more. its a junkies prayer.
more sex, more drugs, more airports, alcohol, donuts, pizza, rumors, office politics, partying, more and more sex.
the problem is i dont feel happy with those things anymore.
its weird.
i don’t feel happy anymore at anything. I HATE EVERYTHING honestly.
happiness left.
it packed its bags. didn't leave a note.
it just walked out
and left the door open
to let the cold in.
i sacrificed happiness to forever ACHIEVE.
now.. im emotionally neutralized.
maybe, all i want is the work.
THE IGNORING ALL THE NOISE. AND DIALING IN.
the morning coffee, cigar, sun on my face in a very cold room, laptop on the table, while im thinking deep thoughts.
the bed’s beside the table. and there she is,
sam’s asleep, she’s 19, face of an angel. wearing nothing but my oversized jacket.
she sleeps with one arm thrown over her eyes like somebody’s about to take a photo, mouth open a little, the sheet’s twisted around her leg, she’s the most beautiful woman i’ve ever seen.
i don’t know how, i dont know how she does anything really. she just does it. she exists, beautifully, without the instruction manual.
what is she dreaming rn?? i thought. maybe nothing, maybe something.
or maybe she’s flying, i taught her the lucid dreaming thing.. check your hands, count your fingers, ask the question, am i awake.
she got in four nights, easy. took me two years and a lot of weed. she just did it, the way people who aren’t broken do things.
girls like her love without calculating the odds. they’re beautiful and pure and i don’t understand them at all. im the opposite, all jagged edges and broken gears.
im out here. both hands around the throat of my own sanity. im at war with my own mind, creating new mental models, a god infinitely creating, trying to drag the whole human species forward an inch, or at least, pretending to.
thats my heaven. two people in the same room and a fight nobody watches.
she’s asleep, im at war. we’re both exactly where we should be.
is this happiness?? i thought.
no, its not. its something deeper. something that god can’t ever take away.
purpose, zone of genius, contribution, tearing of cedulas
lifting the cross, and carrying it up the mountain, for the salvation of mankind.
ITS THE DEEP WORK.
when the work is real, and there’s no thought.
mindless, primal.
an animal hunting for words.
and all that noise of the world??
parties, travel, endless fucking pursuit of feeling good. ALL DISTRACTIONS. thats for sheeps. the happy, grazing herd animals who don’t understand the glory of the hunt.
the sheeps would never understand the work of a shepherd.
my work is the part they don’t show you in the highlight reels of instagram.
that part where you stop wanting MORE, and start wanting HEAVY.
the weekly newsletter
i send it at six in the morning scheduled for 1am on a sunday, and then i go make coffee
and somewhere a machine hands my sentences
to three thousand men i will never meet.
a guy in a dorm in riyadh with eleven roommates.
a guy doing night shift in a bpo in ortigas
talking to angry americans about their internet bill.
etc.
some of them write back. thats the part that gets you.
one man told me he hadn't been to the gym in four years
and went that morning and threw up in the parking lot
and thanked me for it, actually thanked me, sincerely.
a suicidal man in zurich bought a $30 book, and said, “this is all i’ve ever needed”
a woman in la union, emails a photograph of herself naked in a bath tub, red hair pinned up, and she signs it, “yours if you ever come to sudipen”
sudipen?? jesus. i’ve been to sudipen.
a fellow in folsom sends a drawing of a bird on a nail.
“you get it” he writes. “you fucking get it”
maybe.
hard to say what a man gets in this life.
one wrote to say his father dies and he read my thing at the wake, and i sat there looking at that message on my phone. in my boxers, unshowered, with cigar ashes on my keyboard, and i understood that i have no business being trusted like that, and that i will be trusted like that anyway, so i had better be worth it, and mostly im not yet.
they don’t know im just a man in a cold room, arguing with a sentence about whether it needs a comma.
thats the whole messiah bullshit thing. all it ever was.
one god creating immortal poems. one angel asleep in the bed. a deadline he invented himself, and 3721 strangers waiting on a sunday
and the day after sunday, i’ll go downstairs at the inbox, sorting the love from the threats from the invoices, and some days the pile leans one way, other days it leans the other. and either way a man-god climbs the stairs alone then feeds paper into the mahcine.
you forgot about the big bang, and the woods, and the god of a universe
picture a man in complete darkness.
zero light, no moon nor stars
just black
stretching out forever
in every direction.
and he's stacking wood.
piece by piece.
day after day.
year after year.
FOR DECADES
his hands are raw.
splinters buried deep
under the nails.
back bent from the constant lifting.
he can't see what he's building.
can't tell if the pile
is growing
or if he's just
moving the same pieces
around in circles.
everyone else has gone home.
found warm rooms
and easy light.
they're sleeping now
while he stacks
in the black.
and he keeps going.
an ant
carrying crumbs
toward something
it will never see finished.
and then.
when the pile is high enough.
when the years have dried the timber
and the suffering has stripped the bark.
you reach into your pocket.
you pull out a match.
a single
small
match.
you strike it against your boot.
hiss.
a tiny yellow flair.
the first light in a thousand years.
you drop it on the pile.
it detonates.
the big bang.
the birth of a galaxy.
the wood catches
and the air screams.
a supernova of heat and light
exploding outward
tearing through the darkness
shattering the night.
suddenly
everything is illuminated.
the fire is a wildfire.
it eats the sky.
it turns the mud into gold.
it pulls the money and the glory
and the life
into its orbit.
gravity shifts.
the universe rearranges itself
around the heat you created.
watching a cosmos
pour out of your suffering.
you stand there.
face scorching.
eyes wide.
watching the flames lick the stars.
and you realize the truth.
the terrifying, simple truth.
that you built this shit.
out of the nothing.
out of the quiet, boring terror
of the daily repetition.
you look at your hands.
burned.
scarred.
dirty.
you ascended, not a man anymore.
these are the hands of a creator.
you are god.
god of the wood and the fire.
god of the big bang.
everyone will see the fire.
everyone will want to know
how it started.
what the secret was.
they'll write books about it.
give speeches.
make it sound
clean and inevitable.
but you
you'll remember the dark.
the years when nothing happened.
the mornings you woke up
and couldn't see
a single reason to continue.
the pile was invisible then.
even to you
but you stacked anyway.
and now
a universe exists
that wasn't there before.
because you refused
to stop stacking
before the match arrived.