“If I take the bus home, not a cab, there are two possibilities” the man said to himself. “That the bus is full or empty; if it’s empty, no problem, but if it’s full, again, there are two possibilities… whether I get a seat or not. If not, okay; but if I do find where to seat, there were, again, two probabilities: that I sat next to either a man or a woman. If a man, no big deal; but if it’s a girl, then there are two probabilities: whether I find her attractive or not. If I don’t, no worries. But if I do, then there are yet two probabilities: that I talk to her or not. If I don’t, well that’s that. But if I do, then it becomes obvious that we are left with two other probabilities: either it goes somewhere or not. If it does go somewhere, if we meet again, then in the long run there are only two paths to go down: one leads nowhere and the other leads somewhere. If it gets nowhere fast, no matter; but if it does get elsewhere, anywhere, well of course you can only contemplate another two outcomes: do we get serious and take the fateful decision to tie the knot. And if so, will we have kids or not? Will we get divorced, or live happily forever thereafter...
You know what? I think I’m gonna take a cab!
(A WORK OF FICTION)
Let us not pass another moment by, and seize the moment now.
Sure, one thing is what we tell ourselves and another very differently what we do. It’s not a vice of ours to be prudent. And yes, doing good has addictive properties. Do something long enough and you’ll end up creating a craving for it. We should spend more time doing what we find ourselves most passionate about. Creating that elated feeling only requires that our creative juices flow, and so whether you’re chasing after a runner’s high or overeating, it may come down to a critical conclusion: we are suckers for love, as much as we’re suckers for hate. The problem may be that we need to cancel out the seeking thrills. It is the absence that has a lot to teach us. What happens when we can’t provide ourselves with the thing that we most desire? We throw a fit, the adult version of a tantrum. It goes to show that we need to do without in order to appreciate just how much we have. It’s this endless search for the next big thing that makes us so small. The less you need of things and the less involved you are with others, the better off you’ll be. Not that you shouldn’t have a handful of good people, it’s that you should perhaps keep the rest at arm’s length. The less we have, sometimes makes up for our humanity; in poverty, there’s commiserating. You create a bond with the one who suffers with you the likes no one who has enjoyed with you never will. You don’t need to be poor to know that having your way gets tiring. We forget, but there’s no greater contentment in life than being of service to those we love. And sometimes, doing the opposite of what is expected, not as a strategic stance but as a choice of sanity. It is okay to go mad and spend more than one should or eat and drink more than our share. Let us be selfish, yet do so with temperance and aplomb. Expect no more than is given; nothing good ever comes out of laziness.
Of course, there are those on the very opposite side of this equation: the workaholics, always chasing after the elusive jewel of success. Prestige comes in the form of a validated certificate of achievement and then the nightmare unfolds. It’s good having ambitions, but greed it’s more of an addiction; the more you acquire, the more you now have to tend to. People leading outer lives put their focus and best efforts on the tasks required to get the job done, but the job’s never done and it demands more of you, the more of you you give. Inner lives, on the other hand, put the focus on the effortlessness and ease of a quiet life. It’s far less bombastic and perhaps just as much more satisfying. Of course, it depends on the individual to choose what it is willing to sacrifice for. Pain’s not optional; suffering is.
To the kind of suffering that makes us grow, the steamed psychiatrist Jon Yung, a phenomenon he deemed “Legitimate Pain”.
What of things not found in books and if we are to write for a handful of people, or millions, it’s best to write as if that potential future reader did not matter. For no one can assure the writer that there is going to be a reader. And if there is, who says that his message will be received in the manner in which it's been postulated? One ought to focus on the task at hand. The good writer does not think of its potential audience. Words, you read; minds you won't.
It's wiser not to listen in to the voices dwelling in the mindscapes of our psyche. Thoughts evolved to assail us with a constant bombardment of anxiety, states of consciousness eager to hijack the nervous system, dropping neurotic bombs, causing ill-advised stress.
Sure, we can lower the volume in which we play out-loud the tunes our darkest fears want to hear and even when we laugh and joke, we're ridden with anxiety. Notice how some would fluctuate between states of mania and depression: they'd laugh just as easily as they'd get frustrated; they'd love and it'd just the same turn to hate. They'd blame others, circumstances, the environment, genes, personal history, and in many ways it is about all that and so much more.
“One ought to look inside,
but Be on the lookout!”
One may be inclined to rely on its instincts but in extremely volatile circumstances, taking time to assess the situation takes with a cool head. It is imperative.
From reaction to action takes a mere instance and in doing so, in choosing to pause and carefully choosing the course of action may require you to speak. Choose your words just the same. Let them be laconic, like a Spartan If.
More importantly, cultivate quietude, and introspection. Thoughts tend to agitate the mind and sway it back forthwith. Instead squeeze those cushy earplugs into the ears and hop on a pair of Bluetooth noise cancelling headsets, dim the lights and sit or lie comfortably anywhere. It could be the floor, on top of a table, in a chair, the bathtub or bed. Close your eyes and focus on your breath.
Unlike athletes, or orators, writers don’t have an audience. Writing is one lonesome road to self-discovery, and unlike a house that requires building and planning, there’s no one there to cheer you on as players on the field and no one will come give a hand pushing the proverbial bricks to lay the foundation. Infrastructure, it takes a whole team; a fighter needs other fighters as part of their training regimen; a writer needs to be, I think, a good reader above all. If anything, writing is the process by which we show off just how much we’ve read.
Of course, if she says it’s not what you think, then it sure means that that is exactly what is. I was in my early twenties when we met, a lot more immature than now. I thought, women deserve the same rights as men. It’s not that I wanted an open relationship, but I did adhere by the predominant school of thought in respect to relationships, and it was a rather unromantic notion, one that promoted freedom of choice. All that was needed was to open up to excitingly potential scenarios or at the very least making a verbal allusion of it during intercourse. We'd play with the mere notion of an intimate encounter with, say, another couple and consummate matters verbally, to begin with, just a dirty word whispered. It's the aggravated tenor of a sound that summons inner demons out. It doesn't have to be the man who makes the first move. Women’s venture in, way of eye contact or proximity, it is up to them more often than not to signal their availability to the desired male. And generally the audacious and most daring will answer the call, give elusive chase and hunt big game. Cold-blooded animals reproduce at larger number, consume less calories and therefore require less feeding frenzies. Think of a snake: How it sheds its skin (transcendence), keeps its mouth shut and it's tongue ready (like a Spartan, be lanonic, a minimalist in what you must show, but just like a Spartan be in a state of warlike-mindedness ready to calmly call others on their shit like a Spartan If), lie in wait (patience, both in form and character -these two aren't all too independent or that alienated from each other). Like a large snake, feed on big prey and lay dormant most of the time, lying in wait patiently for the right victim to strike.
We played around with the idea of an open relationship, the pros and cons of not being exclusive, valuing loyalty over faithfulness and knowing that the major obstacle to a life of incredible ecstacy and great satisfaction is the ego, mainly in the form of jealousy. It couldn't possibly be worse than traditional marriage, the territorial-pissing lame-ass contest the vast majority of straight and not-so-straight couples subjected themselves for. Assured mutual misery, that is what conjugal lives gradually devolve into. You may, nonetheless, shift the direction in which you go and thus, unequivocally, become something other… perhaps a bolder, equissential lover and lovers come in all shapes and forms which we can then compute into smaller bits of information: zeroes and ones. Parents, siblings, partners. Here's how is done:
Instead of loving partnerships, one adopt a childhood figure that still haunts us. Those among us who enjoy strong mental health
love enterprises along the conjugal segment of society are reportedly unsatisfactory. Its culprits, external censorship and inner egotism. Some kids had imaginary friends; grownups, imaginary enemies.
Homosapiens are midway between the ideal fuckfest of some species of our closely-related evolutionary cousins, the chimps and, on the opposite side of the spectrum, a large gang of bad big ape gorilla tactics deployed by men, in order to subjugate females and emasculate males into the archetype role model. Long-term wives may find a source of joy nagging their spouses into an early grave. You gotta have mommy issues if you, as a man, set out to find your missing half-ass.
It is said that if you want to get to the moon, you gotta aim at the stars. Why not, then, work instead on becoming the one. You know, the one that lies deep beneath the skin, manifested in the midday light of August as a breath of fresh air slowly inhaled, held in deep to the count of ten, and exhale at an even slower pace and for longer than ten seconds. Repeat for as long as you’re aware of this moment. As you breathe, for as long as you do so.
Breathing is the most important factor in our survival, and right about now everyone's taking it for granted.
Most of us take shallow, short rapid breaths and aren't well aware of the deep connection that therein lies. Breathing is of the utmost importance but since it occurs involuntarily we fail to place its value on a pedestal; instead, we carry around the most pernicious thoughts. If you were to place things in matters of importance, breathing would probably outrank any other passion that the mind might find itself fixated on. It's critical because the mind usually sings in an ethereal siren voice that echoes within the uterine walls with a caveman roar, making mad sense in its bombastic imagery and calling out within us some primal appeal to our most deprived entity. We must tread cautiously when walking on thin ice. Save the impulse and drive to see things thoroughly thru; envision instead what will be, focus on the transformative sheet on which you lay out the infrastructure of what's to become of.
Everywhere your eyes may wander, thereby lies irrefutable proof of materialized ambitions. The very fabric of the clothes you wear; impeccable in appearance, flawless execution, genuinely curious, standoffish and upright with a knack for the ancient. Spirituality with balls.
As 21st century men, particularly those nowadays in their mid-forties, as of this summer of 2018, we may find ourselves alienated from the emerging technocratic state of emergency in which we find ourselves. What with the advent of A.I., who knows where we stand in a not so distant future? Most human advancements were met with ridicule and skepticism. A. I. might spell doom, machines bent on annihilation of entire human populations, designed for that very purpose; all is needed are the collaboration of highly intelligent individuals, vast resources, and an ancient grudge, roughly abound everywhere. And,seemingly out of nowhere, agents of chaos are at work. We have collective advantages. Statistically, good deeds outnumber bad ones at a rate of ten to one.
The good, I think, outweigh the bad, and generally the scientific method has a progressive track record. It won't be the scientific community who'll decide how to better intellectually appropriate and mobilize such technology. All you need is one bad apple to spoil the bunch. In fact, microscopic proverbial apples assail us on all fronts, these bacterial/viral entities wage a never ending war on us that ultimately leads to our demise. A. I. very well be our salvation in solving just that minor issue that is our mortality. Nanorobotic may one day, in a not-so-distant tomorrow, deliver the right amount of medicine at exactly the right time, and target disease before it even manifests. We'll still die if an accident were to occur, but health wise, so long as you stay accident free, you'll be virtually eternal. Amortal.
If we loved our lovers with the kind of love relegated to our own, then we’d know that nothing they choose to do is for their own sake, enriching their lives and whoever comes between having your cake and eating it is going to sabotage what could potentially be a mind-boggling, once-in-a-lifetime, out-of-this-world experience. The more freedom I allotted Sherly, the more choices I’d be making for myself. You can either sit there fearing in anticipation her next move, or you can let her do as she pleases and be your own man. She’ll love you for it, because no one else will give her that much freedom. But maybe freedom isn’t really what she wanted.
I had talked to her about the separation of sex and love, not only could one exist without the other but life became a lot easier when we accepted that, what we all invariably at some point want is, variety in sex. Am I proposing that people are better off straying? No, but the idea that we can be satisfied by one person in our life is only true in the beginning stages of a passionate love affair. That’s why you should probably stay out the love highway, and make your underpass to more meaningful means of bonding like befriending someone. Lovers come and go; friends last longer.
The reason people stay married is not based on primal feelings of mutual attraction, though no one denies their existence. We may go through iterated in a five-minute walk outside, and realize that there really was no place out-there independent from the subconscious path leading
Statistically, marriage works one out of two, people nowadays (and for quite some time now) find that they’re better off without a nagging voice, or a jealous partner, and not take the romantic agenda to heart; or, maybe, just maybe, they don’t feel like sticking to a really expensive meal when there are so many
Not just a variety of positions and situations, perhaps ones involving other people. I awaited for her response, but it failed to register in me that she was very girly and submissive in love, that her wits were out the window the minute I entered through the door. It’s useless trying to reason with women, but back then I gave much more credit to my persuasive oratory skills. It was somewhat naive of me not only to believe such fallacy, but to actually promote it as a healthy lifestyle among my peers. Wait until it caught Marco’s ears, and out one night with Sherly, we saw him. It was at a bar normally frequented by college students like us, so seeing him there might have seemed more than a coincidence. Still, it was odd but Marco immediately took the initiative, ordering a round of Tequila shots and bringing them over to our table. After that, he ordered a pitcher of beer for us boys, as he referred to us, and had her ordered an Apple Martini. I noticed my girl was awkwardly receptive when in fact I knew it was her favorite cocktail drink. How did he know, I didn’t ask. Seeing Marco be so friendly really caught me off guard.
Love is accidental. We’re wired by a primal instinct to attract one another, to want more than one thing at a time even though the choice will be narrowed to one, it’s the illusion of having a say over the choices made. Throughout the course of our lives, we’re often confronted with the predicament that our decisions owe little to chance, and more to how we’re innerly structured. Leaving things to chance would’ve been a terrible idea, so nature put in place denial mechanisms that made preordained order appear randomized. It’d be catastrophic for the mind to suddenly realize its own futility in that nothing experienced in our consciousness really is to take place elsewhere, that we all live in our heads and that we will never ever get out so long as we are alive.
It’s good to feel wanted, but the attraction stage is far more potent and enticing than the nested feeling of intimacy which does not enter the picture until much later. By then, lust has somewhat dwindled. And if someone doesn’t want you enough to be exclusive in the initial stages of the relationship, later on it becomes harder to form a more meaningful and lasting bond. It oftentimes happens that one of two becomes obsessed with the other and are willing to forgive them anything, including cheating. The one who loves the most, often suffers the consequences for it. Loving takes guts and if you’re inclined towards forgiveness, instead of vengeful fantasies and harvesting resentment, then you are quite apt and far more resilient than most. Beauty is volatile, and it doesn’t have a direction in mind; as a man, you ought to be the centered one, bringing her body mass to your orbit. And it’s simple, really. To be a man is to be in control at all times. That simple. Or so I thought.
Your perspective might be shattered to pieces, crushed by its own weight, when you witness one day (or night) your loved one with another. It’s sobering, seeing the girl of your dreams ravished by another, a nameless man who only wants to get his way with her and not having to commit to her in any shape or form, a man who fucked her like the slut she turns into when a manly stranger pops out of the bunch and subdues her. No matter if she warns him of having a boyfriend, in fact it is the decisive factor: if a stranger is easily pushed away by her mentioning a boyfriend, then that stranger isn’t manly enough. A man fights off resistance with a confident smile on his face and marches on against all odds towards the land no one’s promised him. Men know what they want when they see it and it doesn’t take them long to go for it. Of course, you’ve got to build rapport and excite her with your superb aplomb and centeredness. She’ll be swayed by your gravitational pull. Not a lot of men know this, in fact the vast majority of them suck at it. But there’s always one out of ten who’d cross the threshold of ambivalence and open her up mercilessly, making her laugh or getting her pissed, ignoring her when crazy, giving her space so that she can suffocate.
I knew that guy she was with because I was one of them. I was quite good at it. Except, no matter how good you are at doing something, there’s always someone better at it. Finding that the way I did is what most hurts. Again, it is the ego, and I was sure it dealt me a blow that will forever have a humbling effect on me. I no longer felt invincible. What’s more, now I wanted her for me, and what better way to own a woman and make her miserable than marrying her?
FIRST ACT
Love’s the excuse. I gave her up the moment I saw her for the first time, I knew if I wanted to claim my own path it was imperative that I demolish any emotional fallacy, stemming from within, anchoring me to the whimsical trajectory of passion. Instead, focus on what’s at hand, always keep physically active, well-read, meditative, diligent, stress-free, optimal sleep habits. It is what I call the internal lives, as opposed to external ones which tend to focus on material acquisition of wealth, social status, material possessions. For someone to forgoes the use of smartphones, I am obsessed by the newest releases and upcoming cell phones. It’s amazing how incredibly affordable chinese brands of relatively good standing have become. These companies appear out of nowhere with the philosophy of giving the most specs for the least of prices.
It was pouring out there the minute Cecil stepped out to smoke and Ja surprised her coming off her blindspot, as if emerging from the shadows. The rain engulfed them, it was hard to see the way those serial raindrops hit us, liquid bullets blurring the landscape. Just minutes earlier, her lenient hubby, a stout and large man in his late forties, not in terrible shape but definitely way out of Ja’s league. A personal trainer in his spare time and a mediocre bandmate in a local band, he worked as a barman and had only messed with women who weren’t looking for more than just a fling, the one-night bystander who casually slips in a stranger’s bed. They had all been fucking, the swinger lifestyle, and both his young trophy wife and Ja’s casual girlfriend were fighting over Ja’s cock, and Ja would look vividly at him who up until half an hour or so before had been a complete and utter stranger. Who was this Ja? And what kind of name is that, anyway? Names give classified passage into someone else, and Ja, he thought, was short for Javier.
SECOND ACT
Not all strangers are created equal. Our parents, especially our mothers, were right in warning us about those we do not know, the so-called “stranger”. We’re all strangers to one another, even to ourselves; in essence, we never get to know anyone, no matter how familiar and close the bond is. Clandestine lovers tend to know about each other because these types of relationships have flourished in secrecy and there’s simply nothing that one cannot say to the other under those circumstances. If we were to truly share with one another, there wouldn’t be any need to cover up the footsteps leading up to it. Why we lie is, well, because we need to keep up with what’s expected out of us regardless of how absurd at times it may seem. Who was it that thought up the idea that trapping two animals to mate for ever in an urban box for two with no room to breathe and if things were to be shaken up, the spark might be enough to get us through the night.
Look, in some cases, time and old age are just illusions; in others, it’s real: the magic is gone. What’s true, though, is that all things in time will come to pass. Just like you want a smartphone every year, an upgrade… why should you settle for the same technology used two years ago?
Why not apply a similar logic to personal relationships? If anything, our lives are far more precious -at least, for now and until the advent of G.A.I. (General Artificial Intelligence) -than those devices. In time, if humanity is to enter yet a whole nother level of evolution, there will be no foreseeable difference between the fragile spec of life that we currently embody and the infinite, limitless enhanced humanity, rid of anxiety, stress; and ripe with realized potential and endless adventures.
Arguably, of course, as they’d always be people who’d object to it. We want our lover to have eyes only for us, but in this time and age, that model is outdated. And so it’s dating, by the way. Today, we are a generation used to getting our way, and what better way to face life than with a partner that it is not overwhelming imposing. Most people claim to a faithful mate, and it makes evolutionary sense to be picky and jealous. If our ancestors hadn’t been jealous, we wouldn’t have made it thus far. Aggression, too, played a more important role in the past. There’s a mild form of aggression in wanting someone only for yourself. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with people having a sedentary disposition and a romantic temperament. For as long as the affair lasts, love seems unbounded and eternal; it’s easy to see why such strong feelings can suddenly flip and show the uglier side of the coin. If a lover wants to be loved, shouldn’t he or she deserved to be so, and if in loving someone freely one or both partners understand that each has got to have a life of their own. Let’s not turn our lovers into our parents; give each other space and cherish every moment together. Look forward to more connections, memories to be made. But know that you cannot hold on to love just as you cannot hold on to air or water. Why take flowers to a garden? Why convince a girl to go out on a date when there are hundreds already out any given day? Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to be selective and exclusive, but chances are you’ve had more than one lover which instantly disqualifies you from being monogamous. Monogamous animals pair with one single partner for life. Why make a woman miserable when I can make so many happy?
But how, if your actions are like those of a child who has to observe the austere discipline of a neurotic mother or an indifferent father? Some people go from a parental dependency to a conyugal one. This only lead to sexually frustrated masses.
Quite frankly it is not a recommended way of life, unless you decide that it is satisfaction, not happiness, your aim. We look towards satisfying sustainable needs, saving and investing a little and getting rid of what’s not absolutely essential (with some reservations). We favor putting the focus on our breath and not ruminating around thoughts. No one can completely escape their mind, so it is best to make peace with it. It is going to be a bumpy ride otherwise.
We fail to see that we’re not our minds. Our minds aren’t an entity, they fluctuate and shift without our knowing. The illusion is that we feel as if nothing’s changed, we’re all more or less the same. But it isn’t possible, see? You’re not your mind, just the same as you’re not yourself. The mind, or “self”, you see yourself in is an illusion. And something being an illusion doesn’t make it any less real. That’s how we go from illusion to delusion: delusion is being within the illusion. Just because something looks legit, it doesn’t make it so. What’s more, from what we do know (epistemology, for instance, is a field of knowledge that deals with the legitimacy of knowledge. It aims to ponder the question: How do we know that we know what we know?
So, in knowing others, we can only know them in regards to ourselves. We see them through our own narrow-minded lenses, visual projections tend to show a distorted image of ourselves, we believe the auditory feedback, fail perhaps to see the envy in their eyes. Not that others will lie to us. It’s more, they don’t know any better other than doing so. We lie inadvertently to give ourselves a witty edge, giving a more flattering rendition of the account or out of simple malice. It has little, if anything, to do with the recipient. Whenever someone attacks you, you tend to internalize the affair, making it bigger than it actually was. We need drama to fend off the feeling that our life without it, at the bottomless pit, is devoid of meaning. Life’s lack of meaning is a feeling that wanes with meditation practice. Meditation takes away the ceaseless voices of doom the mind propels to once it finds itself of little use. When we find ourselves absorbed in an activity demanding our focus and energy, the ability to withstand the daily dosage of misery life inflicts us with increases tenfold.
Others will always be strangers to us in more ways than they’re familiar, and even those characteristics that we find more appealing can mask more starkly sinister specters of someone else’s psyche. The axiom,“Know thyself”, attributed to Socrates, ultimately may lead to the conclusion that we never really get to know the self. Perhaps because we’re not a singular unit, not at any given moment. Knowing it, at the core, that we may never grasp the present moment before it’s gone, but the closer to this very moment that will unravel next and turn into yet another instance momentarily. It may be a downer knowing that the moment at hand is most likely a memory as far away from the present as it was with this line, the here and now are subjective, and there really isn’t a lot of alternatives that we can choose from, considering we’ve been programmed to respond to given stimuli, social conditioning, DNA and RDNA sequences, all of the choices taken to-date weren’t really made today. No one chooses in the moment, unless action is taken upon, and up until the minute that a resolution is enacted, we more or less have already decided. It happens in sports, in love, in the very moment that you find yourself, seeing yourself, and take an spectator’s role in the mindscapes of the life that surrounds you.
THIRD ACT
Let the moment dictate the more audacious course of action available to us given our circumstances.
And if the author were to suddenly become aware of the creative process, then that’s progress. Progress is in paying attention to the minor details, such as… say you come across a case of writer’s block. First, instead of convincing yourself further that you’re experiencing such phenomenon, do no such thing. Act as if you had no idea that you were going through such rough creative patch, depose of the excuses and the mental anguish. Sit as you would if you were to write and write as you would. Do so, regularly, regardless of what your mind says, and you shall conquer your mind. It’s not about fighting your “mindscapes” (that is, we’re more than one mind, and never mind the mind we were a few secs or so ago).
The more you build inside, the deeper the roots, the taller the branches will reach and the tree will grow. Others think that if the tree is cut down, it’ll provide raw material for fire, household materials, tools, etc. We need the shadow that protects us from the sun, the branches sheltering us from rain, the fruit its seed gives, not to mention the photosynthesis. Trees die, and we got three weeks to check out. Why is it that we find human life sacred? In comparison, a tree’s life is far more important to the ecosystem than anyone of us average humans.
Instead of making a focus of your life externally, as in when you pursue a career because you don’t want to end up like so many, broke…. Why not focus instead on eating better, sleeping soundly, exercising vigorously and maintaining an active lifestyle, to start off with? It's the difference between an alley cat and its domesticated, obscenely fattened counterpart. Poverty nowadays is of a mental kind, not of a material one. If a soul starves, it reflects an administrative error: ignorance on behalf of the afflicted as to the resources available. Anyone can go hungry, the real problem perhaps is that no one ever does.
We make the poor of previous generations look bad. We only need and already have the resources essential to survival, but so long as our basic needs are met: shelter, food, safety, water, sleep and, chief among these, air…. so breathe.
Let’s pursue less demanding lives and, as a byproduct, fuller meaning in ours. Sure, there's always higher ground ahead but if there's a steep and downward patch, do as your body would and fight the gravity with poise, keep your posture, raise your head and keep a steady yet unhurried pace. It’s face the mountain as you climb. You'll need strength both in stamina and character: brawn and brain. Similarly, on the way up, you'll inevitably have to face the mountain you climb.
Meditation takes on and recognizing that if you’re not building, then decay will naturally set in and chaos will accelerate to the inevitable conclusion: death. Of course,
How we die, or not, depends largely on how well we treat ourselves as organisms, not the amount of money we got in the bank. The quality of life that derives from success and fame and all the things that money can buy will surely make life more tolerable. To be able not to have to worry about money would be a phenomenal achievement. To have enough not to work anymore, who doesn’t dream of it? Except that is never the case, the more you have, the more you invest yourself in time and effort to fend off all the unforeseen debts, credit, all the mess we are financially. A million dollars in financially unfit hands will run right through them like water. Money is a state of mind, a way of relating to it, the foundation: a safety net not to be touched and in our own possession, no external institution. A little put aside in a retirement account, and a little personally invested in small financial ventures, selling, buying, phones, clothes, etc. Passive income, that is. You can have fun with money so long as it doesn’t become your master. The minute you begin to depend on excess financial success, your health may take a toll, due to the increased amount of stress tending to matters of materialistic nature, always wanting more is a lot like a voracious fever that consumes the one who suffers it. It’s best to treat the accumulative
Surely, you don’t need riches, but a steady income and an economic safety net will do. An education is likely to endebt you much more than a frugal existence ever will. It’s really not so much about how much you make but how much of that you keep. See, people claim to love money; I profess no such thing, but I understand things cost money and we’re wired to spend. If you don’t wire your mind to earn, save, invest and generally prosper, you need not to worry about spending unnecessarily, you won't have any to.
Some are driven to a life of wealth; others find more merit in pursuing their intellectual proclivities or bring passion to their work. There's no ideal other than becoming better beings. Excellence is striving for; perfection is stagnation.
Finding more about all the potential selves, that was Ed’s drive in life. Except, deep down inside he knew there within the confines of his mind lived the same wuss whose father had deserted him since five. More so now, that Ive looked on and beyond the washed-out figures outside the window. A man and a woman, entangled in an embrace, arms wrapped up around each other. He needed a closer look:
It was his wife, smoking hot, with a cigarette in her hand, after years of having kicked the habit; next to her, a man, who could be no other than that unknown fellow by the name of Ja. His employers had found him fucking his sixteen year-old, younger. Latin trophy wife, and heard her moan repeatedly “Ja”, Spanish for “Ya”, which roughly translates to “Enough,” depending on the context: “ya” could also mean “Are you about to come?” But repeatedly moaning, in a begging manner “Ya, ya, ya” means “Stop, that’s enough”, as in “Stop fucking me already!” Counterintuitively, what she says is not what she wants. Instead, she may want to increase her lover’s libido by appealing to his virility, that she’s sobbing, almost begging you to stop can make any man cum.
His name was Javier, in reality, and so the cuckold hubby erroneously assumed it was an intimate short version of his name. It wasn’t until Ed showed the video of his wife happily fucking with another man, a tall, athletic built who did not appear to be remotely curious about him and instead laid hands on his wife and made off with her as he shared tea with the man fucking his wife. In that moment, the rain stopped and it became even more crystal-clear the sight of his woman being ravished by a young, tattooed and pierced body stallion devouring her every inch, claiming as his all that he caressed with his Midas touch. The rain had stopped but the lovers kept right on beasting out, hitting rock bottom to find yet another layer of low just underneath it.
As human beings, we can always hit lower, get in touch with the monster that dwells within every last one of us. And sometimes, the lower you sink, the higher you fly. Being there, his wife appeared to be in a deplorable humanless state, deprived of her will, compliant and unapologetic about her nakedness, for there’s no greater pleasure in life than to put a submissive in touch with the little slut that hides inside her. Come out, come out, wherever you are! We can all get in touch with our most sadistic nature; after all, if we are to thrive, everyone had a slice of misery in this sorrowful pie. Of course, none of it can be said without evoking some form of shock, others might interpret abuse. On the contrary, abuse is what we collectively suffer at the hands of a society that shames us for who we are. It’s our nature to be men, no bravado, no chauvinism, no apologies. No matter how much you empower women, when it comes to her man, the majority of the time they choose a man who knows what he wants or at least looks like it. Don’t get me wrong, there are women who choose to be the ones who rule the relationships, you can see such cases everywhere, young folks who recently started dating, married couples, longtime friends even.
Women love men who take charge and know what they want from the start. At times, her lover/partner may seem a little off and dangerous, but I remind her that he has to also puts up with her craziness.
We all know women can be oh so very crazy. We excuse their madness and look the other way whenever the psycho that lurks within their misty, shadowy skulls emerges out of the depths to take hold of them. We men are used to suffering them quietly, because that’s what we men do: we keep shit to ourselves, it doesn’t look good to complain about personal issues, especially on social media.
I’m not saying all men do, but men such as I tend to keep pain bottled up inside. We are far more vulnerable than most think, but none of us will admit to it because it’d deprive us somehow of our stubbornness to believe ourselves invincible.
No, the men weren’t torturing their women, and even at its most goric and dantescal, mind-boggling counterintuitive way: it was the women, and not the men, who sought them. Think of most women you know and the men they fuck with; inherently, females opt for men who can provide as well as protect them. A woman wants to be a woman in more than one way, and a man has to be a man every time she chooses to shed her skin an
d shift into a whole brand new being devoid of reason (for, who needs to make sense? Only men can afford such luxury!), lack of common sense and human decency. Women have got to fight dirty; nature dealt them some rough cards: having to bear children for up to nine months changes all. Not only that but women tend to be less intellectually acute, more fragile, a more compact version of a man without a lot of excess. Women make great spies because who can’t suspect a woman, especially a pretty one, be anything other than the object of our affection. If they had given the chance to lead armies and become generals, with their intuitive deceit and wicked nature, surely no man general stood a chance.
Nature made women with the intention to create and beautify the world itself with their sole presence. Their nurturing light envelops us way before birth, so we’re forever helplessly destined to seek, oftentimes in vain, the love and selfless devotion our respective mothers, or at least the collectiveness of motherhood in all that is beautiful and capable of recreation, harmony, light, a moment to stop and see our woman in all her Macheavellic splendor. No matter how bad she can be, we can be oh so far worse. The world, life everywhere, relies on kindness and nurture, and that, among other things, women provide. It’s a myth that mothers are all lovingly. And that only mothers who are sick abandon their young or are cruel to them. In nature, momma panda normally has twins, two baby pandas, but chooses to care for only one of them. Momma birds of many species let their young peck each other to death as a way of pruning and getting only the strongest to survive. Humans may see these as animalistic rituals that few human societies have adopted as models. The Spartans pruned out the weakest, casting aside any infant that seemed defective or one of a wimpy constitution, only the strongest made it through childhood and military life hasn’t been glorious but to the everyday Spartan, war was all they knew and aspired to. No aspiration to know, only to build an impenetrable society with no vision for tomorrow, trapped in the moment, did not afford them with the more radical attributes of men, twenty times more testosterone not deepens the tone of our voice, it gives us a more muscular frame, twice their strength and stamina; add facial hair and far more aggressive and territorial, a man really ought to tame its most abrasive nature, cultivate aplomb and reserve judgment.
You’d think the basics would be automatically covered, but no: cut ties with slander and quit, if not your job, at least your bitching. When life bitches, say it barks at you, there’s no need to get into a shouting contest. Let others cool off, if they appear to come out of left-field. People often lash out at others because they find themselves unease and troubled skin deep. It is pain that they shout out with, toxic voices hammering their minds into unleashing madness, anger it is contagious and it is poisonous. Stay away from those who strike once you’re within close distance, cold-blooded creatures that love to inflict poison into the vein of our lives. It may be a vociferous co-worker, or a backward relative, whomever that might be, you need to know NOT to spend your time other than conspiring to be satisfied.
Those who can’t sleep oftentimes haven’t really earned their rest. If you wake up rested after a full night sleep is because you have ahead a schedule that demands a whole lot of you throughout the course of your day. So that when the day comes to an end, you have only but to lay your head on the pillow and fall asleep. A good morning begins with a good night sleep.
And so, no. Women don’t want a gutless man by her side, life’s hard enough as it is and one ought to pay attention to whom or what it is we devote ourselves at any given moment, if not to the pursuit of self-mastery. Notice I did not say “success”. This success that they speak is the reason we are all disillusioned and restless, working ourselves to death or into early retirement. The market changes overnight and a particular trade becomes obsolete. Little by little, and then perhaps all at once, smart design will make our wildest dreams come true. It, too, can bring our worst nightmares out into the open, for just as we have the capacity to solve humanity’s most pressing issues, the polarity of goodness has evil as a counterpart. Most people you’ll come across are benevolent, some more than others; it is our leaders that promote war and hatred and it’s up to us citizens of the world to counter the weight of this oppressive tyranny. Except activism might prove fatal in more radical places of the world. Still, you’ll find that it’s the silly policies enacted by our government that have us at one another’s throats. Jobs have vanished, and some new tech industries have been created out of thin air. The world around us’ changing at an exhilarating pace. (It’s a figurative speech: the world is not around us, it is within.)
Now, I find one of my selves as working a mindless yet lively, dead-end job, with no aspirations in life that I can think of other than doing with the rest of my time whatever I want. And not in any narcissistic way, though it emanates from the ego only if it is internalized as opposed to projected from within and splashed all over the walls of our consciousness. Everywhere we look, there’s an opportunity waiting to be realized and one ought to make space and time to become curious about the world around and how little we have in our devastated planet. We are, in more ways than fiction can tell, living the end of times.
SECOND ACT
Surely, these women are sick and should be helped, but in the vast majority of times, that simply wasn’t the case. Thing is, justice is black and white; humans aren’t so much so. It may be simple to understand but it’s not an easy thing to grasp: many of us want to be subjugated and ruled; in fact, most of us follow those truest of leaders daily. If such aren’t found in our line of work, we look for them in books. It only takes a Google engine search and there’ll be wise quotes on your screen.
What you do with beliefs is, put them up to the test and don’t bother trying to convince otherwise. It’d seem that people want to engage in argument rather than dialogue. Ideologues tend to hold their preconceived notions and force them down the throat of those who come by.
Ed had taken her from her childhood boyfriend who dreamed of marrying her one day and then, and only then, make love to her.
In the case of Ed what mattered most now was seeing the very thing that haunted his mind, it brought back the inadequate feelings of immaturity. Youth had never left, somewhere deep inside a wimpy five-year old rules our lives, buried under layers of neural conglomerates that subterfuge and mask our innate, whimsical nature, flickering on and off, one moment a poet, the next a lizard running on two-legs over water; in one instance, the man blinks and there, in a flash that the mind perpetuates, reanimates and shoots all over the anemic colors. The death that breathes in and out has an even slate of life, so that at any given moment you can choose whether you want to live or just lie down wasting time. It’s not easy to choose the right path but often we find that a change of pace can add more meaning. Say, someone doesn’t do as much? Motivate them into action, if the desire to thrive is there. If the elements to start a fire are present, all that’s needed is the know-how.
Cecil had always hated it when her conjugal partner called her Cessy. She didn’t know why but everything about her man treating her like a little girl downright annoyed the crap out of her. And men tend to make that mistake, especially when a more intimate relationship entails. She’s not a little girl; but she can be your little girl. She already has a pussy; she don’t need another one. And so, Ed proposed a threesome with another girl.
“What do you think, Cessy?”
Ja wore stylish leather shoes, designer clothes acquired at warehouse prices, tailored-fitted suits and , and a tight flowery shirt that would’ve made a lesser man look downright gay. He had claimed to be bi-curious, not into penetration of either kind (you know: one you give; the other, you take). It had all been a farce, the minute Ja saw my wife, he completely forgot about anyone else in the room.
First, he had her knelt down before him. Assertively, his hand on the back of her neck, pulled her closer to his midsection. The idea, he said, was to skull-fuck her until her eyeliner would wash off her face as his lovely wife would be forced against her better judgment to swallow Ja’s shaft down her throat, her face’s expression disfigured, as if submerged under a deep pressurized tank of presemen viscosity, only to come out in gasping agony and hear him tell her that the more she’d cry now, the less that she’ll suffer later.
“You’re going to cry your eyes out and not be able to articulate an vowel. In the end, the better suited you’ll be for anal sex right up next, down the alley downstairs. I want the neighbors who are always looming out their windows as if that were their only vocation in life see me fuck your wife. Use the wetness off her cried-out face as the only lubrication before devirginizing her anally.”
“It’s not necessary to go downstairs. Just pop up the window, let only the closest neighbors watch. They’d tell the others, for sure. Why give them all at once?”
Porn is boring. Isn’t it? I mean, it serves its purpose, but it could be so much more. It may help heal the abyss open between lovers, help understand one another, really make it about how to get better. But why would in their interest of the powers that be, to make things easier for their customers and lose their profit, it could be so easy for the common man to bring in so much money. Immaturity is big business, and not that there’s anything wrong with porn. It just serves on a one-dimensional platform, with little space to innovate or offer any solutions. It does get the job done, if that’s what a man wants; but if we find everlasting pleasure in it, and not the sporadic kind, it reflects deeply on our big divide.
Fiction isn’t personal. It is not the author’s name that matters; it’s the content. Imagine that a great author in antiquity or in modern times, dead or alive, incurred plagiarism. Some say that Shakespeare didn’t write his own stuff, but it’s not like we knew him intimately, we did not know the Bill from William. I may write only fiction, not because I do not hold anything that cannot be framed otherwise; but when we speak of the opposite of fiction, we do not say “reality”, in fact, the right term is “nonfiction”. Photographers will never enjoy the rockstar status that good painters had. We rather let historians come and go, but good storytellers are here to stay.
I don’t see what a name, in the end, really means? My ebook, which I wanted in digital form, is being sold on Amazon in print. I wanted my books to be digital, save a leaf. We forget books, as well as toilet paper, come from trees. I’ve written three books, two of which I recommend, but most of my writings are for free all over the internet. Not that I would mind if I got paid, but writing gets to more people when handed down so selflessly. That I get paid, it changes my writings, I guess. I find more meaning this way.
