Fincher again?
I finally returned the voicemail of a friend of mine from college. He called a few weeks ago to wish me a Happy Easter, and in true Christian fashion, I completely ignored him for the better part of a month.
He also called to invite me to his annual Memorial Day retreat to Ocean City, MD. This would be my third time going, and I always have a good time when I do, so after I was done cowering in a corner not returning his phone call so as not to have to make small talk about the small life I lead, I did call him back. I happen to have been in a wonderful mood at the moment, since I found myself on a rock in Central Park, just north of the big rink, the rock to which I myself retreating for two consecutive weeks last April, perched prostrate like an iguana, rolled on its back to let the sun caress its cool, slithery belly.
When I got back to my apartment on the Dark Side of the Moon, I caught the redeye of l’homme in the miroir and remarked first that I was as pink as a healthy gum. The second unignorable fact was that my belly, so greatly, gratefully warmed by the sun forty-five minutes prior, has ballooned as only a belly is capable. A heart can expand metaphorically, but – and I’m no doctor, that’s for fucking sure – I think if a real heart grew too large, it would be a bad thing. A mind can expand, but I think that’s mostly illusion – to me, what’s increasing is not the size of the mind but rather the complexity and layering of the connections within it. Sure, new things are learned all the time, but I consider those more like drips in a bucket – the bucket is not what’s expanding, it’s the watery contents. The mind is the bucket – no, the brain is the bucket — fuck it. Water, water, everywhere, do mind and brain both think?
I was looking at my spare tire, tired from the sun and exhausting from hauling this spare tire around for the entire winter. In fact – the spare tire first got some love last Ocean City Memorial Day trip, when I finished a case of beers over one 18-hour period – nice and slow. But even so, slow, so slowly, that’s like 2400 calories PLUS whatever food I ate (a lot) and I’m not surprised this is what happens:
Gluttony. Gluttony is the deadly sin I’ve committed.
Gluttony, the first deadly sin illustrated by the first deadly murder of David Fincher’s movie Se7en.
Which other sins are up on the big board?
Gluttony: the ‘tire – I’ve put on fifty pounds since last July 31. Of course, last July 31st was the end of a time when I was temping for a living and not eating much of anything, let alone anything healthy, let alone not eating anything fattening. The rest of the poundage is from the winter, when I picked up a little drinking problem to pass the time. Luckily, I was pussy enough that it didn’t really take full-time.
Greed: the fact that I’m a consumer whore! — not because I buy shit all the time, but because I consume essentially without producing. I’m a little backed up creatively, and people should often accuse me of being full of shit. I share nothing with others but what I want them to see, and when occasion does arise that people know something I don’t know they know, I freak out and shrivel back into my walnut.
Sloth: I used to be great. Then I turned into Al Bundy. Now I regale my women marketed-product office with stories of my high school athletic glory. Example: I once pitched against a now-Cubs minor leaguer (a pitcher, to be fair) but he went 0-for-3. He can make the majors, but he’ll still never have gotten a hit off me. It’s these small victories that add up.
Lust: The internet is for porn!
Pride: I won’t have my reputation tarnished for any kind of shame by which I assume I’m victimized. So, I stop talking to people who are more successful than I am in any way, making exceptions for those who genuinely want me around.
Envy: It’s hard to envy everyone I see – which is everyone, because I’m exceedingly tall and would swap bods with anyone for a whole day just so someone else in the civilized world could understand. Also, I’m fairly certain most homeless people pull in more weekly than I do.
Wrath: I’m extremely hard on myself. No one’s harder on me, and while I can be at best indifferent or at worst, harsh to others, my wrath – which might be too strong a word – stays within. Right now I’m gonna pull back the veil on my persona: while most of this blog has been simultaneously brutally, breathtakingly honest and yet soothingly facetious, I’m not even going to hint at implying that anything criminal will come from my personal frustrations. I’m a loner, but I’m not a gun-toting psycho quiet enough, pathetic enough, unexpressive enough, to hold it all in until a cowardly, inhumane, insensitive, horrible, ridiculous, unthinkable explosion. Maybe we can make sense of nonsense, find some truth in the absurd. Maybe it’s what I was once told in a dream. That “You can’t take everything so personally.” So, you stupid fuck – from Dave Grohl’s dream mouth, to my ears, to your dead fucking soul, burning on earth and now burning forever – as well you know that there is hatred in the world, consider the possibility that before your heinous acts, no one hated you more than you hated yourself.
