jeez, louise

I’m good and drunk tonight. While I’ve typically kept my alcohol consumption in the past week relatively even, tonight I went out with some friends to a cocktail bar and I guess I didn’t know my limits. I didn’t eat today, not much anyway, plus everything went down easy. Now I’m trying to type this and keep fucking up, the room spins around me and I’m doing my best to sync up with it. I think I’m just going to go sit on the couch and watch seinfeld and drink water until I sober up. I could certainly drunk post, but to be honest, sitting here writing this is excruciating for my proprioception and anything I write would be, at minimum, uninteresting, and at maximum, annoying, potentially vitriolic, potentially sappy, potentially manic, potentially depressive. No one wants that, least of all me. Maybe I’ll revisit, if not I’ll delete in the morning when I wake up.\

We’re back. I sat in my bathroom for an hour trying to throw up, then laid in bed for an hour because I was cold. See, this is my issue with drinking, I don’t have the necessary experience to gauge when too much is too much. And I’m a lightweight, god am I a lightweight. I had like, three mixed drinks and with no food to dilute the poison I just felt like vomiting for the past couple hours. The line between drunk and happy and miserably sick is just too fine, at least with liquor. I haven’t had this problem with my daily beers. Give us this day our daily beers and forgive us our trespass as we forgive those who trespass against us, you know. The Lord would not think fondly of liquor consumption and neither do I, any ABV above 15% is heresy and those who drink it should be pressed to death.

There’s a ladybug on my desk and I’m going to use my indomitable spirit and capacity for love to get it on my hand, one moment.

Got your ass, bitch.

I like to think the ladybug can feel my desire to entangle with it and is happy on my skin. My desk is cold, though everything is cold right now, but my hand is probably warm, and I think the ladybug was into it. Imagine being so small and cold and then a warm pad comes down from the firmament and welcomes you onto its pillowy flesh, what a day, what a joy. I like ladybugs, I had a lot of them in Birmingham. Well, now I’m looking into it, and this bug on my hand appears to be an Asian Lady Beetle, which looks similar to ladybugs but is stinkier and more aggressive and can bite and stuff.

I don’t have good luck with Asian ladies, as it were. Though this one didn’t bite me, so I suppose it depends on the individual. I’m actually quite honored it didn’t emit a stink or scratch me, it must have felt quite at home on my hand. Like I said, I like them, they eat aphids and are quite cute. Some people don’t like bugs, which is understandable, but I don’t know how you can dislike a little spotted guy like this one. So small, so fragile. I could crush it with less force than it takes me to open a tube of toothpaste or a jar of pasta sauce. But I don’t. How magnanimous, how righteous, how merciful I am, love and worship me, Asian Lady Beetle, I have judged you worthy and spared you from swift oblivion. In place of death, I offer you warmth and compassion. Truly, I am a good person who will go to heaven regardless of affiliation.

I don’t know, fuck. I try not to kill bugs often, generally. There are a couple exceptions, of course. I’ll fuck a wasp up out of self-preservation and I’ve offed a lot of c**kro*ches (dubbed jellybeans in a former life, due to the name being a trigger) because they’re ugly. No pretty privilege for these guys, they can re-enter Samsara and hope to get reborn as a Galium sphinx moth or an Asian lady beetle, something deserving of life. But alas, they were too bad in their former lives and got reincarnated as public enemy #1. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, ugly bug gets the shoe. So it goes. But pretty bugs, or I guess non-offensive bugs, they get welcomed onto my flesh like a tattoo or a piercing. I feel a weird kinship with bugs, or I guess living creatures in general that meet the minimum requirements of not being grotesque. We are both just doing as we do. I’d hate to be killed for no reason, certainly, but beyond that, the ladybug (I know it’s not a ladybug but I’m not typing out asian lady beetle anymore) operates under the same parameters I do. We have our base compulsions to eat and reproduce and not die and everything we do, in some way, serves those purposes. If it scratched me, I still wouldn’t kill it because I scratch people all the time. Can’t be a hypocrite, that’s the worst sin there is. The ladybug’s existence is as happenstance as my own and we just do the best we can while we’re here. I felt like a bug today, at the gym, climbing the rock wall with a friend. I had the ability, I think, to climb some of the easier ones. But I’d get about halfway to two-thirds up the wall, feel some natural urge to not be there anymore, some fear, and I’d rappel down. Fear of heights is a pretty tame one, I mean, humans aren’t really equipped to fall without splatting. But I don’t know, it’s hard to overcome. I’m sure it was hard for the ladybug to overcome its urge to bite me, too. But it did, so I guess it’s better than me.

I suppose it’s a narcissistic impulse within me, or perhaps a self-deprecating one, where I only feel real value when I’m of service to someone or something. I like it, not sure why, it gives my life purpose- to help out in bad situations, to be a rock to others, to be a hot surface for bugs to relax on. I really don’t know if this comes from an ego that says “I’m a good person, look what I can do for you” or from an ego that is so diminished that it only feels itself when reflected in its action’s effects on others. Who’s to say, honestly. Regardless, good things are happening to person and creature. I think my ideal life would be as a birdbath, or maybe as a hollow tree, or maybe a spoonful of sugar water. Completely devoid of ego and subjectivity, a tool for the nourishment of others. Again, no idea what that says about me, probably nothing good.

A life of service isn’t bad, though. I mean, that’s the whole Christian ideal, right, and that’s the dominant morality of the world. Of course, at this point, that mandate is covered in the self-serving veneer of wanting entry into the Kingdom and the people don’t act like that regardless. But shit, it does sound nice. I always said my ideal career would be to be Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, just learning about and doing a bunch of odd tasks. I get bored easily. And they say specialization is for bugs, sorry ladybug, part of being my species is that we can do more than eat aphids. But now that I think about it, I’d like to be beholden to something. The responsibility of care. Maybe it is a narcissistic impulse. Perhaps I should’ve been a graveyard caretaker, tending to the stones and stories and birthdays and death days and titles of the forgotten, clearing the vines and dirt that obscure their memory. Maybe I should volunteer with the Boy’s and Girl’s Club. I looked into signing up to coach bowling for the Auburn Special Olympics team, that seemed rewarding and God knows I can throw a strike. Maybe I should do that. Regardless, I’m in the eternal search for a tether to this world that supersedes my value in itself. The great decision in life is to do something or to kill yourself, you know. And so we tether ourselves to the material or the spiritual or the familial or the loved to get away from the nihilistic impulse to simply fade away. On general principle, it’s not a good thing to hurt others if you can avoid it. So, I look for tethers, places where I can see my impact and importance. I suppose it is narcissistic- or maybe it’s life-affirming? Depends on your personal philosophy, I suppose. But for me, I need the chains of human interaction, of service, of kindness to bugs to feel remotely at home in my skin.

There is one big thing I took from the Bible, I mean there are multiple, but one sticks with me. Now that I look at the verses, I’m misremembering, but fuck it, it’s like 2000 years old, I can interpret it how I want.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. ²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.²⁸ And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Now, you can take this to mean God has given man the mandate of heaven to become the de-facto rulers of Earth and elevated them above all other living things. I don’t take it this way, though, too anthropocentric. I take it in this way:

God, being God, is the general protector of human souls, he’s the shepherd guiding and protecting man through his guidance and miracles and other bullshit. The “image” we’re created in isn’t one of superiority, it’s one of responsibility. Humans innate purpose, our divine resemblance to the creator, is to be dutiful shepherds of the Earth. Be kind to other people, to animals, to plants, etc. What kind of shepherd culls unnecessarily? I don’t know, it’s cope for my own outlook on grand purpose. But shit, you need one, you need that tether. So, if internalizing this divine responsibility of stewardship is what keeps me from turning the lights off, I’m all for it. Plus, it makes me feel good, when I have a ladybug crawl on me or I feed a bird or rip out a weed. Seems like that’s what we were made for, at least.

Sorry, I’m still buzzed, so if none of this made sense, it’s not my fault. Rock climbing was fun, drinking is fine but I’m not doing liquor again, my arms are noticeably bigger, and I swear to God one of these days I will take my lofty ethics and put them into practice on a large scale. Life is long, life is short, be effectual, be kind. Love you forever, dear reader, hope all is well on this Thursday night/Friday morning.

4:51 a.m.- I guess I’ve learned a new quirk of mine. If I get drunk, I cannot sleep. I’ve just been rolling around in bed sweating by like a pig since 1:00 a.m. Weird stuff. It’s been at least, shit, 4 years since I pulled an all-nighter? I think the last one was staying up to watch some trash reality TV show and then going to get a Panera baguette once they opened. I wonder what today is going to be like.