Delusioner

The punchline of life is that there is no punchline. You get to make it up.

…And it begins with a change, a sudden shift in the state of mind that becomes matter. Immersion into the world from the waters: I hear my name and I’m awake again. I look around and I’m alone again. A returning: I’ve been here before; I’ll be here again.

This past weekend I DJed for a mostly empty room, and I had an amazing time. I got to play some of my favorite new mixes at full volume. I closed my eyes and danced under neon indigo and I shone like a star. I don’t need a crowd if the energy is right. I’m playing for myself, to hear songs I enjoy but also to test my craft at the skill, to see what transitions I can pull off live and how seamlessly I can adjust to the unfamiliar equipment.

Most of my best friends were in attendance. They danced and bought me a drink and we all took pictures and caught up on each others’ lives. I felt loved and in love with love. I naturally stepped into the role of a de-facto leader. I assembled, I led, I laughed, I decided. I don’t want to hoard this power but things slow down and stumble when I’m not taking the reins. These friends of mine bristle when anyone else tries to take charge. I’ve been told the best leaders are the ones who don’t want their positions and so, reluctantly, I will be the oldest, and we will go where I want. We’ll dance and pose and perch and if you don’t like it we will walk you to the train station or wait for your car to pick you up.

There were others orbiting, have been others orbiting around my light for some time now. Two separate S.S.’s throwing beacons of light over my otherwise night-darkened open ocean. The subconscious, the 12th house.

Angel numbers on my wrist, angels in my midst. I’ve been informally advising a young woman on love and she already knows what I have to tell her: that one should not settle for a partner that does not trip over their words in their haste to compliment you; that the instinct is natural and must be trusted; that those who try to invalidate your intuition or minimize your feelings are not appropriate candidates for any kind of relationship; that desire, if it exists, should be overwhelming and intoxicating, NOT merely amusing or distracting…

Passionate formation. I am not my thoughts, or my body, or my degrees, or my failures. Our hands are tied by bonds we manufactured. Just when I think I’m free, I invent some new challenge or situation to hoist myself with. The doing comes from the being, M. told me. Locate your feelings, don’t analyze them. I’m working on it.

“Happiness is a delusion,” W. said to me. We argued for hours every week about whether or not it was ethical to destroy one’s self. For L., I sat there and I listened while she sobbed for her mother, who’s been dead for years now but still vividly haunting her. Z. and her mother didn’t seem to mind that I could see and hear them, they threw forks and challenged each other to do it, take your life, coward. You won’t. Won’t I? Eventually? T. doesn’t know how to control himself, he blurts out slurs and insults to everyone he loves, including me, I suppose. Somehow I keep smiling even when R. tells me to fuck off.

One of my clients cried out in despair: “There’s no point to anything!” I’ve heard this before; I said to myself in the dark years before anyone else confessed it to me. I could have reassured them or provided some platitude to nudge them towards feeling better. But that wouldn’t have solved the problem. I’m not a psychiatrist seeking to anesthetize people; my job is to reach into the abyssal soul and work out a solution, to strengthen the muscle of the mind. To empower. So I told them after a moment of quiet: You’re right. Because they were. There is no meaning or purpose to any of our lives. We are all mistakes. Cosmic coincidences. Us and all the emeralds in the world were made through pressure, through chemical reactions and processes which just so happened to result in beautiful things.

Everything else we’ve assigned importance to is arbitrary. We are alive because we are, and what we do with our lives is up for interpretation.

The other night we met a woman who had a series of piercings and avant-garde makeup lines which orbited and framed her eyes. I complimented her and she blushed; “No one’s ever told me that before,” she said. I don’t know how. The world must be afraid. But when I see beauty I have to say something about it.

“Of course the Gemini is at the front of the line to get in,” a bouncer said, smiling with his teeth and perusing my damaged driver’s license. Elsewhere, at G.S., I saw K. from the old days at K.R. and we embraced warmly. He had no shame about pulling us in front of the long line behind us and I had no shame in accepting it, complimenting his outfit (which he designed himself), asking where he gets his hair bleached. My blonde is now an accent, frosted tips, and I don’t love it.

But it’s not time for me to make such a drastic change yet. I’m still evolving. There are still parts of myself I’m working on.

Nostradamus, who channeled a revelation dating the beginning of the end of the world, believed that all humans have choices.

¿Does everything need a message? ¿Every post needs a snappy and relatable theme? Not I. I don’t have it in me, I don’t have enough to say left after the hours of emptying myself for others to pour into. I’m just a lot of peoples’ emotional support playboy philosopher advisor. Like a modern day oracle. And for some I am a party on two legs, a salve for dark days, a source of comfort and understanding in a world so scant of it.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since client V. realized she’s been purposeless her whole life: I said, ¿Aren’t we all? When another L. said he feels like a mistake, I answered: ¿Who isn’t? The happening of our birth may have been on purpose but who could have predicted that it would have resulted in us, specifically?

There isn’t any reason we’re here at all, we just are. Everything else is hoisted upon us by tradition or trauma or what have you. But the punchline of life is that there is no punchline. You get to make it up.

I’m very good at coasting through life, A. told me. Everything just kinda works out for me. She disagreed when I commented that this is how it is for everyone. I heard her out, now I think that it could be like this for everyone. You only have to trust your instincts and accept whatever path unfolds before you. Try not to resist or complain about what you’re given. Go for what you want. And you have to believe that it will all work out the way it should. You have to know it with all your heart even if there isn’t any evidence. Take it from me, the unsuccessor to the world, the #1 delusioner. I’m having a great time in this world of my own making. ¿Why aren’t you?