The Big Fish Eat the Little Ones

Here is an anecdote that has been on my mind for some time. If you know anything about Oakland University, you will probably know that it is the home of the only Chick - Fil- A in Michigan. This is one of those facts that is deemed "fun" in nature. In its quirkiness, it has become almost a novelty selling point by university officials, as though you come for the Chick - Fil - A, but stay for the academics. The sandwiches are apparently delicious, how unique they can be as compared to the rest of the chicken based restaurants is difficult for me to fathom, but I'm told they are good. And by good, I mean that their food is good, because I have been told many times, by many others, that they, Chick - Fil - A, are bad. They are bad because every year their organization gives money to other, "non-profit" organizations that actively discriminate and persecute members of the LGBT community.

This is where the story starts: the information gets out and members of the LGBT community begin to take action. They petition, they protest, they ask for a boycott, they ask the administration to discontinue the company's presence on the campus as it is personally and deeply threatening to them. They make a good deal of noise, that apparently fell on deaf ears. The administration asked questions, but in their own haplessly annoyed way, the way that seems to wink at the perpetrator, letting them know they're really on their side. The campus dinning services on the other hand, claims to have taken action. And to their credit they did, they issued a survey, an attempt to poll the students on whether or not Chick - Fil - A should be on campus. It seems to me that such an important decision being made on the premises of a progressive institution should not be merely left up to a vote, especially since votes do not solve ethical dilemmas, but just prove they are in fact, dilemmas (I.E. we could have all held a vote on slavery and regardless of conclusion, would have still had a civil war). Beside this, the survey was downright tactical, I remember one question in particular: "are you aware that Chick - Fil - A is staffed by students of Oakland University?". Whether the answer is yes or no it does not yield whether or not you like Chick - Fil - A or not, it is just a shameless way of telling you sympathetic facts that might dissuade you of any bad it is doing because it is also doing good. This puts the University Dinning Services clearly on the side of the restaurant. To be honest, I think the members of the LGBT community would have just rather have been told to "fuck off".

To my knowledge, the restaurant still stands at the university, as a pillar for their inability to make any move that might be deemed, in the most remote way, as controversial.

This is not a rant, there is a point here. The point is, that the Google empire knows more about me than most of my family members do, but we are incredulous when we hear the government is collecting our data. My point, is that I think we need to start reassessing who Big Brother really is. I'm not trying to be cliche here, I'm not just going to aimlessly talk about the flawed system I am fortunate enough to be apart of. No. I only want to rail against what I truly feel helpless against.

For example; take the way we vote. We vote both politically and with our dollar, but in both sense of the word, I feel as though I carry no value. Despite my refusing to shop at Wal-Mart or BP or Chick - Fil - A, there are still floods of people who rush to these institutions and cast their vote every single day. On the flip side, the incentive of receiving my insignificant vote does not seem like it pushes the politician to do what I elected him to do. Meaning this, Chick - Fil - A is always going to win because people are always going to go there and the powers that are supposed to stop it have no incentive to stop it. So what do I do?

In order to live in modern society, we have to buy into a system. This system is incredibly indifferent to us, it doesn't matter how careful you buy and it doesn't matter how often you buy, at the end of the day you will always buy. In order to use the internet and talk on the phone and send letters and emails and texts, we have to share our data, our identity, with the rest of the world. We are like children playing with sharp toys, but we're worse because we recognize the toys are sharp and we're still outraged when they are taken away from us. I don't think anyone would know what to do with pure privacy, because no one would be listening.

Again, not a rant. A request. I want the NSA to take all of my data; my phone calls, my emails, my bank statements, my texts, my diaries, my receipts, my random book annotations, my grocery lists, my love notes, my birthday cards, my bathroom stall carvings, I want them to assemble it all in a bin and label it "to do". Then I want them to go through and read it, have to read it, the president and congress and the CEO of Chick - Fil - A should be forced to read every single one of these "to do" files.

Then they will have to pay attention to us, not necessarily to what we're saying, but to the fact that what we say, says a lot more about us than they are even willing to pay attention to.

Thanks for Listening,
Kyle

Writing Through Life

It's been awhile since I've written anything in this space. I started this whole endeavor so I could have a place to be brutally honest with myself as well as work on my writing ability. This past week in a half, I started a new job and I haven't had much time or energy to write anything. That being said, I couldn't stop thinking about writing, not in a pretentious way, like a "I can't stop thinking about writing because I do it and it's something cool and different that I do, look at me" kind of way, but rather in a "I need to fucking do this" kind of way. At work I keep wishing I had more to write, I think I'm going to start teaching myself how to write copy, at home I offer to help my girlfriend's siblings out with their papers. When it first hit me, that I need to write, and this past week in a half it really hit me, the first solitary moment in time when it hit me was when my little brother messaged me on Facebook with this, the blog he created. I was speechless, mostly because it is so apparently inspired from what I did here, but also because it's good, it's insightful and it has opened a window into my little brother Mike's life that I wish I could of had when I was younger. But this inspiration is not without context, this is coming from an area of great conflict for me.

When I was younger I played a lot of video games, entire summers would go by and I would hardly see the light of day. My games of choice were role playing games, mostly fantasy ones, because I loved any game with a good upgrade and because I loved being a different person in a different world. I'm sure any novice student of Psychology reading this is pining to tell me it was to escape, a means of getting away from the real world with locker room bullies and maybe I liked upgrades because I was crippling self conscious of my own abilities. This is probably true on some "sub level" somewhere in my inner psyche, but all I can say is that I thought they were fun. My cousin or my best friend and I would sit there for hours on end playing this massive game that wasn't about beating, but just about playing, about being in a world unlike your own. 

My brother has a very different gaming experience, one that is enveloped in the world of online gaming. When he plugs in, he is entering a world not unlike his own, but one full of his friends, his family (my uncle and my cousin are avid gamers) and a level of comfort that probably only exists in places he deems safe (ie not school). I think he said it best when he said: "it gives me and a lot of other people a place where they can fit in, where you don't have to be judged upon what you look like (unless you're camping in halo, no one likes a camper)". I never thought of them in this way, I only saw my brother sitting in front of a TV screen looking really concerning. It would make me nervous, it still does. It's not that I misunderstand and it's not even really about the video games, it is about his slipping grades and the fact that he doesn't seem to be able to pull away from it in order to take care of his day to day mundane tasks.

Then he shows me this blog. It is genius in a way that I was never capable of seeing in my brother before. The posts are very relevant, he is able to deal truth to himself and others fairly; he knows he needs to play less, but he wishes people could see it more of a balance issue than one of abstinence. He posted a piece on pushing your limits, but never getting lost in the conundrum of trying to be better than others. He posted an incredibly brave piece about the use of the word gay as an insult, something too few high school kids ever actually talk about. Even the title of the blog itself, the double meaning makes my English major blood rush with pride: Gaming through Lives, lives meaning lives in a game or life itself as we live it. What an accurate and fun way to portray what he's actually doing with what people perceive him to be doing. 

I guess what hits me after seeing this, is that my brother looks up to me. He sees me doing something that I love and it speaks to him in such a way that he is inspired to start a blog himself. I realized that I have to write because every day I am inspired by people I look up to doing what they love. I want my brother to get his homework done, to turn his grades around and still game, to be the exception to people's expectation of gamers everywhere. I want my brother to keep writing too, but mostly, I want my brother to game as hard as he can and school noobs and buy upgrades and fight demons and play In the Arms of the Angels over his headset whenever he kills another player's dog in COD. I want my brother to game through life in the most deliberate way he can because I know my brother wants me to write in the most deliberate way I can, which is why I need to write. I hope I can continue to do that for him.

Thanks for Listening,

Make sure you check out his blog too!

Kyle

With an Audience in Mind

This polar vortex has taken quite the toll on my finances, from what I understand, it has taken a toll on yours too. The roads this winter have cost estimates of over a million dollars in car repairs including flat tires, there have been numerous cases of expensive and in some cases irreversible damages to homes, not to mention record freezing temperatures that have taken more than enough stray animal and human lives to deem it a tragedy. If you combine the very tangible and frustrating effects of the winter on your finances with the far more intangible effects the lack of sun, stressful driving conditions and general cold weather has on your psyche you have a recipe for regional hatred. Though this polar vortex is not the first time I've come into contact with people hating on the mitten, but the rise in off hand comments and facebook outbursts have driven me to be far mar reflective on the matter. Why do so many people I know consider this state to be a trap? One that so many are willing to escape by all means short of  gnawing their leg off and even some who might be willing to do even that.

My first experience where I truly became cognizant of this phenomenon is when my very first girlfriend moved to New York to go to college. This might seem kind of late in the game to be aware that others might not possess the same sentiments towards their location as me, but having lived such a happy and relatively easy life I didn't find much cause to think of these things. Anyway, she would constantly go off on how she needed to get away from the Midwest, away from Michigan, away from this mundane culture. I would be nothing, but obediently supportive. Many of our mutual friends seemed frustrated because to them it seemed like she was touting that she was better than us simply because she moved to a cooler state (NYC). Even today I know that is not true, that she did feel a calling to exist in a fast paced setting and she in no way was condemning those who did not feel such a calling. Although she usually wrote them off as jealous, which I also do not think is correct because this was different, as I said before these people did not have the calling to move. No, it was her attack on the very culture of Michigan that hurt them. This idea that because our state and where we grew up is so much a part of us, we are also our state, we comprise it and therefore we are all Michigan as Michigan is all of us.

Today, I meet numerous people with this "get out" mentality. I can see how Michigan might feel like a trap. The hand shape that seems to be held up in response to your hopes and dreams, the fortress of massive lakes surrounding it leaving you only one congested exit and once out you find yourself in the Midwest region's flat and elusively short, but actually fairly substantial territory. Most people I know want to flock to the coasts like migratory birds fleeing the harsh cold of a culture-less land. They want beaches, interesting and attractive people, art, life. In my mind I see them wanting adventure or a journey. This of course makes me sound like I'm much older than they and know all of their hopes and aspirations as though I've been right where they were at and gotten through it all. Not true, but I have been on journeys and adventures. This again sounds like I know better them, which seems like I'm rushing to the point, let me back up:

My problem has always been pornography, it's an addiction I've struggled with for some time. I have no qualms in saying this because it is the secret of it all that makes it so difficult to rid myself of it. Anyway, I've made great strides in grappling with this addiction over the past few years. I've had a very tumultuous as well as triumphant journey and have found a deeper sense of self awareness and love than I could have thought possible. When I first began my journey I was spending most of my day wasting away in font of a computer screen and though I still struggle at times, through the action of myself and my friends I have it under control. This is the true problem, my inability to talk about it prevented me from even acknowledging it, and the true problem is not acknowledging the true problem.

Connecting the dots: if you feel a calling to move to another state with culture and fun and better weather, you feel that your problem is that you sit wasting away in a state that you feel truly displaced in. Then move. But first acknowledge your problem: talk about it with a friend or write it down. Acknowledge that maybe a change of setting is only going to give you the temporary alleviation of pain the way a vacation does, that maybe your location has nothing to do with your unhappiness at all, but your inability to recognize deep down why you are unhappy and that the tools you have to fix it do not vary from state to state, but come from within and can be accessed regardless of where you are. Again, I'm not trying to make a claim like I know better because I certainly don't. All I know, yes know because I have been there, is that acknowledging and truly seeing what is holding you back in life is the only way to take the necessary steps to getting over it.

This is ordinarily the point in which I would be done. But while I wrote this I can't help, but think of a conversation I had with a friend of mine who asked me if I had a particular audience in mind when I wrote these types of things. I do, I have in mind that I'm writing to a lot of people who are a lot like me circumstantially and so I assume they take similar things away from what I have to say. But just in case, I think a disclaimer is necessary here, if nowhere else. Disclaimer: I am a suburban, white, male individual with a slight, but very basic grasp on my own reality. I am in no way responsible if you find yourself in very different living circumstances than me and your application of what might appear to be advice does not drastically change the circumstances in which you live. Similarly if you are an individual who finds himself in the same circumstantially alike life as me and do not feel the acknowledgment of your problems has made any lasting difference in your life and you really think you should have just moved to California when you had the chance, this is also not my fault, [insert generic dad advice regarding trusting and listening to others here]. 

Thanks for Listening,

Kyle

All Love Stories Are Actually Ghost Stories

I don't believe in ghosts, at least not what others might think of as ghosts. The only time I ever believed in ghosts was when I was little, I would have this dream where a little girl would be standing in our living room pounding on our front door. She would be dressed in these old, little house on the prairie-esque pajamas and would be screaming and pounding on our front door. My whole family would walk out and see her, my step dad, being the brave one, would step over to the girl and gently open the door. We wouldn't see her run out, but we would hear her little feet crunch quickly in the snow through the darkness that in dreams seems incredibly more opaque than real darkness. Keep in mind this is a dream and it happened often. No one else in my family had the same dream and eventually I just stopped having the dream altogether, though I never forgot it. When I grew older I realized that I don't believe in ghosts, but the power of unconscious imagination. We are so unaware at our own subconsciousness' ability to pierce our view of reality that we believe that it can only be ghosts, or some other inexpiable thing. I understand many people might disagree because they believe in ghosts and nothing can shake them of that, I can respect that and I do respect that. I just don't believe in those kinds of ghosts, what I do believe in though, is not too far off the mark of what a ghost is to some people. Let me explain:

I believe in the past manifesting itself into a physical presence that haunts you. This could be via dreams, or dejavu, or what we interpret as ghosts, or the last few unfiltered thoughts we have before we fall asleep. These are the most frequent for me. These instances, when you're faced with fairly large periods of time with no access to distraction. This could be when you're in the shower, before you fall asleep, just zoning out, et al. In the response to potential boredom the inner most parts of your mind will often project these memories in a mad dash effort to distract you. Often these memories have to be traumatic enough to catch your attention, but not so traumatic that it's uncovering things that have been buried in your mind forever. For example, moments before I fall asleep or into prolonged awake unconsciousness, instead of getting memories of the few and far between near death experiences I've had in life, I get ex girlfriends. Floods of memories of ex girlfriends. Generally, if I'm not sleeping or about to sleep I snap myself out of it, but it's usually too late; the damage, the haunting, has already been done.

Each of the three of my former relationships ended in something terrible I did, as well as several terrible things that I did in the course of them. When I'm bored and rely totally on my subconscious to kick in the way I trained it to, it usually gives me cut scenes of me cheating on them, saying something terrible and callous, lying through my teeth, all in an effort to leave one and get with another. All the times I said I love you dashed against the ground as I crash and burn the relationship in a maddening attempt to get out of it without being honest with myself. This is coupled with the total reality of these people in my day to day life. I may see them across the room at parties, catch glimpses of them on social media or via mutual friends. In the sense that I completely avoid contact with them (and they with me) it is like these three women are ghosts; they haunt my subconscious and appear in subtle uncommunicative ways in my day to day life. They are constant reminders of  my deepest human failures and they are completely unavoidable. I know this because two of them don't even live in the same state as me and yet they seem so much closer, if not in tangible proximity, then in a realm that would put any seance to shame.

In many traditional ghost stories, the reason for the lingering spirit is that it has some unfinished business that is keeping it from transcending to wherever the hell ghosts go. This could mean they need to pass on some warning, or expose who really stole the family jewels, or restore honor to themselves or others, or be a better parent or whatever. Yet it seems my experience with ghosts are the ones that Scrooge encounters in a Christmas Carol. These ghosts do not have any duty to themselves, but rather a duty to expose other's flaws in some existential way and these ghosts don't go away, but are instead sentinels, keeping tabs on whether you're living the life you promised that you would as you got on your knees and sobbed and begged a second chance for. In this way, those that are haunting me are saving me from this selfish condition I've been living in, showing me that I was not born doomed to this miserable and insatiable selfishness, but that I have a means of choosing to live a different and responsible way. In other words every time I accidentally see or think about one of my ex girlfriends, it is their way, my own mind's way, of showing me my grave; cold, dark and alone, then pointing me down the right path.

And of course they don't know this or do this willingly, I'm fairly certain they all hate me and would not like to think of themselves helping me in anyway. I have nothing, but immense respect for my ex girlfriends, they are all amazing people and not one of them deserved to be treated the way I treated them. On that note, Scrooge's life was made all the better on the backs of the people he screwed over. This is something I can choose to dwell on or, as I prefer, cower in fear of.
Whew.

Thanks for Listening,
Kyle

On the Ethical Question of Zoos

Most people who know me know that I have a very good, near impeccable memory of events (as opposed to dates or more trivia type of memory i.e. I would be terrible at jeopardy). This is not me simply patting myself on the back or trying to balance modesty with honesty. It is a cold fact that my memory is great. For example, I remember this from when I was very, very little: when I learned that we, as humans, should not drink out of dirty glasses after I had poured milk into a glass previously used for orange juice, the small remnant of pulp and saliva mixed with the milk making a concoction that makes me skeptical of both of these beverages even today. This is the sort of memory that we don't recall, but that we wonder about every time our stomach lurches when we see unclean glasses. The point of all this is to build credibility when I describe my first visit to the zoo, which might be seen by some as a "there is no way you could have known that as a child" moment or a "that's just hindsight" moment more specifically. Regardless:

I remember my first visit to the zoo, when it was just my mother and I. I remember the car ride being longer than it actually was and being incredibly excited to see "the animals", which I thought would all just be gallivanting around main walkways for me to pet and talk to and eventually take home. In the car I was drawing what probably looked like sad attempts at drawing people in Easter Bunny costumes, but to me was every animal the zoo would have to offer. I also distinctly remember the drawing making me sick and having to stop at a Burger King to walk around and also having to stop drawing for the remainder of the car ride, this again is only for credibility purpose. When at the zoo, I actually don't remember seeing too many animals, I remember the Tiger, the lions, the otters (who so appealed to my childlike sense of wonder I was convinced had cognizance beyond what people attributed to them), the elephants and of course, my favorite, the Rhino (the capitalization is actually a typo, but I'm leaving it, because I was that impressed by rhinos). My mom had to drag me away from the rhino exhibit, I remember her only appeal that eventually worked was telling me that the other animals would be sad if I didn't see them too. Curses mom, you had to appeal to pity. I remember feeling so much joy, I remember having felt like I learned a lot, but it is impossible to discern exactly what I learned now and I remember being sort of shocked that animals were there, in front of my face...walking around.

What I don't remember is sadness. I don't remember being upset that the animals were in pens or cages or "exhibits". Yesterday at work I was discussing zoos with some coworkers, one was named Liz, which I say now only because of her insistence that I not refer to her as an "unnamed coworker" when writing this. Her argument was the appeal to pity, one that I am so prone to fall victim to. She is disgusted with the institution of zoos, not that they house rescued animals, that's fine, but that they breed animals for the soul and solitary reason of being looked at in a cage, for mere entertainment. And please, when I say appeal to pity I do not mean that it was some half caste argument that only tried to evoke feelings, her argument was based in fact, that animals are bred and born in the zoo, to exist in the zoo and live their lives for our pleasure, education and entertainment, which is unfair and therefore should factually appeal to our emotional side, spurring us to hate zoos. 

And I think it's a fair point, one that another unnamed coworker and I could not seem to dissuade her of. Not for lack of trying either, we brought up article after argument after article after google search. For example, it is true that tigers in the wild have problems with inbreeding due to humans destroying all of their habitats, in order to try and remedy this problem there is a complex and massive global network of zoos breeding tigers in order to add variety to the gene pool and subsequently stabilize the tiger population. The same is true for other endangered or ecologically vulnerable species such as rhinos, polar bears and elephants. Apparently though, according to Liz, this is not worth the animal living life in captivity, which is a hard viewpoint to change. Should humans be playing God and raising animals for purposes they see as important?

My answer is still yes. Although in an idea world I would like to see massive ecological reform, habitat rehabilitation and people letting tigers exist naturally in the wild, it is simply not happening. The fact is we would lose the entire population of tigers if the zoo did not launch such expansive measures to ensure their continued survival. I am of the firm belief that if one part of the human population is being so disgustingly reckless to have endangered or eliminated the existence of an animal, it is the ethical and moral responsibility of other sectors of the human population to, in an act of accountability, do everything in its power to stop or reverse any process or action that led to this.

IN SHORT: I am willing to posit that the life of a tiger in a rapidly declining environment, a life wrought with starvation and lack of available mates and shelter, in other words a life devoid of food, sex and shelter, is worse - significantly, irrevocably, horrifically worse - than an artificial life in which all of these necessities exist. Is this argument enough to dissuade Mrs. Elizabeth George? Probably not, but it isn't for her lack of reason, it is in fact because she is a kind person that simply wants the best for animals and people alike and no one can blame anyone for such a desire.

ASIDE: The reason for the story in the beginning is because I want everyone to know that 1) I am an avid animal lover 2) I have sympathy for the appeal to pity as evidenced by my mother's ability to use it against me at the rhino exhibit and 3) I thought it was kind of cute and memories always help me get started with these things. My reasons for explaining the reason behind the story in the beginning are fare more numerous, but include my wanting everyone to see this piece as more of an argument than an opportunity to talk about myself. Which I am simply doing now. Without further adieu, here is an awe inspiring picture of a tiger: 

Wow.

Sources can be viewed by clicking linked text or alternatively clicking the below links: 

http://www.futurity.org/inbreeding-threatens-indias-wild-tigers/

https://www.zsl.org/education/the-modern-zoo/how-breeding-programmes-work,100,AR.html

Thanks for Listening!

Kyle   

The Hardest Prompt

I usually come up for ideas about what to write about in the shower. This is mostly because there is nothing to do in the shower and for some reason pure, disciplined thinking is easier to do. So a couple of showers ago I got it into my head that I wanted to write something about suicide. I had planned it out, I'd write about people who've had an impact on me, who have also committed suicide and then, through the course of writing, get to some higher understanding of the matter. 

Because this is the way it works. For me. I'm sure it's very different for other people, but I rarely ever have the conclusion already hammered out. Usually I just regale a story and via writing reflect on the answer. Usually writing the experience or story down is a good way to organize my thoughts and from organized thoughts, opinions are born. This is not new, any high school student who has had similar language arts assignments could tell you this, but my reason for telling you is that suicide, I've discovered, is an entirely different animal. 

"Suicide is a hard line subject" "suicide is difficult to write about because..." "my first experience with suicide". These are my first three attempts at writing about the subject. Each individual premise when looked at as an introductory sentence seems far too juvenile to breach anything complex or lead me to anything profound, but conversely each premise is not necessarily a bad thing to write about. Suicide is a hard line subject because you have the ability to speak so juvenile about it that you could cross any number of lines that might speak to you as a person without you even knowing it. Suicide is difficult to write about (beside the obvious) because those of us who have never been so close to it get lost in trying to capture and describe the feelings associated with it and ultimately just end up talking about ourselves.

My own first hand experience with suicide is when my uncle committed suicide when I was in the 7th grade, it is in fact so hazy of a memory that the only thing I remember concretely is coming home from the funeral and just pacing around my room looking for something. I was not sure what I was looking for even at the time, thinking back I might just have been looking for something to do to distract me from the awkward sadness that I seemed to so bluntly be feeling, regardless I never found anything and the memory just stopped like someone cut the film strip to it. I remember crying too, but mostly not knowing what to feel, so just feeling awkward, then guilty because I thought I wasn't supposed to feel that.  

A lot of famous people who had an effect on my life also committed suicide. I made it through high school's crippling phase of self consciousness by listening to Kurt Cobain wail about teen apathy. I never really came to be an art lover, but there was something that always touched me about Van Gogh. I've never been able to read Hemingway without feeling a deep pang of relevance in my life, a feeling that is trumped only now by David Foster Wallace, who also killed himself. I actually don't know if this constitutes as a lot, but it seems like it is compared to the number of famous individuals that did not commit suicide.

Over the span of my life I've met so many feelings in the face of suicide. I've seen guilt that is so inconsolable that every attempt to do so seems too morbidly bad to work. I've seen indifference whether genuine or not didn't matter because I've seen indifference played as genuine, but coming off as not as well as the other way around. I've seen sadness too, but that goes without saying. 

What I've never known, is how to feel about suicide. I don't think anyone sits down and decides how to feel, I understand that's not how it works. But then, I've only ever felt kind of awkward around it because it didn't make me sad. I even tried to feel sad. It's not like I didn't miss my uncle or feel bad for my step dad or feel a certain measure of pain at the loss, but the suicide itself was like something else, something that just hovered over everything. In other words I was sad my uncle died, but the fact that it was suicide did not make me any more or less sad. Try as I might I couldn't convert the sadness of the loss into the sadness over the suicide. 

This is essentially why writing about suicide almost seems like a frivolous task now, simply because I can't think my way into feeling a certain way like I can about freedom of speech or life after college. I wish I could write to David Foster Wallace and tell him thanks for everything, I wish I could tell my uncle that I never stopped praying for him and I think if he were alive right now we would have known each other better. But for now, writing these things down is just organizing them, next time I think about suicide I'll probably reread this and just kind of feel better.

      

Thanks for Listening

Truly,

Kyle

I Love You Like The IRS Loves...

Ours is a thoughtless love.

I love you like a fat man working in internal revenue loves cake, not for any stereotypical reason having to do with his weight, but because the presence of cake means a distraction from the usual routine that so fails to distract him from his self confidence issues. Our love is not warm enough to heat the overly air conditioned confined spaces of the office, but it is enough to sustain you like the overabundance of coffee you drink, partially to stay awake, but mostly to warm up. 

Our love requires zero thought processes, it is done day in and day out like a typical 9 to 5 job that has been worked for more years than you would care to celebrate with an anniversary. It's thoughtlessness and repetition are not genetic or predetermined or even deliberate, but rather practiced, not rehearsed, but practiced. Not like practicing hockey or baseball or the "I think I can, I think I can" of childhood practicing to get better, but more like the way we've gotten better at standing on two feet because we've done it all our lives and, excepting any tragic circumstances, will continue to do for some time. 

"This is what's wrong with America" they'll think and say and blog about. They'll think our love is the reason for the divorce rate because it doesn't have any thought behind it, because to them, the lack of consideration seems wrong. But they're wrong. Divorce and "what's wrong with America" and marital affairs are all for the adventurous. It's for the people who consider love and marriage and relationships a toy that can be broken. It's for people who consider their love at all. And maybe we thought about it in the beginning, we questioned why it was there and what it's purpose was, where we were going, where were we going, so many W's with question marks. But that time is long gone.

When we tell each other we love one another it is so automatic it could potentially be delivered by a telephone operator through static cracking lines twice a day like abandon machine operated church bells keeping the neighborhood awake and giving them the feeling of guilt despite knowing that the church is empty and even if they wanted to could not attend. Could not show up early to and take their seats at the front row out of some unconscious desire to fit in that these types of people have felt since grade school. This is our love. It is not our conscious decision to sit in the back of the classroom so we can goof of nor is it our conscious decision to sit in the front to the classroom to better take notes, but rather a built in seating chart that has been constructed over the course of years.

Years of waking up at the same time every single day to do the same things every day to meet the same people everyday to eat and drink the same things everyday to fall asleep next to the same person every night. Our love is thoughtless, but it is felt. Felt in such a way that it is automatic and requires no thought. Everyone else seems so lonely, trying to think and understand their love, like fireflies, who have always seemed to look so far away from ever finding one another. It is not automatic like God's love, which at times feels so automatic and unconditional that it might almost cease to feel special for some people. But an automatic a tax calculator, taking in every aspect of your life as though it's affect on your life is the simple addition and subtraction of a number. 

That's what it feels like, overwhelming. So thoughtless because to try to consider the mathematical trajectories and economic theories alive in your taxes, the mind numbing crap your CPA goes bonkers over, is so impossible that it is best to just stop thinking and let the enormous effects wash over you while you continue on with your life. This is how I love you, so recklessly thoughtless and automatic that to even consider what it is I'm doing and saying is so irreversibly more reckless that I would rather just let you wash over me, like a tidal wave unconcerned with the fiscal emergency budget of the top five most likely to respond industrial countries as it washes away everything we have built together.