Today's First reading

Job [`phfina] spoke, saying:
Is not man's life on earth a drudgery?
Are not his days those of hirelings?
He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.
So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
If in bed I say, "When shall I arise?"
then the night drags on;
I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.

Job 7:1-4, 6-7

— `phfina's analysis

I've been praying a lot these days, and I've been reading from the book of Ecclesiastes, `cause, you know: it fits.

Saga asked me: 'What do you want me to do?'

Because why? Because I said, don't do things for me or because of me, don't be afraid of me: write to me, or don't write to me, as you want to. And I said: 'Listen to your heart.'

Big mistake.

Her heart told her that I will move on with my life.

Well, no duh.

That's what it is, isn't it, to be alive: you're in movement. Only in death do you stop moving completely. So, Saga — wise, insightful Saga — listened to her heart, and saw me, and said, 'she'll move on.'

It wasn't the response I was hoping for. It wasn't the response I wanted.

But it was a real, heartfelt response from her.

So, now: the question is on me. What will I do?

I know what I want to do. And I know the fairy tale movie thing to do: 'And `phfina somehow righted every wrong, swept the fair maiden Saga off her feet, and rode off into the sunset where they lived happily ever after.'

But then there's the `phfina alternative. Find somebody, find anybody willing, shoot up, with shots, and shots, put her hands around my neck, and beg her to strangle me as she fucks me to death.

Go out with a Big-O bang, totally numb, whimpering into the darkness of death.

And then there's the Saga response: life goes on, and so will you.

I think. I think her response is the saddest, because there's no remorse in it. I mean, there is, and reading her words, I can feel her heart break in every word, as I feel mine, breaking with hers. But, so what? You mope, and you cry, and you then get up, take a shower, and go to work, and go to school, and life goes on, and so what.

Why?

Why, Saga?

Why did you tell me you love me? Me: weak, little, frail me? Knowing my psychoses? Knowing, in advance, what this break up was coming? And why? Because girl after girl you've left, because 'it's not right,' this forbidden love, 'it's not right.'

Did you want to be able to look back and say, 'And this one, this one was my lover for a time'? And: 'she wrote me things, such sweet things, such naughty things, that I will always treasure'?

No, you didn't say that. You took a risk, and dared, and hoped, and filled me with such hope, and life, Saga, life for more than a year where all I had had was emptiness and despair, and a sure knowledge the only way out was out, and it wasn't how, it was just a matter of when.

And then you came into my life.

But with all those girls before, when you left, and left, and left them when your conscience gnawed away at your soul that what you were doing was wrong.

Did you think, when you blurted out, in anger, that you loved me: 'This will be different'?

Doomed from the start.

There is no 'different.'

Here's why. 'Different' is 'well, she'll be different than the other girls' or 'I'll feel differently' or 'the situation will be different.'

'To be different' is 'to compare' and 'to compare' always has as its basis the thing you want to be different from.

So, what's always in front of you, for 'different', the thing you want to be 'different' from. The 'failure' and with that in front of you ...

Doomed from the start.

One thing never changes in 'it'll be different.'

You.

You look for a different relationship, a different girl, a different job, a different major, ...

but you're always there. And so what happens? Just like the last job, you get those prying curious people who annoy the hell out of you, just like the last girl 'God, I hated that when Sophie did that, would you just say what you mean and stop hemming and hawing like stupid little girl who can't make up her mind?'

They are all the same, because ...

Because you are there, and you haven't changed, and you make them into the exact same circumstance you just ran away from because you couldn't stand anymore the situation you created, and everybody was your puppets, pulled by your string.

You know this, Saga! You commented on it yourself when, in Bells are Ringing, poor Sam ate the bitter words of her own regrets about heartbreak in relationship after relationship, and here she is now with Chris, looking for something 'better' something 'different' when Sam is still the same old panther Sam, hunting down sweet, tender Chris girls, knowing they will, each and every one of them, break her heart.

'Different' doesn't work.

'Better' ... isn't.

'Change' never happens.

The only thing that works?

You.

You have to become new. Not different. Not 'not like I used to be,' but ...

New.

You have to become a person you love, admire, respect, and are happy with when you see her in the mirror.

Then what's different?

Absolutely nothing.

People are still people. It's still cold and grey outside.

But you.

You are new. And the cold and grey are ... a delight. The cold makes you feel alive, and joyful.

And people? What they do is funny, now, or sweet, or silly.

And that girl.

That girl, so intense, with her penetrating blue eyes and straight black hair and no fashion sense whatsoever, but there's something about her that ...

I've got to get that girl into my bed, because her words have already captured my heart, and I've got to fuck her brains out until she's beyond exhausted, so she no longer thinks and thinks and thinks herself into her sadness, and hold her through the night, cuddling with her, kissing her hair and she moans in her nightmares, ...

and love her.

Right or wrong?

I don't know.

You don't either. You know now, because nearly everything you do is wrong, you being you.

But when you are a new you.

Then what is right? What is wrong?

What is wrong, for me now, is living in bleakness, and agony, and is it wrong to love and to be loved?

Yes, it is wrong to love, and to be loved.

Because to love and to be loved ends up in sadness, and heartbreak, and Saga says she can't love me, it's wrong.

I can't ask her to love me. To ask her to do this would make her sad and conflicted, and if I asked her to do this for my happiness, I'm saying my happiness is more important than her life.

What do I want to do?

I want to ask her to throw aside her scruples, and to love me, and fuck her compunctions. I NEED LOVE HERE!

But what about her? Wasn't it agonizing, this period of reflection, and then this conclusion that she just so loved to be brave enough to tell me? And do I honor her, her insights, her wisdom, by saying: "Fuck that, and fuck me, right now, cause I need to be held, goddamnit, and I need you to tell me what you have told me time and again, because without you I'M NOTHING!"

What do I do? Oh, God, what do I do?

Well, right now: I'm doing the taxes. And I'm stuck, cause writing down those numbers, so clinically, and seeing all that money going out, and seeing so much less coming in.

I'm stuck.

I write down those numbers, and I measure my worth.

Is there such a thing as a 'negative yardstick'?

In this post-Ayn Rand world, our worth is in what we produce or what we consume ('mooch'). And the producers? Live the high live with soirees and fetes and hobnobbing with other producers.

And the moochers...

Soylent green.

It's starting to happen. It's been happening in the 3rd world, it's happening in the Old World. It's happening here.

And how we eat people is to force the wife into prostitution or the daughter or to become a boy so 'he' can work in the ... um, sneaker factory or farming in WoW or work in the sulfur mines or ...

Or work for the producers as fuck-me-up-the-ass-boss secretaries.

It's in Ayn Rand's novel, but it's not fiction, not anymore.

So that's what I'm doing.

And Saga is right.

I will move on.

Hell, there's already a line forming, and if there weren't all I'd have to do is go to the meat market, whichever one works, Whole Foods or a gay bar, or hell, the super bowl's tonight, and I'm Irish, a pub will do very well, and 'whistle' by batting my eyelashes and get bent over the produce counter by one of the producers.

Producers don't waste time with dinner on the first 'date' anymore. It's a waste of time and money for a good old hard fuck that is there for the taking, whether she wanted it or not, and obviously she did.

Back to taxes. I have the hard task of writing numbers in column A (income) and column B (deductible expenses) and coming up with a number in column C (taxable income) even though B is greater than A.

Not so hard to do: just be honest. I'm not a zero; no: 'zero' is too high for me.

I'm a loser.