brief reward. Two classes aced, a life partner, a sense of self that might come and go but at least is no longer the transparent it once permanently was. You sit and painfully watch the clock wishing the night with her wasn't about to end, when in the past, you just wanted it to end, to fall asleep, to never wake up. Now you want it to stretch on for eternity, cuddled up on the couch, laughing all of life's anxieties away. Still there is more around the corner. The counter says two blog posts in two months, one of them not even yours. The book sits next to the bed folded on its spine still somewhere where you left off. Your friends talk about a game in ways you barely understand anymore.

So many references dangle in and out of earshot, quotes, in-jokes, a sort of language owned only by the most select people, you revel in what it means. For so long your language was global, only shrouded in niche internet references insomuch as the internet can be niche, now you have a network of one where language is your own creation, your own household. It feels weird and new and exciting. You and your wife can speak a version of English only you understand. An actual love language. It's weird to think millions more exist.

You still have no idea where any of this leads. All seemed impossible. You knew being a writer was impossible years ago. You knew moving to southeast Asia was impossible years ago. You knew being married was impossible years ago. You knew singing in front of a crowd was impossible years ago. Who knows what you'll think is impossible tomorrow? The counter for May ticks to two. In three days June will read 0. It's easy to focus on the nil.