UNDERGROUND MAN SELF-DIAGNOSIS AS A SUBSTACK POST
BROKE WOKE BESPOKE CHOKE
Listened to a podcast and I thought it seemed familiar. Thought maybe I had listened to it before. I paused the podcast. I checked my internet history. I had not listened to the podcast before. I continued listening to the podcast. It sounded so familiar. Sounded like a memory. I opened the minimized YouTube video of the podcast and the video showed two men in split screen who were both me. Oh yeah I recorded this podcast with myself last month and it wasn’t in my internet history because I was there, I was there. My memory versus crtl+h. A battle of wits. Me rocking back and forth in a house by myself no matter the outcome.
A historian and a journalist got into a fight over who gets to keep their story straight. They died fighting in my internet history which is a folder of drafts written by someone else who looks like me hours ago. Each moment a flower blooming from the center of a larger flower. They both never stop growing and the blooms are ceaseless. I really thought I was going insane, the shoe finally dropped.
But there are historians, so they say, there is a stable platform. So they say. Dreams squeeze memories through a little hole and sometimes they change shape. Sometimes the memory is made of igneous rock and it leaves the dream hole gaping and jagged. I know every internet post is not about me but they sure like to pretend they are. They hop and skip holding hands singing a song that only I know, I made up the song that the internet posts written by other people are singing alongside one another. I sang the song in my head during a shower and the internet posts know all about that.
I have to go for walks for my own sanity. I have to do it every day or else the dreams and memories and internet posts start fighting. I remember being a teenager lying on the driveway with an old friend looking at the stars and she said: “I hope we are friends when we grow up.” So did I.
And here we are. Years gone with a glance. A shrug that gets steeper and steeper and makes me claw into the flesh of your back, the ground, the earth.
There is a platform, it’s easy to lose sight of it, but I know there is a platform. You can’t build it and if you think you can then you are swimming in a dream. You can return to the platform. You were made to walk and move. Nietzsche would only believe in a God who dances. So would I and that is why I believe in God. We were made in His image. God is a fire.
