"Make merry," he said, "Make merry bleed, brutha."

I’m feeling sick, and it’s the kind of sick feeling that’s lingering in the near background so it’s not really serious but it’s certainly annoying and tedious. I’m not sick enough to be able to sleep or relax through it, but it’s seeped into my joints and sinuses and won’t really let me concentrate on anything. TV’s too bright, music’s too loud, and oh, can you imagine, work is just too much.

So. Solemn me, I’m here writing and trying to focus my thoughts into whatever passes for narrative meaning this week. Like the fact that I’m feeling dusty; a surface covered in dust and every movement releasing a cloud of allergen and particles that evoke eruptions of sneezes. Is it possible to feel this dusty? As if clapping a hand on my shoulder will shake off an avalanche of debris. That’s how I feel. It’s not feeling old, or useless; its feeling weighed down with minutiae and the sub-atomic strands that tie together daily operations like getting coffee or spending two minutes to rub the cat’s poor, neglected head. The space between her ears where even the dog’s vicious, yet playful, teeth don’t bite. The dog goes for the soft jugular, inciting an inter-species war that lasts for as long as the cat is willing to put up with the tussle. Then the inevitable. She pushes back, a weak resistance that’s still enough to scare the dog, and then leaps a foot above her and watches like a disgusted socialite. This is something that never ends, it just repeats, it’s pointless but it’s real.

If everything is interconnected then even just waking up in the morning is making a difference. This is some stale sort of philosophy that will surely get your mind into gear and wondering if even brushing your teeth is a good idea given the state of the world. Are you in part responsible for all the awful things that are happening just by going through such a staid routine? Can complacency in the mundane lead to genocide? People want to feel so in touch with the good things that happen they forget how tied to the grinding, pulverizing horrors they actually are. This isn’t meant to prevent you from having eggs at breakfast, but stop and think before you add that extra spoon of sugar to your black cup of coffee. You might well end it all.

People have a tendency to lie out of a fear of being seen as weak. The weakness is somehow the admission of not knowing what you feel expected to know, or not having done that which maybe you should have done but can’t quite understand how soon it all caught up with you. This is pale and weak. Only lie about things that are irrelevant and shouldn’t possibly be lied about. Be honest about how weak and predictable and lazy you are. But lie like a politician about everything else. Lie about the movies you like, the music you love, the shows you watch. For every opinion you agree with, espouse exactly the opposite. Never let anyone know what you think or feel or know about the things you love and care for and obsess over. It’s not that it will make any difference, and it’s not like anyone will ever guess, and that’s sort of the point. It’s a kind of small and ingenious deception that could possibly remain undetected until well after you’re dead. Isn’t that a sad kind of legacy? Nothing to be proud about, but at least it will last. Thoughts and feelings will linger well after you’ve rotted into the ground. Not me, though. I’ll be around forever so what do I care?

So, this leaves me feeling a little empty now, which was exactly the point. I spilled forth on this page like an inkwell finding its perfect blotter. I used the white space to dump a little black poison into the world. Like a knife finding itself slipping through a nice fatty tissue, stabbing right into the artery and letting a steady, rhythmic beat pump the blood right out of your neck and into the air and onto the wall and drip down to the floor and pool into a puddle and lapped up by the cat who’s rubbed by my sweaty hand. A perfect circle, baby.