Please Talk About Something Remotely Life-Affirming...like Ziggy

I'm a big, fat cry baby ensconced in existential angst. For that reason, and since I have an actual diagnosis from a real doctor who says I'm bat-shit, I joined an online support group for equally disfunctional people. The group focuses on depression, which is by far the least interesting mental illness from which one can suffer. Schizophrenia and personality disorders are at least entertaining, and oddly compelling. When someone claims that the refrigerator is being used by the Department of Commerce to spy on the goings-on in their kitchen, you know you have the beginning of a story that is likely to heat up. Why is the DoC spying? Why the refridgerator? Is anyone in danger? Are any other appliances listening or giving orders?

The best part about being around a crazy son of a bitch is that the future is unpredictable. You may hear something insane, or you may get your nose bitten off like that guy in "Silence of the Lambs." Either way, your mind isn't likely to wander. It is the one virtue of madness.

Depression certainly qualifies as crazy. But the depressed person is very predictable, and has nothing of interest to relate. I say this as a bipolar fuck who knows depression, and has a personality disorder or two (or four). I'm not ranking on anyone here. Actually, that's one of the curses of depression. Your friends and family will run for the hills every time you emerge, disheveled and unshaven, from your flat. You radiate ennui and hopelessness and it's clear to everyone that you are a sad-sack who will:

1. Be unable to see the good in anything.
2. Think every negative thought, comment, and image is aimed at you.
3. Not stop talking about yourself and how much you suck.
4. Bore the life out of people, plants and animals.

Naturally, people will flee. And rightly so. Even when in a good mood, your average human (if he or she has any scruples) will have to suppress the urge to stick their face in the fan. A black-hole of a depressed fuck can only attract other people who are also walking insults to the gift of life. Therefore, a support group for depressed people is a place where unbearable people can join together and talk about what a suck-fest is life. Strangely, knowing that other people are going through this is actually a comfort. It really is. Conversations in groups like this, both on the Interent and off, go something like this:

Darren (that's me): I haven't slept for three days, and I can't stop thinking about trying to kill myself. I don't want to die, really, I just want to disappear.
Zeke: Oh, I totally know that feeling. I just want to disappear, too.
Barbara: Me, too. When I look my husband, I just want it all to end. All of it.
Darren: I'm such a loser.
Zeke: Me, too.
Barbara: Yeah.

That's how it goes for however long people can stand it. Group therapy in real-life is worse, of course, because you're sitting in a circle and staring at each other. The Interent takes the misery up a notch in a different way, because people are encouraged to explain their plight in fantastic detail. They can sit in front of their computers and stab out a litany of banal observations and mental health diagnoses. Every once in a while, someone throws something into the mix that is terrifying and/or strange, just to see if you're paying attention (it seems like). For example:

Jeff and I went to the Waffle-Hut on 5th and Amsterdam yesterday. I wasn't hungry, but I had some pancakes. Jeff didn't say much, but he seems to want to say something to me. I, too, want to communicate my pain and share it, but I can't. I just want to die. When we got home, he sat and watched football while I played, "Slingo" on the computer.

This could go on like this for pages, then suddenly:

After tea, I went into the bathroom and cut, "DIE CUNT DIE" into my right thigh.

What the fuck?! You see, depression rarely travels alone. Frequently, something else is in there. But even if that's interesting, it's not in a good way. It unbearably sad, and really awful, but what can be done? I'm searching, myself.

Every once in a while, the fog lifts and depression wanes. Life (cruelly) seems doable again. The very first thing a depressed person does when they have a reprieve from depression is to GET AWAY FROM DEPRESSED PEOPLE IN GROUP. Seeing other people like that is bound to get you down again. So the group is always cycling people in who are in the worst frame of mind. Online groups frequently get posts from people who are at rock bottom. They go on a tirade against themselves, and it's all death and emptiness and sadness. Then you don't hear from them again for 2 months.

I try to stick around my group when I'm doing well. Although this is sure to annoy some people. My advice is basically, "Don't kill yourself, take your pills, go to therapy, and wait around for it to get better." That plan usually works. If it doesn't, if you wait around long enough, you'll die anyway.

New and Exciting Colors and Shapes

This is how my 'blog will look from now on, until I decide to change it again. Isn't that just the balls? The balls! While I adding images and posting this and that, I might as well share this image. It's a "presidential knife" with Clinton's name and face on it. It's part of a complete set of knives, each with a different president on it.

I could make some deadpan comment about how bizarre this is, but instead I ask that you just take a moment to enjoy this picture. What they call on "The Daily Show" a "moment of zen." Enjoy!

Great Quote: "If you sense wacky happenings or kooky goings-on in your immediate vicinity that's a good sign that an orangutan attack is already underway."

Darren Contemplates Nap - News At 11:00

Man, I certainly wasn't in a chipper mood when I wrote that last entry. Since then, I've been a bit happier and more upbeat. Whilst traveling in Boston on Thursday, I took pleasure in seeing so many happy people out in the warm sun. Finally, women are shedding Gore-Tex coats and revealing their arms, shoulders, and legs. I even ran into a friend in Kenmore Square, near Fenway Park, from my days as a political activist. After talking about the good old days, I picked up some Chinese food and headed home.

Right now, as if anyone gives a flaming baboon, I'm enjoying some Dave Brubeck and contemplating an afternoon nap. I'm also happy for my beloved Donna's upcoming move to Oregon. For those who don't know, Donna is my former fiancee and current close friend. I no longer harbor any jealousy, which is a good thing. And because we are still such good friends, she comforts me by telling me that I was better in bed than her current lover. True or not, I'm going to enjoy the compliment and leave it at that.

At some point this week, I exchanged phone numbers with a cute girl that I had just met. Late last night, I was awakened by a telephone call; it was her! I ignored the strange timing of her call, which came in around 2am. She laughed loudly at all my jokes, and seemed to find me charming and intelligent for some reason. She wasn't even upset at all when I fell asleep as she was telling a long story. At 5:47am, we concluded the conversation.

That felt good, as I've been a bit lonely these days. I love my friends, and it raises my spirits when I hear from them. But it's so fantastic to flirt and build oneself up to a new person, isn't it? Sort of like being onstage. Loneliness is the price a person like myself pays for a degree of comfortable segregation. It's bound to happen with my kind of social anxiety and self-loathing.

I'm going to go have a slice of pizza.

Happy Mothers' Day

It's been raining for days here in Boston. My basement is flooded, which is not really bothersome, except to a few Christmas decorations which are stored down there. The great philosopher Travis Bickle once spoke about a desire for the rain to wash us all away. He saw what we are, and wished for the rain to pour down and take us away. Finally, the world would be clean of whatever it is we aspire to be as a species and try to be everyday. In the doing and finally done we are despicable. The rain seems an elegant solution to the problem of our embarrassing existence.

The red brick outside my window doesn't know that we're an embarrassment to it, but I do...we do. So by ending we end the action and the emotional reaction. The water is too dirty to see one's reflection. Doubly effective is the water if it drowns us all dead.

Skyrocket Your Puppets With Realism

The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889, but who cares? I was built in 1972, which is even less important. Either way, both the Eiffel Tower and I are here right now, baby! So you had better reconcile your view of reality with our presence. You need to re-con-cile! I hear children playing outside my window, and a neighbor is laughing. How compelled I feel to emerge from my flat, approach those fuckers, and force them to reconcile. Two times!

What's really been on my mind lately is, "How do I 'skyrocket my puppets with realism?'" This may read like nonsense, which it is. But it doesn't change the fact that I have been asking myself this question off and on for nearly a week. It all begins and ends, like everything else, with television.

About a week ago, I found myself completely unable to sleep. I tried taking 5mg of lorazepam, which is a lot for me, but my mind was still racing. My bedroom has a television, or more accurately, my television has a bedroom. So between 2am and 5am, I flicked from station to station. Who knows what I watched, but I'm sure that each movie and program I watched represented the very best that artists today have to offer. J'accuse!

Eventually, I started to fall asleep, and I made a terrible mistake; I forgot to shut the television off. The volume was low, but I could make out what people were yelling. If it's worth hearing, it's worth being yelled. Hasn't Fox taught you anything? So I drifted away into the gloaming of near-sleep. It was in that suggestive state that I loudly and repeatedly heard someone on the television scream, "Skyrocket your puppets with realism!"

It didn't wake me up, which is the source of the problem. The problem being my having to question what the hell that meant all week long. It kept popping up. I was reading an article about Karma in "The Smithsonian" magazine when suddenly I asked, "How do I 'skyrocket my puppets?'" It happened when I was grouting the tub, feeding my cat "Toulouse," and trying to put my socks on (long story). And, of course, I couldn't help but meditate over the question in bed every night.

This morning, however, I finally reached the end of my journey. What joy! Whilst sitting at my computer in the wee hours, I head someone on television yell something about skyrocketing something. I looked, and written across the screen were the words:

SKYROCKET YOUR PROFITS WITH REAL ESTATE

Absolute magic. I laughed. I cried. I became part of the "info-mercial." I like to think that I learned a lesson about leaving the television on when trying to sleep. But had I not done that, I never would have traveled on this voyage of self-discovery. Perhaps we are all here to answer the question, "How do I skyrocket my puppets with realism?"

Having thought about it for a week, I have my answer. It will go with me to the grave.