I am 3 men

Every person is 3 people: What I think I am, what others think I am, and what I really am. What I really am is a fate I could never change. No one can be anything other than their true self. Trying to be what you are not is a way to lose your self respect. I see it every day. People who are so lost they cannot be reached. People who have utterly given up. They have a self-loathing that poisons any contact with others. I can look at a stranger and read his or her pain like words on a page. The aggressive young men are comical in their machismo. The hostile stares with the inflated body language is laughable. The submissive types that avoid eye contact have shrunk into safe worlds of their own making. And the scammers with their baited hooks fishing for dupes. Walk any city street and smell the fear and desperation.

9/27/2007

My job really blows. Got to stop looking for something that is not there and waiting for something that will never come. I hate what I lower myself to do to make a living. Maintaining a phony facade to coworkers that are doing the same. Hell is the impossibility of change. Maybe I have to grow a pair and get the hell out. But the choking reality of needing money to live keeps me chained. I have found it always true that men do seldom or never advance themselves from a small beginning to any great height except by fraud or force. I can't see any way out.

Mom died

When someone you know dies, the main thought is only about what could have been and never was, and with the death now can never be.

June 2 2002

Words on a page fall short. The injustice and rampant mendacity that comprise all human relations is so basically entrenched that nothing can thwart it. Perhaps there are only two kinds of people, those who want, and those who take. In a world full of predators who are morally bankrupt the meek will be ground into the dust. In american society the measure of success and worth are measured in material objects and cash.The rich live in the finest areas while the poor are left to rot. The hypocrisy emits a noxious reek. The rich feel secure in their wealth while they smugly look down on the struggles of those pathetic humans with little or no means to break the bars of smothering poverty. The rich strut in their thousand dollar suits and tool around in their shiny metal boxes but fundamentally we are still primal apes driven by basic greed to steal the bananas from the weak. Men go to church on Sunday to pray for their neighbors while the other 6 days they prey on them.

8/24/2009

There are only three ways to live: wallow in and sink beneath original sin; meekly and half-heartedly do nothing and seek nothing; and the noble and solitary path that rises above the hollow futility of the flesh. That unescapable doom of ultimate failure and fading away.

11/17/2009

The natural course of this world is decay, rust, and ultimate fading away. Life is basically a series of disappointments, tragedies, and betrayals. Man as a species is no more than a gorilla clothed in a silk suit. Money and the power that comes with it is the law of the jungle. I would say out of every dozen humans 11 are completely rotten and live and think in terms of preying on the weak and gullible.Included in those 11 are the sophisticated and subtly passive aggressive types who pursue their hunts in a clever manner. That other one out of 12 sees the hollowness of this world and knows it for what it is.He or she is truly alone, but cannot and will not stop the conviction that right is right and wrong is wrong and they cannot be blended. The conscience of this thinking ape rules his thoughts. Every ape needs to decide for himself. Temptation resisted is really the true measure of character.

A find unlooked for

Sometime in April 2010 I got a call from an acquaintance who owns an old building in South Philadelphia. The building is divided into four small apartments. A tenant in one of these abruptly left leaving behind clothes, personal effects, and copious notebooks filled with his writings. This man has not been seen by the landlord for over 4 months and is presumed by landlord not returning. The landlord gave me the notebooks thinking I might find an interest in them. He gave them a glancing read and found them the ramblings of a madman. The remainder of this blog will be the writings of this man, who I never met and was told by landlord was a white man in his late 40s of average looks who kept to himself and was a quiet tenant.