s t r e A M # 4 6

Be careful, more careful, with your declarations. Why? Because you’ll always find a way to rebel against them. For example, you’ll state, for the record, that you listen to one thing, and then, shortly thereafter, you’ll stop listening to it altogether. You’ll say you write one way, today, and then, tomorrow, you’ll write in a completely different way. In this way, by making such declarations, you’ll embarrass yourself. Ergo, unless you have something to gain from the act of sharing, don’t share—ANYTHING—until it is absolutely necessary. Don’t set yourself up for failure by making declarations. Or promises. Lead, instead, by example. (How trite. How hackneyed. Well, you ARE a bit hungry.) You always overdo it: the declaration thing. You give too much away. Nobody wants that. They want mystery. They want to be teased. Stop giving away so much. Or, stop giving so much away. This over-zealousness must cease. It embarrasses you; it scares everybody away. Nobody buys it. I ask you: When has it ever played to your favor? Never. You must, as the kids say, “chill.” You must keep your shit to yourself. Odds are, they’ll be more intrigued if they’re made to work to squeeze your shit out of you. This presumes your shit has some imagined, if not some legitimate, value. At minimum, your shit must serve as fertilizer. (Mental, if not physical.) Bottom line: It’ll always be PERCEIVED as more valuable if it costs them something. Put a price tag on it, wait a bit; inflate the price, wait a bit more, then have a “sale.” Likewise, it is always more meaningful to EARN a thing. Drop a thing worth a damn into any given lap, and, odds are, it will be treated like the week-old Christmas gift. “What are you talking about?” ME? What am I talking about? “Yes, dagnabbit, YOU.” Let’s beat around the bush. “Yes, let’s.” I want the dishes that don’t shatter when I toss them against the wall. “Tin dishes, then?” I want to bed a young woman who doesn’t enjoy peaches after 8 PM. I want to bed a young woman who enjoys pie after 9:43 PM. I want to shed my skin of the hair that prevents me from achieving better aerodynamics. I want to snorkel in your snatch. I want to straighten up this mess. I want my pie served with potato pancakes. I do not think you understand. I think you’re reading too much into this. I do not bleach my underwear. Actually, I DO. I do not know why I lied about that. There are certain things I feel confident about. I AM, for example, confident about the declarations I made yesterday. Not here. Elsewhere. THOSE declarations were true. And yet, given what I’ve written above, you should not believe me. But henceforth, you should. These are not declarations I will add caveats to. I do not use the word, “unconditional,” casually. Yes, I know, it IS madness but what can you do? They – my previously stated declarations made elsewhere – are as true as the grass is (OH, GOD) green; true as the sky is (GAG) blue. I’d like to make this clear, but this is not the forum for making ANYTHING clear. This is a forum for making things mud. Yes, “Clear as mud,” as the old chap liked to say. “Clear as mud?” he’d say. And then, on cue, I’d nod and press the appropriate button. Anyway, it was nice to “touch base,” as they say. It was nice to make my position on the matter and the relationship (if one still exists) clear. It was nice to “wrap things up,” if that’s what it was. Because you never know what people think. You can never be absolutely certain because you can’t get into their heads (anybody’s). You’ve got a bit of a hero complex, don’t you? And hero complexes are expensive in more ways than one. They take tolls. You want to be wanted when you’re not wanted. But you’re rarely, if ever, wanted. If you were wanted, you’d know it. But you are not (wanted). You’re not wanted by the folks you want to want you. If they really wanted you – for anything – you wouldn’t have to make such embarrassing admissions and declarations. Get over it. Move on. You’ll save more money. And, oh, hey, isn’t THAT comforting? (Nope.) Please note: You’ll always (and you’ll only) get the truth if you talk directly to me. Or, rather, you if talk to me directly. Or, perhaps, if you talk to me directly. Bottom (and beyond) reached. 

22 July 2008