Proverbs 25, Verses 21 & 22
"If your enemy is hungry, give him food!
If he is thirsty, give him something to drink!
This will make him ashamed of himself, and God will reward you."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
I'm trying an experiment.
Don't worry-- it doesn't involve spraying Maybeline into Thumper's eyes or replacing Christian babies' blood with Ecto-Cooler. It's just a teensy little experiment.
A writing experiment.
Tonight, I am going to see if I can be a little bit more in tune with, or attuned to, my emotions. Now, I'm obviously off to not such a hot start because, if I was, I wouldn't have done that cutesy little phrasing (in tune with, or attuned to-- God, shut UP) because I would have been paying closer attention to what I'm feeling right now and less attention to being clever.
I'm not, that's why I have to pay attention to it.
What I'm feeling right now, frankly, is cold. Not emotionally, but physically. My feet are freezing and my nose is schnuffling, and my shoulders are cold. I've got a sweater on, and pretty thick socks but this room and this house are both drafty and I don't have the wherewithal or the ambition to go downstairs and turn the heater on. If I had one of those nifty apps on my smartphone I could turn the heater on using that, but those are for assholes.
I don't need HVAC cellphone apps to be an asshole. I've got it covered.
I suppose I'm feeling a little lonely tonight. My wife is at her band rehearsal and the babies are asleep, as is the dog. I could wake her up to play with her, but that feels a bit selfish. Plus, she'd probably just get riled up and bark and yelp and wake the babies up, and that would be mightily sad for all involved. I usually don't mind being alone, but I don't like the way it feels right now. I feel like I want to call up a friend, but why? What would I say?
"Hello in there?"
It's frustrating when you're not sure where to go with a piece. That nice moment there doesn't mean much if it's not picked up in a thoughtful way, or an energetic paragraph that goes somewhere else. It sort of just hangs there, doesn't it? Like some forgotten dream, that we've both seen...
I've been worried recently that I'm not terribly funny anymore. And I've been thinking about it a lot. In writing and in life. That I maybe don't have the knack for it, or the energy for it, or the interest in it. I looked at the homepage of John Elder Robison's wife's blog for some random reason today, and it made me crack up, just silly captions she put under pictures or the way she phrased things and I was thinking, "I used to do that, didn't I?"
But maybe I'll be funny when I'm supposed to be. Maybe, right now, when I'm not feeling funny, I'm not supposed to be being funny. Oftentimes, people are funny because they have to be, or they think they have to be, to cover up what they're really feeling-- to help someone else out, to prove something to themselves or the world. It's our way of making Ecto Cooler out of lemonade. It's a neat trick: Hey! I can do that! Look at me! I'm depressed as hell but I can still make you laugh.
It's a neat trick. Better than a goddamned porpoise bouncing a beach ball on his fucking nose at Sea World.
I saw a headline today, I guess it was on an advice column, and the title read, "Should I Take My Child to Sea World?" and I was thinking "No, you fucking stupid cunt," and I was thinking about how much I wanted to smack the asshole who wrote that, and then do the same thing to the asshole who printed it, and then do the same thing to everyone who clicked on it and read it. And then I thought, if my children want to go to Sea World, I am going to take them. And then I will want to slap myself. Because I am my own worst enemy. My mortal enemy. I'm going to be around myself forever.
No, don't take your lousy lopsided miserable kid to Sea World. Buy him a Siamese fighting fish instead. He'll love the fucking thing because it's beautiful, and Sea World isn't beautiful. I've never seen it;
but I know.
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