Monday, June 27, 2011

I was never meant to be an adequate human being and other things.

Despite all odds, step 2 of the Big Move has been completed; I have a car. (The first step, by the way, was registering for classes. That stress lasted for a single day. The car stress was week-long and is not entirely over.) The whole ordeal was long, delay-ridden, embarrassing, and expensive. I ended up learning a lot about myself, though, either directly through the experience or in some dazed perspective mode induced by it. To wit:
  • I get depressed by things that wouldn't probably depress most people. I realized this when I began the stages of getting the car, and I realized that dealing with salespeople depresses the very fuck out of me. That most people are frustrated by the salespeople-interaction phase of car-buying seems obvious, but for me, it was emotionally bleak and filled me with mind-numbing, exhausting despair. Looking at my phone flashing the number of the dealer and suddenly I was half in love with easeful Death. My dealer (that sounds unseemly) was a decent enough guy. Waiting (in vain as it more or less turned out) for the bank to call, the dealer and I sat outside and shot the shit. Here, he adopted a more down-home persona, littering his speech the dread eff-word to show how much he related to me and telling stories about work intended to achieve the same: "I'm loving this Droid X. I can download porn like so much fuckin' faster than my friend; we had like a duel with it." "Oh." "And, like, there it fuckin' was, some chick gettin' the dick right there on the screen while his phone was still loadin' up." "Yeah." And also telling me about how the whole financial enterprise in the US was pretty fucked. He was basically a good guy, though. Anyway, after the encounter was when I realized how depressed the whole thing made me, and how that depression wasn't the result of spending so much money on a vehicle with 144,000 miles on it but rather it had something to do with the interaction and proximity to Salespeople (not necessarily that one salesperson who was really an all-right guy but Salespeople as a species) having to do with some really existential soul-scrambling that I can't fully intellectualize but that I certainly can feel like almost spiritually. Philosophically. It's so low-level and mysterious that I may not have even caught it if I hadn't been slightly caffeinated and in a certain state of mind anyway. This all lead me to realize that many mundane things depress me, mysteriously.
  • Such as: the aforementioned Salespeople; shopping alone in Vintage Stock-type stores (but not with other people); shopping with other people in bookstores (but not alone); driving north-south routes (but not east-west); attending concerts; attending, actually, anything spectator-type event; watching music videos. There's more, but this pretty well gives you a gist of what I mean. I wasn't able or inclined to meditate on why any of this should be, though I'm sure I will in the future. I just realized all this sort of at once and was interested in listing the weird things that depress me. 
  • In looking at the east-west thing, I also realized that I gravitate towards towns that run on an east-west axis. Like, arguably, Monett. Wheaton. Pierce City. These towns are just as staid and quotidian as any other town in SW Mo, but I always have fond memories of them that are somewhat vague and apropos of nothing. When I run, it's the north-south routes that give me the most trouble; I catch my second wind on the east-west roads. This is just really weird to me and like even more low-level and subliminal than the depression things, and I was sort of proud of myself for even catching this.And I have no idea why this should be.
So, none of this is the slightest bit useful or interesting to anyone but me, but it's certainly odd stuff that I don't know how to think about.

In good news, I'm writing a couple stories (including a new Gnawingly) that have a certain potential, if I could just find the time to finish them. I've read a few books that blew my mind (The Good and the Ghastly; The Sisters Brothers; Lighthead) and listened to an album that beat every one of my expectations (Bon Iver's new one) for a change. It's been escapismy and nice to dive into. Well then, tally-ho

Matthew