Tied Truths

Grasping,

Gasping;

Clogged tongue,

Tied truths:

Opposing instinct—

tried, untrue. 

Vain vein-

Vae Victis-

Vague tempest-

Elated automation,

Medicated dedication,

Alleviated interception:

Memory is more a digression 

Excessive ecstasy to depreciating delicacy

Exclusive— 

What the fuck is being ‘free’?

Noting Nothing

*aside before this: though it’s ‘NN’ abbreviation ability the name it is not part of the Neurotic Nihilism series. It’s just notes in the midst of nothing. Stream of consciousness. Like Time Eats. Not a Neurotic Nihilism entry. 

The clock I put on the wall reads its hands at about 7 minutes until 3pm. I’m at work, a slow day in contrast to last Thursday. Not much aside that and a podcast in my ear.

A customer walks in. He has me check his lottery ticket. Winning $3 he chose to purchase another three tickets, promising like many a day to reward me handsomely, should they ‘win big.’ I doubt such ever would happen— after all I only have about another 6 weeks here; and I have never seen a person win higher than $500. What I see is more spent in wishful attempts than in successful return. I have a theory that lottery winners, in the larger numbers, tend to be preplanned and much of the money spent on the lottery is more akin to a fundraiser which goes until the fever reaches a breaking point; as seen with the madness I experienced last week. Multiple shifts of almost endless faces buying their share in the slight possibility of having the government breathing down their neck for taxes till they die…

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It’s true what Patti Smith says in M-Train, that, “it’s not so easy writing about nothing.”

Being at work, writing about something is more fit for a night shift. During the day, less time is afforded. Before coming in I was reading a bit of Dita Von Teese’s book Your Beauty Mark; admittedly a bit absent-mindedly in the process thinking of it’s concepts; in association with an anonymous quote, commonly and falsely attributed to Nietzsche, about the difference in killing a moth and butterfly being viewed in differing moral lenses based on mere aesthetic appearance.

Moths being a major proponent in proving adaptable traits in evolution, history seems to offer a differing regard. Not too dissimilar in that the species are quite similar in origin and outlined appearance, the morality is blurry. Subjective. Moths are goth and butterflies are hippies. 

Goth came from the punk movement largely, which was in many ways a direct counter to the hippie ideals. Both however in their heights were looked upon with distaste by the respective (and typically same) establishment(s) around.

Aesthetics backed by ideas they ignite via their pathos and ethos grabbing propaganda clash. 

Vibrant, a butterfly seems lively in fields of flowers on a sunny day. A moth is of the night, hovering around flame and street lights; phantasmal, some genomes even have patterns likening to human skulls on their bodies… Goths sacked time and byproducts of the hippie movement murdered Sharon Tate in meth-addled manifestation. 

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In my ear Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel argue whether or not movies become reality. All things considered, I agree with Bill more. Apocalyptic is fetishistic, but it’s rather realistic if the way we go is by our own hand. Or like the cosmos killing the dinosaurs. Self fulfilling prophecy is true but in gradual decline. Interesting ideation on an instance unlikely end personal witness to in spite of inevitability. 

In a sense Bill’s whole club random podcast is mundane extremes, in a sense. 

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Thinking, at first it seems ironic for those adhering to the Christian faith to get tattoos of even crosses on their persona. On consideration though, why would that be so queer? Going in terms of the idea of ‘slave morality’ the faith came from the widespread adoption of those typically in servitude. Throughout time the marking of bound constituents in some form or another has been enacted so signify that slave status. In the rejection of all other entities before and in service to the Abrahamic Lord, it’s a marker without a mark. Given Adam and Eve began as nude until they got knowledge of the fact and everything apparently went to shit because a piece of fruit got eaten, and in Revelation with the imbued Mark of the Beast by the evil other entity (who was historically a substitute for a disliked emperor, to further add differentiators which also lends a bit more to the idea building, it seems). In a sense it’s akin to the proletariat against bourgeoisie in communist history and theory… Prohibition being Levitical law however if I remember reading correctly, according to Christian doctrines such as Catholicism say such got superseded with the New Testament and Jesus doing away with the old covenant… the implication being said rule is Jewish in the Abrahamic family tree, not Christian. 

Seemingly, it makes a bit of sense they would get the cross tattooed, among other non-religious iconography and images. And that it’s a 2,000 year old dogma, as well as an almost innate inclination for humans to veer towards bodily glamour of varying degrees such happens. 

Not being Christian, or ever having been, I’m altogether unsure. Their theology is their own mess to make up as they please. 

I like the two cross of Lorraine tattoos I have though. As a random aside with all that. 

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nothing. 

nothing. 

or something, it’s nothing. 

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I guess I’ll get coffee. Well, when these people leave. This location doesn’t have any flavored syrups so I substitute: a few shots of hazelnut creamer, coffee, then some French vanilla creamer and mixing till it looks like a milkshake. Boom. Good coffee. 

Rarely, I have learned, is there ever a truly bad coffee. Only bad coffee makers. 

Psycho-Neurotic || Neurotic Nihilism IV.4

Brett Easton Ellis’ famed book turned movie starring Christian Bale, American Psycho; begins its descent into delusion with the imagery of foreboding red inscriptions quoting what Dante in his Inferno claimed to be on the gates of Hell greeting those who enter: “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” Blood red, as the text details. 

According to Ellis, his writing portrays a psychotic episode in textual representation. Dialogues as long as Ayn Rand’s monologues about anything, everything down to the minute smallest detail. Eyes viewing with obsessive compulsion, more than mere perfectionism; endless knowledge of memorized factoids about average apparel (at least, for Patrick Bateman’s class); and grandiosity all the while in a state of free-fall. Seemingly with no ground to finally crash down onto. Never is it told in the course of the nearly 400 pages of descent if the character portrayed is psychotic by nature or developed disorder…. Psycho being in the title, the implication is less of a mere fantasy from an unreliable narrator like Hubert Humphrey in Nabokov’s infamous Lolita, more an actual psychopath’s inner monologue after reaching past the point of depersonalization. 

Whether the presented perspective in the book is merely embellished from insane insight or delusional delight, is up to interpretation. 

Brett Easton Ellis has stated in interviews that Bateman is quite largely based on his own mental fugue of experience in the 1980s as a closeted, repressed homosexual. Readers and viewers of American Psycho might pause with that remark, given in both film and novel the character Luis makes explicit advances on Patrick; one must also consider the time, place and taste. 

Sexuality is a part of the human animal, for better or worse. A procreative prerogative paired with intelligent imagination. Similarly, that Homo Sapiens have animalistic impulses—harsher hobbies— often not disconnected to sexuality is true. Domesticated dogs are often neutered for a reason— it’s called ‘fixed’ quite ironically. Like sexuality barbaric, brutal behaviors are also loaded into the genetic gun. Like a dog, even neutered, humans get frustrated (to say the least) in said regard. 

Definitionally, the word psycho means, “a mentally sick or neurotic person.” Psychotic and Neurotic differ in detail; though are slight synonyms. Psychotic, coming out of psycho,  lending then to the term ‘psychosis’ which is defined as, “a major mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of personality.” In relation to Neurosis, such is, “less serious than a psychosis, marked by severe anxiety, depression and the like, without any apparent physical origin.” Then lending to Psychoneurosis, being a more direct verbiage for the idea of a neurotic individual (New Webster’s Medical Dictionary, 1981).

A state of psychosis implies neurosis whereas neuroticism in of itself is not psychotic. Psychoneurotic goes with neurosis, meaning a psychotic individual is psychoneurotic; however psychoneurosis on its own is not an implicit signal for psychosis; only neurosis. 

A better illustration to this, in less graphic though nearly melancholic lense: the 1980s dark fantasy Nietzschean film The Never Ending Story. Also based on a book, the movie makes a montage of the collapse of imagination— life in a sense for the human animal as we consciously live— into a literal gaping void of Nothing. Only is it resurrected by the reader of the story, who has to have the power of a truly wondrous, childlike, naïve imagination. 

Without imagination a person is, like Patrick Bateman, an automation. Alive, but a person without a person. Going through the motions of harsher hobbies, his being external rather than purely personal. Bateman exists in a banal branch of the American Upper Class in New York. Working despite not having to, the life of upper echelon business surrounds him. While he’s shown to not be the sole solipsist in a state of decay— all around his colleagues are consuming copious amounts of cocaine, fretting over suits and sluts, competing over better business cards, etcetera— it directly gives the perspective of his own person, without a person. Psychotic, past the point of neurotic depersonalization. The title of the book cannot be clearer in connotation for the contents of its pages: an American Psycho. 

Chicken or the egg: what came first, the economic situation or mental illness?

To defer to Mark Fisher, hauntological philosopher of lost futures and acid communism; in his K-Punk writings speaking in various essays in regards to activities seen as degenerate, the difference in deviancy is quite little regardless of class position. What closes up the gap, according to Fisher, can be summed up as an extreme boredom of the banal bullshit; to the point of neurosis, leading to psychosis. 

Foregoing any conclusion to Patrick’s confession, it amounts to a completely void story. Not ending in arrest or death, simply five capitalized words stating: “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.”

Time Eats

Blue light beaming digits on the screen tell me it’s 8:42pm on December 31, 2025. Unsurprisingly I’m in a room and it’s just me, myself and I. A TV plays in the living room; outside fireworks crackle like incoherent turrets— people celebrating the year coming to a close. 

A year is an interesting idea. That it starts in winter I find odd— given the idea is a ‘new’ year it should be akin to rebirth; or the season of spring. However, given the tilting of the axis the seasons across hemispheres are in constant loop. In a sense maybe one of the spring or autumn (depending on the geographical placement from the equator) would suit better placeholders. 

It’s a rather fruitless attempt at debate, time being relative; a year on Earth is quite a few elsewhere in the solar system. Time only matters and means so much as to what our short lifespans wind up perceiving. A new year is merely a spherical hunk making a loop around a giant ball of gas. To me it seems a bit weird, though in the same manner it must be queer to a Jehovah’s Witness the celebration of that or my own affinity to my date of birth. This next loop around it marks the 20th for me. 

Twenty— 

Has it been plenty?

Running,

out of one thing-

out of money-

into degeneracy

Do I need Misery or

do mysterious entities need me?

Hermit,

Ambiguous spree

Dusk to dust

far from a skeletal husk

Lolita and butterflies by dying flames

What if I stayed?

Hash, fash, perfume splash

Mad last gasp

Head up just as fast

Present is future past

Yet another to best

Time eats without teeth

20 lines for 20 years, come March that is. But I’ll count it. Technically, I would have been ‘alive’ in the womb 20 years ago tonight. I say technically as unless I had higher brain functioning that would make it so I can be writing this now, which it is possible of being in the time of that trimester then such tends to develop, I would consider myself alive in more ways akin to a symbiote in Spider Man. 

I’ve had this coffee I’m sipping on since about midnight last night, only have a bit less than half drank— I fell asleep shortly after walking out to get it; with it I also got two packets of Planters salted peanuts. Of the two one remains in ever so slightly decreasing quantity. A siren briefly starts then quiets as quickly, a fire vehicle from the sound of it. So begins the semi-annual explosive-related incident surge which happens this time, and July with Independence Day’s celebratory tradition. 

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Outside, though dark, it’s nicely overcast with slight sprinkling of rainfall— the air feels nice, but heavy. Ozone permeates every inhale through the nasal cavity. 

The plastic piece goes between my lips, I breathe in with my mouth like to sip from a straw and electric myst enters my entity. Holding a second, upon exhaling there’s minimal fog. Adrenaline shortly coursing through and nicotine giving its focusing fumes. I yawn. Not terribly tired even though the lids of my eyes weigh slightly. Intake—hold—elate. Coffee doing its use. Putting my headphones on, covering only one ear I press play on Meine Musik. Marilyn Manson’s Keep My Head Together begins instantly— I have the We Are Chaos CD but I want LOUD and variety; and to feel what I hear, so headphones suffice until the morning when I’m completely alone. The song is good. I wrote much on it in notebooks— I get it now though. I think, but probably not— I can interpret though… Bleeding from and into the vibrationally industrial 3Teeth’s song Atrophy. 

I could, well, more accurately should be reading, or maybe working my notes on Plato’s Phaedo into some sort of better essay; but writing this suffices. An exercise I don’t do as much as earlier in the year. From 3Teeth to Depeche Mode, the live version of Stripped from their 101 album. I remember listening to this at full volume in the car while driving amidst a raging storm in the Colorado mountains. With the wrong split second I very well could have died, impossible to see anything but black and flashes of lightning too quick and pale to see with beyond the bumper ahead of me, red tail lights lights guiding as my map had long since lost signal… Inevitably ascending the mountain to spend a nice rest of that night in the park by Columbine High School…

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The phone tells me it is now 9:48pm. Death Effector Domains, an interesting number begins in my ear. Groovy tune, not much more than a nice vibe. I feel it would lead really well into High Pressure Dave by HEALTH, quickly putting it as the next track right in time. My bias confirmed. 

Getting distracted by my phone, I threw it and my headphones to the side. For now I’ll have more peanuts, coffee and delve further into the pages of Patti Smith’s book M-Train; which is the whole motivator for this stream of conscious writing. 

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Read a bit more, got lost on my phone a bit more. Now it’s 11:34, turn it upside down and it spells hell. Hell… there’s an essay on that in a book I have playing interesting word games with regards to Hell. When I get up in the morning I’ll reread it. For now, I go to take a few pictures…

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