BeerSpeech:Dragonfly

There sat a man, on his porch, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. He was talking to himself. This is what he said:

I don't even give a fuck about writing anymore. I used to. I used to care a lot, used to think I'd do something with it. You know, be the next Hemingway. Something improbable, I'm sure. I even bought a typewriter, I thought it would help. It didn't. I can't write stories. I mostly write about one person, being depressed. Sometimes, they'd be depressed socially. But mostly, alone. Frequently, they'd be drinking. It was all autobiographical. Shit is what it was. I wanted to write sometimes about something exciting. Maybe a British turn-of-the-century explorer who became obsessed with lions and spent his life living primitively with local indigenous people hunting them with spears. The Gentleman's Way. But I would start, and that explorer would never even make it out to the Savannah. He would get distracted by the bar in the hotel, make love to the beautiful Nubian bartender- for 50 pounds a taste- spend a month that way, and go back home. That much closer to an early death from Cirrhosis of the liver. Lion Hunting stories never worked out for me. Neither did any others. Except the drinking ones; which start and end in the same place, depression. Like I said, it was mostly autobiographical.

And on top of it all, there's this god damn dragonfly- right behind me. He keeps flying into the light on this damned porch. Why won't he go somewhere else? He persists. He keeps struggling, just a few inches from the light, but he'll never get to it. But he doesn't know that; because there's something he doesn't know that I do- its called glass. You can't see it, and you can't get through it. Fuck that dragonfly. He's a dumb sonofabitch. I pity it.

Maybe if I had a gambling problem, or a drug addiction, even alcoholism, I could live with myself better. At least they have passion. I simply don't give a fuck about anything. Last two things I cared about were thus: a girl, and writing. Neither one worked out for me. I've been thinking about the alternatives: a man, and illiteracy. Maybe if I was an ignorant fag I could straighten myself out. Get excited about mornings, money, dick, and not understanding signs when I see them. Shit. Anything.

As it is, as things stand, I think about suicide. I think about suicide, three times daily, like a muslim prayer call. I'll go somewhere quiet, after I'm done with my obligations to the world- which I do mostly so I get left the fuck alone- and I begin to hear the oriental hum coming from what I have to presume is the minaret in my mind. It chants, "suicide, suicide, suicide" with a deep booming voice like a holy mantra. See there's still part of me interested in action- a part of me that can still write lion stories. That part wants death. Like Caligula in the Colliseum drunk on wine; facing an awkward fighter who simply won't go down. Caligula keeps sending out the best fighters to face him, but somehow he manages to kill them all, no problem. Its not skill, some dumb luck is what it is. Well, the audience isn't pleased at all with this fortuitous loser, neither is Caligula. They want him dead, and Caligula could not be happier than to oblige them.
Thumbs down, lucky loser.

But enough about death, I'm not there yet. Beyond the chanting Muslims and the drunk Caligulas, there's a bleeding Jesus. Or sitting Buddha, or dancing Krishna. Shit, who knows anymore? That's probably part of the problem. I had some god damned liberal education. I read a lot of books, a lot of spiritual books. I was taught to accept a whole lot of things. The problem with accepting many things though, is you stop believing in any of them. I could quote to you loads of philosophies; from the Franklin Agnostic to the Persian Zoroastrian. But none of it means shit to me. Its like a sad encyclopedia. I would have liked to have been around in a time when I was encouraged to murder infidels. The real ones, not the political phonies we have around today. Infidels that sincerely had it out for YOUR god. Really girds the balls that does; having some group of pricks threaten your god. Makes you really like the one you've got. Even if just for the sake of slicing some oppositional throat. My balls are cold now though. Someone voices an opinion on god, and my damned liberal pony garden mind springs out, 'isn't that ingenious, how very exotic!'. I'd prefer a time when I'd hear that same idea, pull out a dagger and thrust it to a throat, a stubbly Occidental throat, and demand he recants. 'Or you're losing something precious', I'd say, 'and its not on your neck'. Fuck it though. In those times I'd probably just up and practice Druidism; ride stallions naked through the locks of Scotland, just to be contrary.

I'm thinking about starting to practice transcendental meditation. But thats just a thought really. If you've ever fully drank a bottle of scotch, you know you don't need to meditate, to transcend.

For some reason the quote, 'don't stare down at the pond's reflection if you want to find the moon', sticks with me. I think about it all the time. I think I'm a pond-starer. There's a whole fucking race of us, staring at ponds, looking for the moon. The only thing I'm afraid of is looking up and seeing that there wasn't even a moon up there to begin with. There's probably not. Maybe just some fucking ad with a talking animal in it, jiving me to buy some car insurance. The skies are marketable, in a time like ours. Most everything else too.

But here I am again. Spouting off. All I'm missing is my typewriter. That would really fuck this whole thing up wouldn't it? Writing again. Sittin' at the keys; punchin' out the next-great-thing for those guys. You know those guys, those guys who think they're too good for television- so they can talk about it eagerly in the cafeteria of their stiff ass accounting office. So the other assholes there know, KNOW, that they, the next-great-thing-readers; Are better than you.

Or even better. So I can keep it in a box, a big fucking box somewhere. You write something, something like this drunken speech to nobody. Then, you pile it up with all the other shit you've written. Then, every time you walk by it, you can say, "Oh shit, you know, I've really got to work on that shit. There was really something to that, if I just work out the right kinks. If I could just do that, who knows? Who knows?" But you just keep walking after you say that, and you never do a damn thing. Because you like it just the way it is.
Irreverent and sloppy as shit. But anyways, you always say it.

Fuck. Who am I even kidding? That's just me.