Here's the next page from my book of 300 Drawing Prompts (the last appeared on Aug 1); the prompt for this latest half-effort was "Honeycomb".
Dear diary,
Long ago, all my friends moved away & got married & had children. They might as well have been abducted by extraterrestrials, because I never see them anymore.
I say “friends” plural, but now that I think of it, I’ve never really had more than one. I mean, over the span of my existence, I’ve had many friends, but always one friend at a time. I guess I’m a friendship monogamist. But I don’t intend to be. Maybe I just can’t fathom any concept beyond a pair, because two’s company and three’s a crowd, and I’m allergic to multitudes. Thus does social life escape me.
When I was a tiny boy, my only friend was my next-door neighbor. This proves the compatibility of all people: you can befriend anyone, for any reason — or rather, you’ll be able to find enough in common to get along. The same goes for spouses: even if you’re a victim of a parentally arranged marriage, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Every instant is the end of the world, yes, I know; but you can re-create the world with every next instant. Whatever is unattractive about your arranged spouse, don’t focus on that: focus only on what is…
No, I admit I’m wrong about this. Certain people just don’t click, and certain familial matches simply cannot work. It’s like trying to get the southern end of a couple of northbound magnet-mules to remain ass-to-ass. I myself am not able to get along with everyone, tho I wish that weren’t the case. I wanna please the whole world, like the Apostle Paul my nemesis:
Tho I be free from all people, yet have I made myself a slave unto all, that I might gain the more. To them that are under the law, I behaved as one who is under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without law, as without law, that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men.
(1 Corinthians 9:19-22)
Note that he mentions becoming “as weak” to “gain the weak” but he says nothing of strength. This is cuz he couldn’t feign that attribute well enough to persuade anybody. The truly strong souls were like, “Hey, Paul, what are you doing, posing like that and speaking so unnaturally?” And Paul answered “I am becoming as one who is strong, so that I might convince YOU to attend my new mystery cult, which meets on Sunday.” And the strong souls murmured, “You’re just mimicking Mussolini. We see right thru you. You should listen to Jesus of Nazareth: he sez that true strength resides in gentleness and compassion.” So Paul walked away crestfallen, for his intention was to avoid listening to others, and only to gain followers for his own cause by using the name not the teachings of Jesus.
Sorry; where was I? Oh yes: attempting yet another autobiography. I’m always trying to figure out how the heck I failed; and I assume that, if I keep re-articulating my own narrative, during one of these iterations it will become apparent even to me: that point where I made the wrong turn.
So I was talking about friends, and how I’ve, for whatever reason, always been limited (or perhaps unconsciously limited myself) to one at a time. Now, when I begin to review my sob story, all these individual allies blend together into one composite MEGAMIGO (mega + amigo), which has no real identity — he/she/it becomes more of an invisible companion — as, over the years, I move from one phase to the next. About every seven years of my life, there is some significant change that occurs.
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon.
(As the Duke always sez, in Measure for Measure.) I don’t know about your life, but in mine the phases tend to go like this:
First there was youth, then teenage, then adulthood, and then finally decrepit adulthood. In youth, we played games; in adolescence we grew fond of art; in adulthood we participated in artistic creation; and in decrepit adulthood we write diary entries like this one here, in hopes of spinning all the preceding as worthwhile. So please stop holding me back: let me now try to begin to tell my story in a boring fashion...
The Story of Your Life (Not Mine)
In the days of old, you had one neighbor, who was nameless; therefore you and he were friends. Now, whichever friend woke up first every morning would call the other on the landline and ask “Can you play?” (Hereafter I will use the pronoun “we” instead of “you”, because it seems more natural.) And then we’d meet at either my house or yours; and we’d play the board game Monopoly, and the card game Uno, and the dice game Yahtzee.
Then, when the rest of the neighborhood kids would wake up, we’d all go outside to meet in your front yard and play baseball, using a tennis ball. (A tennis ball is more bouncy than an official baseball or softball; so it makes one feel like one’s a stronger player than one actually is, which appeals to weak youngsters like us; that’s why we did that: it’s easy to hit a tennis ball really far, with an aluminum bat.)
And each day we would get into arguments and end up beating each other up; but then the next day we’d be friends again, as if nothing happened. So our day-to-day existence was like those cartoons where the characters suffer horrible conflicts and even sustain life-threatening injuries, but then the next episode begins pristinely without explanation. Our lives were intensely, physically violent.
& then when childish games seemed uncool to us, in our teen years, we stopped with the game-playing and began to “get into” music — or audio recordings, rather; since what we loved was not so much music as noise: percussive collages of...
What I’m trying to say is that we joined the rap world of the late 1980s, when rap was considered culturally dangerous. Nowadays the genre is entirely assimilated and homogenized, not to mention ubiquitous, thus we hate modern rap as much as we hated rock back then; for we perceived (rightly, I believe) that the rock music being produced in those days, like the stuff on the radio, had been tamed and subdued by the commercial marketplace — and ditto for 21st-century rap — but during that golden age, our allegiance was reserved strictly for the underground tumult.
(Curiously, however, even the rap that made it onto the radio back then was intoxicating: I think that the idea was just too wild and new to dullify; for corporate goons tried to water it down, but it was like adding water to hemlock: it still gives you a buzz.)
At a certain point, we realized that we did not need to remain on the sidelines as spectators and cheerleaders of this evil creation, but that we could rush the field and contribute to it ourselves: we could make our own noise.
So we spent the next span of time recording punk folk rap.
(I say “punk” because it was harsh; “folk” because its focus was almost entirely lyrical at the expense of all other musical elements, which were relegated to the position of subservient background rhythm; and I include the word “rap” in the description because the fad among the most respected members of the culture at that time was to declare the label “hip-hop” as representative of authentic contributions whereas “rap” meant the fake trash made by posers — thus we ironically embraced the latter.)
During our foray into the rap world, our attention started to wander: the siren song of art and literature and film began to lure us from the present and into the past. We spent a long time trapped in the past, and it was a good time: I miss it dearly.
Eventually we became a Past Master and realized that it was time to share our great riches that we’d earned (wholly mental riches, mind ye) with the Present, so as to plant them for the Future. Thus we wrote a number of scrolls.
Then we began to write in this here diary, which is really just one interminable scroll, blending with all foregoing attempts & likewise expecting to be fumbled in an attractive manner by the next baton recipient; but this here segment of the Everlasting has no purpose beyond what it’s always had: the unveiling of the thots of a single mind — the only friend we were ever allotted — whose imaginations are alas currently filtered thru the fool Bryan Ray. But he’s a good egg; he’s just more animal than deity.
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