New Year's Revolution

The problem with love is this. When I look at you, I think “You deserve the best. And I am not the best.” I’m the problem. It’d be easy to say that I’m a bag of glass, that I’m a burned-down church, but I think it’d be truer to say that my good conscience and my bad conscience agree pretty much all the time these days which is confusing. My good conscience is like “I think you should kiss her.” And my bad conscience is like “Yeah. I think so, too.” And I’m like “Thanks for the fucking help, guys.” If my mind is a house of commons, then I’ve become bipartisan to the point of indecision.

Right now I’m starring in the movie Teen Wolf Fourteen: Middle Aged Wolf. I’m a compromise. Like death metal coming out of a sensible family minivan. I’ve turned into a prudent prude. My past, present, and future are all tense. I’m tight because I’m well-taut. I’m a clown at a funeral. I’m worried that I’ll find Narnia in the back of an oven when I notice that the squeal of brakes can sound like somebody screaming. I want to be a tragic figure but I’m not. So I’ve decided to move slower. For the rest of my life.

I wonder if Wolverine’s healing ability works on broken hearts. I wonder if men go crazy because they’re not allowed to be loving. I’ve heard it said that it rains on everyone’s roofs but it’s loudest on the tin ones meaning that the sensitive people hear life the most. I say that earplugs are available for fifty cents on the corner of lalala boulevard and I can’t hear you street.

What does the heart say? I don’t know. Mine says “if you want unconditional love, get a dog.” Mine says “If you’re dirty, then love me until you’re clean.” Mine says “My stomach has never been filled with butterflies. It’s full of caterpillars. It’s gross.”

I never lose my cool because you can’t lose what you never had. I’ve never been this old. On the other hand, I’ll never be this young again.

So fuck it.

Love is the most important thing in the world. I’m taking off my arrow proof vest. I’m not only going to take out my earplugs, I’m going to get hearing aids to listen to the rain. I’m going to improve myself to the best version of myself I can be so that I can feel like I deserve love. I’m going to prorogue my mental parliament and tell my conscience to start making sense. I’ll star in Middle Aged Man, an independent surprise hit feature. It’ll be my New Year’s Revolution.

And I’m starting it now.



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The Heat Death of the Universe

The universe is ending
The stars are going out
It's taken years for the light if 50s stars to reach me
My fathers stars
He watched them die as he grew up before death got him too
And now I watch the stars die
Hollywood's white dwarfs and quasars, red giants and blue pulsars blow up, go nova, and turn into black holes
Stars are said to have heat as they get famous and I am watching the heat death if the universe
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and a lot of stars die young. The Phoenix nebula. The great Ledger cloud. The Hoffman Spiral Galaxy.
Some new stars are born but these are not my stars. They belong to the the youth. I no longer know their names. Their light is faint to me.
My dad's stars preceded him to the other side. Edward G Robinson. Errol Flynn. Robert Mitchum.
And now mine are starting to go as well. Their deaths change the movies they were in. Patrick Swayze is a literal ghost.
Soon, most of my favorite movies will only hold memories of lives, records of performances from dead stars.
In the entertainment newspapers and TMZ, we watch the stars go out before they go out.
The universe grows and shrinks with every generation of performers.
It's an ebb and flow.
But I live for movies. The triumphs of those actors stories were my triumphs. Their sadness was my sadness. Besides my parents, movies were my parables, my teachers. Life imitating art.
As my teachers die, so I become a teacher.
And soon I will follow them into the blackness of space.
The universe is ending. The stars are going out.
Credits
The end
Fade to black



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