Facebook writing

One of the things I enjoy about Facebook is that it still allows a platform for written pieces a little longer than short, but not too long. The boundaries of the format remind me to be concise, but the instant audience factor also adds energy to the writing. It's too bad Facebook is trying to move to "stories" more, an incredibly non-interactive and more performative format that is largely nonverbal. 

Anyway, I wanted to archive a few things here, since finding them again on FB is nearly impossible. This first thing I wrote in the shadowland between Xmas and New Year's, a few days ago:

"I had a humbling and funny experience last night. I went to Blaze Pizza and just as I was getting out of my car I saw a family with couple, four children and mother in law headed into the place. Oh man you do not want to know the black and bitter thoughts on my mind. Then they had the audacity to let all the little children order their own ingredients, good lord. I finally got to the front of the line and got the process of building my own pizza started. I was still fuming like Scrooge about that damn cute happy holiday family and their happy holiday family pizza-blocking terrible timing, and their cute as a button little smart blond children, and the burly happy pizza making guy who told the happy family he had a great Christmas because he got to hold his newborn daughter for the first time, awwwwww, ::growl:: and how much of a pain in the ass they were, everything was, the whole world just a giant pain in the posterior at all times and always without exception trying to make life difficult for me.

And as I'm going down the line selecting ingredients, the happy dad who I hated on sight approached me and handed me a card. "This expires tomorrow and I had eight but we only needed seven." It was a gift card for a free pizza. Oh yeah? Trying to belittle me with your goddamned charity? I screamed at the top of my lungs. Just kidding. I felt like an ass. "Wow, thanks, I really appreciate it. Cute kids you got there." "Thanks, ha, they are a handful let me tell you."

You know it's wild, life is difficult enough on its own. It's always a wake up call to realize how much more difficult I can make it, just being me."

This next one came out of a bitter and curmudgeonly place for me, before Christmas:

"Words of wisdom from a fool who persists in his folly:
1. Never take advice on happiness from a miserable person
2. Never take relationship advice from someone whose relationship wreckage is epic and who is bitter and cynical and who thinks their wisdom comes from a failure of courage
3. Never take a moral scolding from any motherfucker ever
4. Never privilege someone's words over their behavior
5. Never doubt when a person warns you not to get involved with them
6. Never settle for someone else's bad decisions and wrong-headed beliefs-- those belong to them, not you-- let them suffer for them, not you
7. Never confuse stubbornness, performance of a look good and fundamental lies for integrity or noble sacrifice
8. Never believe that pursuing your happiness (within non pathological bounds of course) will harm those you love-- they'll come along for the ride and be better for it-- in fact you being a martyr is harming them more
9. Never show your art or yourself to idiots who have no clue what you are doing, yet will tell you their opinion of it. A shit audience is worse than no audience at all
10. Never believe what people said to you about you or about life when you were between the ages of 4 and 21 or so. Never believe what people say about you period.
11. Never forget to demand that people show the fuck up
12. Never forget that this too shall pass, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it, and you'll be dead a fuck of a lot sooner than you believe
13. Never forget that the true measure of happiness is being able to be alone at perfect peace and ease, not regretting the past nor wishing to shut the door on it, but also not fucking yourself up with 'what-if' thinking about the future
14. Never forget that sanity unfolds strongest in a context of not taking things personally-- not taking the bad personally, but also not the good. None of it is personal. The universe doesn't give a flying fuck about you, so you might as well enjoy yourself.
15. Never take advice from a fool."

And this next one from several years ago. I was startled to see it reposted yesterday by a woman who I don't know very well, and I was reading it and kind of scoffing, until I got to the end and saw that she attributed it to me. Then I recalled that I was the author. A very weird moment. I am nowhere near this level of sanguinity and confidence these days, so it was a really weird experience re-reading this and recalling the context from which it came. 

“You cannot become a better person. Give it up. Fire Mr. or Mrs. Fix It. A radical notion in this twisted culture built on scarcity, insecurity, lack, in the midst of the greatest abundance the world has ever known. The secret is that there's no way to fix it, because nothing is broken, there's nothing to fix. There is nothing wrong with you. All you can do is get up every day and do the next right thing and be open minded, willing and honest, one day at a time. Develop a sense of perspective and your true place in the world and look for openings where you can be useful. Then you *might* get some side benefits where people actually want you around, trust you and the world provides something like firm footing, community, a support network, a family of choice, the experience of love and belonging and purpose we're all longing for. Might, mind you, as there's no guarantees. But you will definitely find ways to be useful and to have a shred of purpose, even if only in flickers. And *this* is the source of happiness: being of service in a world that desperately needs your gifts, one way or another. Your happiness will be derived from sources you yourself would never have even imagined. You will begin to experience and be truly present for a life you could not have worked hard for, managed, planned, manipulated or forced into existence in a thousand years."

The strange dynamic on Facebook that I am highly sensitive to these days is twofold: people being deliberately mean, choosing a moment of my own revealed vulnerability to deliver a sharp jab (especially other men, who more and more infuriate me by seeming to be emotional failures and enduring narcissists); or, people just not getting it, projecting so fiercely that their responses are kind of obliquely hilarious and clueless. But that's the price of having a sometimes shit audience. It becomes more apparent how the loml and I GET each other, often in instant flashing ways, the more separate we become. Is there any finer feeling in the interactive human world than this telepathic understanding? 

Also, Monteverdi was born on this date in 1573. 

A torch song from 400 years ago:

Phoebus had not yet brought
The day to the world,
When a maiden so angry
Came out of her house.
On her pale face
Her pain could be read,
And every so often
A heavy sigh came from her
heart.
Stepping on flowers,
She wandered from here to there,
Bewailing her lost love
With these words.

Love
(She said)
Love
(gazing at the sky,
Standing still)
Love
Where is the troth
that the traitor vowed?
(Unhappy one)
Make him return to my
Love, as he once was,
Or else kill me, so I
Can no longer torment myself.
(The poor girl, ah no more, no,
can she suffer so much cold.)I no longer want him to breathe,
unless far from me
so that he can no longer say the
things that torture me
(Ah, the poor girl, ah no more, no,
no)Because I destroy myself for him,
so full of pride as he is;
but if I flee from him,
again he entreats me.
(The poor girl, ah no more, no, can
she suffer so much ice)A more serene eyebrow
has she than mine,
but love has not planted in his
breast so fair a faith.
(The poor girl, ah no more, no, can
she suffer so much ice)
Not ever such sweet kisses
will he have from that mouth,
not softer, a quiet,
quiet, he knows it only too well.
(The poor girl)

Thus with indignant complaints,
the voice rose up to the sky; thus,
in loving hearts, love mingles
flame and ice.