A NOTE: I am trying a new format of post where I publish an audio-version in tandem for people who prefer to listen, or read along with it. I recorded straight into Substack and the compression is weird. I welcome feedback about this. Hello everyone, I am making a secret special redemption post to tell the few of you here about how I stopped wanting to die, which I alluded to, before, desperately, by killing the what-how of my life instead: It is no secret I have gone too far, not even to me. Yes, Mana dismisses my play as naval-gazing, and Holly says they only like the parts of the FEAR BOOK where I talk about something besides my feelings, and my good friend sends me a meme which says ‘I think you guys are thinking about yourselves too much.’ Yes, of course I am, and all of my instagram stories are selfies, yes. But there are two truths which belie that archetypal character, the fraudulent vainiac. 1. In work, what could be a fallacy of belief, which tells me if I am to write on something, I ought to be able to take accountability for my position. I picked this up on tumblr and twitter as a 20-year-old, witnessing, in the democratization of discourse, the posture of authority in every post. It was a theme of posting. I still witness it on substack, the guru-type meditations on wellness, or how one ought to be, spoken in the confidence of the absolute, and it annoys me. Everyone is an expert, and I think that’s stupid; I want to hear from an actual expert. I developed an attitude of speak-for-yourself, which I have tried to embody (if somewhat erringly) in only writing about what I know for sure: my experience and my feelings. Hey, and if I can communicate some relatable aspect of the human experience that sits like a buoy on the water of being, like so many other writers have done for me (there’s that Baldwin quote) (“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive…”)then my work is justified, and besides I’m not compelling anyone to read anyway. I think, It is my honest account of my being, and who knows, maybe my account is enlightening. 2. In my social life, a dogmatic rejection of dignity in favor of possible growth, which is I guess best explained through narrative. I rejected the ego and got something like contented. That was probably like 2019 or 2020. Life was about love and I did not need to be anything. This was better. But then I lost a bunch of friends and support structures and yes even stability and money and health in a year-and-a-half’s time (2023), and I found myself in the desperate position of having no reason to work, besides to try and be seen by someone, anyone, to give my life meaning. So my writing remained expressive, like a journal. Then I took on a more fearless attitude again, to risk my person for romance, to risk my failing stability for art: Then I (thought I) found someone who I thought saw me, and maybe they didn’t, (they didn’t) but the fragility of that experience and how flippant the ending left me defeated (my friends saw it coming). Okay, it was all a farce, my being, my tenuous ego-identity, I gave up on life and as such, became its victim. I felt like I was dead, and I thought about dying. Why was I so delicate? How is my life that delicate? And then I had a little epiphany! I thought: If I’m going to die, and I surely will, why not wait six months or so and go completely insane to see if that feels better? So I decided to do that. I will wait to die and see if I can’t make life feel better in the meantime. The ‘meaning’ (ego expansion) I am buying into is giving me reason to work, in fact I depend on it, and in fact my whole life is dictated by it. I’m almost certain my friends will tolerate me just a little longer (I love you all so much its crazy, and I’m sorry) while I sort it out. And so with a full awareness (and little at stake!) I am being as loud and unapologetic as possible (I’m sorry). I’m not good at it yet, but I’m getting better. I think its fun. I’ve still got a little time and I feel alive and maybe even like I could want to stay alive. The idea is that if I can succeed at anything else (which demanded making new definitions for ‘success’ that included things like career advancement, social standing, art identity, all those ego-fodders I had rejected) then I can have more pillars which support my continued ‘being alive’. Okay so, that’s that. I know how this all looks, and, yes I am using “I” too often (but aren’t “I”?), and, They are right that my writing sucks (but it doesn’t) because it is too selfish (but it’s not). I am going to grow and improve because I love you and respect you and/or I do not care what you think. Here’s some real writing, which is painfully relevant, from the journal of January. It is the same but I was healthier about it. I hope to include it, at least spiritually, in the FEAR BOOK, which has been stripped of its soul lately, but I have hope in redemption: I needed to reclaim a sense of desire from the annals of ego youth, where I last left it. Sometimes we have to revisit things to finally see them through, like Al helping me process the ancient Tyler-fear. Similarly I think the dip back into self-obsession is a product of trying to triangulate where desire lives. Those two things- desire and ego, currently, are inextricably tied. I do not know much but I know to have the one, I must accept the other. It is a type of meditation. And if I am sorrowful in my meditation I will be sustained by a sort of third-self awareness, I hope. What else? I also want to apologize less, which means ego as well. What balance can be struck in the celebration of self against the stability of living for others? The principle, I assume; the still-living-according-to some sort of credo, something buoying and true and right which supersedes an 'identity,' but allows for full expression of life. Who could argue? I have independently decided what is right and life falls into slot accordingly, however hard it is tempered by the profundity of existing wholly with love and friendship. It is tempered by the celebration of the maximum of being. In this way, we can approach art from the side door, correctly, and let it be a further expression of desire and preference, without the fatal filter of -how it looks, what ways it affects my reputation- my reputation is beyond my needing to control. I should do things I like and do them easily and without consideration. Only love my friends and let excitement dictate my actions. Grow into that beauty and the principles will resolve themselves. and some more- A STILL LIFE What here? I am drawn to the light a candle flickers and the women paying look classical in its spread. It refracts around in the mixing glasses, upside down on the bar top and I too on the bar top, and my drink on the bar top and my paper. They move through the door, a breeze, legs prickle beneath wool trouser, and the stillness returns. There are flowers here. Some to my right and all along down to the other wall and a couple by the candles, who are made most vibrant- they feel almost like my cousins. There are voices behind me of intimate conversation between beautiful intimates, I cannot hear them. The phone is on the counter and it has a plug, and the wire from that plug swirls beneath fragile wrists and down and up and into two little headphones. From the headphones ring the amorously destitute whale songs of contemporary song-writer and three inches from there a tear collects in a deep blue eye. And then now in the vacuum of being, the total temporary rejection of FEAR BOOK I started a new thing, which has become journal of stagnant August- It is aptly named POSTFERE and I will share these passages of self-restoration. After all, when I started this substack post, it was weeks ago, and I held off. Looking back I see several contradictions, no doubt a product of a messy scramble toward sense, but largely the way I have talked about the ego then vs. now; where in January I was describing accessing desire by putting some sort of self at stake, (and I did) that it was a risk to feel longing, to move from your position, and we had to accept the possible (most certain) consequential pain (and boy howdy); but in beginning this post I was arguing for ACTUAL EGO, which is less tolerable and not stable (but still). Obviously I knew the exchange, and made it out of desperation towards wanting to remain alive, but even that was so momentary.- And then this week real life and some bad news, and with that all things aligned and the ego put a little bit back to bed. I have found salvation in the comfort of my friends, that there is nothing greater. My mom says she would slap my ex which is hilarious to me now, a couple of weeks ago I said to her no, no, mother, she’s wonderful, it just hurt me, but my mom has never been violent and it is its own expression of love, no? To be moved to action by her son’s suffering? She’s never needed to be. She’s never said anything of the sort! Now look at the mother bear! Beware! Now I laugh and I allow it, get her momma! And my friends and all loves know I should have been treated better too. It’s small things but it’s a principle I won’t let go. I love them, I love how they care for me too, and I allow them now. In the POSTFERE passages below (and these are not things written to be published, so this is vulnerable) I begin a dialogue with self in the effort of centering my beliefs and hopes against the wholly un-karmic world. You can do whatever you want but you shouldn’t always. You should sometimes think of others more than yourself. I will stake my book’s iden
