Blah

I spoke with Dylan today. We both confessed how we are living in horrible states of depression. The worst part of admitting you're a writer, we decided, is how low you feel when you are not writing: The damned dregs of the earth; slovenly in appearance, hazed in thought and habit.
We went on about suicide and Celine. And I got to thinking about the last time Dylan and I met. We were living on separate continents coincidentally reading Henry Miller and equally wild about cunt. We arrived in the hotel lobby out of shape and licked by booze from spending the past months writing words, columns and chapters. We were each working to create our own Tropic. Not sure where that idea went. It vanished during our stay in the Village Amoedo. Maybe it went up our noses, or inside our gullets. But when the weekend was over we admitted the Tropic we wanted was a Tropic already had by greater men. So when we spoke today about our state of being, we briefly wondered if we should get into the rhythm of our time and meditate on inner monologues of self-loathing and existential worry and get bent on Dave Eggers. I guess it was just that kind of day. Hope not to have it again soon.

Joel, You Are A Pussy

The most entertaining thing about pursuing writing is that you are welcomed with these things called Rejection Letters. Writing is very ego-driven, and the rejection letter is courteously aimed at the windshield with decapitating intentions. It is loaded with pleases and thank yous and graciouslys followed by a declining, not a good fit blade to the neck. But those are the experienced executioners. Like McSweeney's. They usually tell me something about my writing being too rooted in the short story. I mean, shit, if I had to be rooted to something. . .
Yet sometimes those carrying blades are no more than fools finally off the leash. I received one yesterday that had "guest editors" make the final cut. Nobody knows who the guest editors were, but I am assuming one was this kid named Joel who I beaned with a fastball in Elks Little League 19 years ago, who I have always suspected of dedicating his life to collapsing mine. Anyhow, Joel responded via his online magazine's guest editors:

Editor 3 Vote: No

Ed. 3 Comments: Wasn't clear on the point it was trying to make.

Editor 4 Vote: No

Ed. 4 Comments: I don't understand this.

Ok, Joel. Well, we all saw you cry after I hit you with that fastball. Pussy.

Loam

The last I heard from Zillmann was a few months ago. He was writing mad poetry about Mars and working in a plant nursery. We spoke recently and he said he has been digging his hands in the fresh loam. I told him it was vile to say such a phrase, but he insisted the loam is where his hands have been. I countered by telling him that if I ever bothered to find out what the hell loam is, I may congratulate him on his loam. But for now I will keep my eyes set upon this bloated dog on the sunny side of the road hoping that Zillmann will keep his loamy hands to himself.
Been on this bus for too long. Somewhere between Only God Knows Where and a Borracharia. I feel all these people have a right to be on this bus because they need to be on this bus. They need to be somewhere, and hopefully soon. Maybe it's work. Or maybe family. But it's important for them to get there.
I have nowhere to be. And I tell myself that is a good thing. Some kind of Buddhist load of shit about not being owned by material obligations, and letting go, yet I feel queer and nauseus with these thoughts. And it could be because I am writing while in a moving vehicle, but maybe I have reached a time in my life where traveling has become tiring revolutions around the anywheres of the world. I am no longer shocked by culture, wealth, poverty, or landscape. I understand that we live in different places and that we eat different foods, that water falls and deserts dry, and the hills are high and the valleys are low.
What blows my mind more than anything is that we are alive. That on this bus we have all achieved, up to this point, a moderate success in not dying. Waking up is a tremendous miracle. Throughout our experiences, at any time, the introduction of one unneccessary particle to one ordinary situation can shatter everything. A displaced particle can make this bus driver kill us all, or such a particle can cause the man next to me go for my gringo throat at the next rest stop. But none of this will happen. We will still drink wine and eat bread; this is miraculous. We are alive while phantoms circle over our bodies. Zillmann sifts through the loam and writes beautiful poetry about Mars.
Incredible.

Talking To Myself

-Let's try and do something good for ourselves tonight. I know that TV, drugs and whiskey are cool and all, but there is more to life than that.
-Yeah, maybe. But what are you going to do about it?
-Well, I have been trying to write something about it. Here, look...
-Ok, but if the first line is about TV, drugs and whiskey then obviously it's the inspiration and without it you would have nothing.
-But that's just it! What if I was living without this shit? Imagine what could be accomplished during a day. Imagine making love and actually feeling it!
-I feel it.
-Well, yeah, but-
-Listen. You can keep imagining all this shit, but without all this, you wouldn't even be real. This is your life right now, and there is no other, or at least no other that you are aware of. Let it go. This is why you have a failed career, failed relationships and own nothing. Because you can't fucking accept who you are in the present. Now--no, not a word, I'm not finished--do yourself a favor. Pour a glass, roll a joint, watch the television. Fuck wildly when she comes over and say things you don't mean.
-Like even that trash about anal sex and a vibrator?
-Absolutely. We can say it over and over again, and we will pretend that we have harmony and that all the things we do in the dark bring you happiness. Then, I assure you, we will have cast enough worry, doubt and illusion into the rill of goodness that you still hold onto to write whatever it is you want to write.
-I hate it when you're right.
-And I hate it when you write.