Misery NOT Company

They say, whomever they are and if you figure out who "they" are please let me know because I've several not so nice things to say to "them", that misery loves company. People use that expression like it is supposed to really mean something, and that it has some deep transcendent meaning that will make the person who is miserable feel better. Or that it will explain why the sad sack bastard who is miserable is trying to make other people around him or her miserable as well. "Misery love company" they will say and nod knowingly. Never mind the fact that usually the miserable bastard isn't exactly having the time of their life by being miserable. "They" just use that tired trope to explain why the miserable one is trying to make the world miserable with them. Well, they are wrong.

True misery, the type of misery that has you looking for methods to find your way out of the world in the least painful but quickest way possible does not in fact love company. In many ways, company is the very last thing that misery needs. It doesn't help, all the fake pity, and the "it will get better, I promise" lies told to the miserable one as ways and means just to get them to come to work and do their job. I mean you may be miserable,but can you get me those TPS reports before Monday, and try not to off yourself over the weekend, "yeah thanks."  The miserable comes to work, because what is the alternative? To spend the day in some coffin they call an apartment, staring at the walls as they begin to close in? To go to the track, and hope the ponies run swiftly? Even if they do, a true miserable bastard will get little joy out of picking the right horse. They will, if they are truly miserable, and it is deeply rooted enough find a way to explain that because their horse came in, it probably means there is a piece of Chinese space junk about to land on their head and even the karmic balance out, and it will probably happen on the way to cashing in their winning ticket. Thus, the balance of misery is complete.

Good things happen to miserable people all the time, they get co-workers to bring them donuts, they get told they look good in that dress, or that when they smile it lights up the room. They have people remind them of their humanity, and that in spite of themselves and their current condition, they are, in fact, a decent human being that has value far beyond what they believe. They have people, whether they want to believe it or not, that are really, truly (as much as any other human can be) on their side. People who will take up for them, people who will try to help them (again as much as any other human can) slay the demons that are causing the misery in the first place. They have people who will pour them several drinks into the glass of "calm the fuck down" and sit with them while they get heavily intoxicated on its contents. They have people that, after all those drinks, will steer them out of the bar, after they have calmed the fuck down, as the miserable one tries very hard to keep their shit together and either not fall or break down in public. They have (if they are lucky) people who will, for reasons passing understanding, watch that break down happen (and it will happen, it has to happen) in private, and remain beside them as the miserable one is having a come apart like a Frenchmen at the fall of Paris. They even have people who will provide them the most basic of human comforts. The type that people don't talk about at polite parties.


Of course the miserable one knows this, they are miserable, not blind, deaf, or dumb. The misery has not robbed them of their ability to appreciate the good people that are trying to take the "misery loves company" proverb and change its narrative. The actual theory behind the proverb is that miserable people want others to be miserable as well in the hopes that it will make them feel better to see that they aren't the only ones miserable. That is a load of bollocks. The miserable one doesn't need to know that other people are just as miserable as they are. Again, they are miserable not stupid. The miserable one(s) understand that the world has enough shit sandwiches to go around for us all, and that they aren’t the only one taking a bite of it. That is the difference between being miserable and being pathetic. It isn't a contest to see who can hit rock bottom the fastest. There is no prize for being the most miserable, or rather if there is, you sure as fuck don't want to earn it. If such a prize existed, and thank fuck that it doesn't, I seriously doubt it would be the "cure" to that person's misery.

Misery is a temporary losing of the plot, a side road on life's journey that may be a bit more bumpy than you'd like, but here you are fucking miserable. This is not the Lewis and Clark expedition, you do not need a team of mapmakers, guides, porters, and camp followers to come with you on this trip. If you do, then you aren't doing it right. Those well wishers, and supportive people who you left behind on the turn down misery lane, will be there (if you are lucky, and if they are truly supportive) when you find the end of the road. You don't need them to, and if you are any sort of decent human being, you don't want them to come on this journey with you. Write them letters from the wilderness of misery, drive the point home that you are on a solo journey of misery, and have them pray that tomorrow gets much better. If they care they will, if they don't, well fuck them they aren't your friends to begin with, and they can rot in a hell of their own making.

That trip through the wilderness of misery is fraught with all sorts of pitfalls and all types of peril. There will be places that will appear to offer respite from the horrors of misery, places that seemingly offer you a quick way out. A short cut to a happier place. This is an illusion, misery is a tricky bitch. It (she? he?) knows just the things to put in front of you to trick you into wandering even further into the brambles they have constructed for you. Misery is a clever whore, always has been, always will be. Generally, misery is smarter than you are, and that's a problem. Misery will allow you to cry for help if you want to, but remember she is smarter than you. Those cries for help that you think are clear as day, misery will twist and turn into something far, far different. Just for fun, misery will provide you with images of people (and they are just images, they aren't real) that seem to offer you an escape from her clutches. Another illusion, a trick, a way to get you to believe that misery does love company, and that here is another soul on the same path as you, that can provide you a modicum of warmth, and support to get you out of your misery. It's a trap, such a person doesn't exist. This is a fan favorite of misery, allowing you to believe the horrible illusion that another person can save you from misery. They can't, and you can't let them. It is a siren's song that is very, very difficult not to listen to, but like the crew of Odysseus' galley, you need to stuff you ears with wax, and not listen to any type of song that promises a way out of misery.

The trials and the trails of misery are yours to transverse alone, if you are truly aware of the nature of misery, you understand and accept this. Acceptance, as "they" say is the first step, and you are going to have to take a lot of steps to get out of the trap misery has laid for you.  However, misery, the true misery that if you are unlucky enough to be suffering does not love nor want company. True misery is like Linus' security blanket, it is something that you wrap yourself, and yourself alone in, and work out alone and do not share. You may try to talk yourself out of your misery in the company of others, but they are not on the journey with you, they are signposts, way stations on your intensely solo journey out of misery. It is a trip that must need doing, and only you can do it, and only you can want to do it. Other people can smash you over the head in their attempts to get you to "snap out of it" they can cajole, beg, and plead for you to come to your senses, and see the light (as it were), but it is a trip you have to walk alone. Try to reach out for help, and misery will be there waiting to make things worse for you. That is what misery does, makes things worse. It is the sole reason for misery's existence. I've never seen a situation so bad that it cannot get worse is one of misery's mantras.

The weight of the world is not on your shoulders, the world doesn't really give much of a fuck about you, sure it is kind of out to destroy you, but the world doesn't have to try that hard, and generally if it waits long enough, you will probably destroy yourself anyway. That weight, that Coleridgeian albatross following your ship doesn't have to end up around your neck. Your can is not empty, don't rattle it too much, or people will grow tired of the noise though they might (or might not) be too polite to tell you. Think of it as a rebuilding project, misery has torn you right down to the ground, and you need to rebuild yourself and the image of yourself (for you and others) from the bottom up. Erect scaffolding to facilitate the construction process. Your enemies (misery and others) will deride the scaffolding as an eyesore, and try to shake it to the ground. The scaffolding will, eventually, collapse, and perhaps it will crush you, but if that be so, let it happen when the edifice of the reconstituted, liberated you is already standing. That time, whether you know it or not, is coming, for not only strength is on your side, but truth is also.

Serge and his Apples II

"She told me you'd be here, drinking yourself into oblivion."  I looked across the booth to see the latest "fresh hell" that had wandered into my life and sighed. "What is it with you people and your unattached pronouns "she"?" He looked perplexed, and eventually replied "the one with br...., stop it boy! I fairly shouted, I fucking know what colour eyes your "she" has, and I knew she'd send you, and if either you or her had any sense, you would have known that I knew that already. For fuck's sake how big of a drunk does she think I've become?" I put up a forestalling hand, as I could see that he was actually about to answer my rhetorical question about the level of my non-sobriety. "It's Monday boy, and I knew she would send you around today, so let's not waste any more breath on the subject of who (or what for that matter) she is. Hopefully she also told you to keep your gob shut, and let me do most, if not all of the talking, please just nod if that is the case, voices are a bit much for my head to take at the moment, or rather any more voices." He arched an eyebrow at that, but did as he was told and nodded once in affirmation. "Good, now that we've reached a partial understanding as to how things are going to work, maybe I won't have to stick a fork in your forehead." Again he nodded, quick learner it seemed, probably learning all sorts of things quickly, but that was no longer my concern, I had other more complicated problems to deal with that this latest idiot of inquiry, but I certainly wasn't about to share that with him in order for him to share that with her.

"You're here, just like the last one, about Serge and his apples. Whether you know it or not." He looked a bit confused and replied "Serge? Apples? Who the hell is Serge, and why would she send me to buy apples?" I laughed out loud at that. "She didn't tell you about Serge? Or his apples? Or that eventually that is the point of her sending you?" He nodded his reply again indicating that she had sent this idiot on his "mission" grossly under-informed. "For Fuck's Sake! Do I have to educate the entire free fucking world on this every time your mistress(es) feel the need to pump me for information?" I raised another forestalling hand, "that is a rhetorical question, boy and you don't need to bother making things worse by replying in the affirmative." Sighing, I continued "fine let's start near the beginning, since it seems I am like Sisyphus destined to push this rock up the same fucking hill for all of eternity. But, before I start his long tale full of sighs, I want to make sure of something from you."
"What is that?" he queried "I want to make sure you remember it or if you can't I will give you pen and paper so you can make some notes to write down, I grow weary of telling the same story over, and over again to you lot." He nodded and said "I'll remember it, can't promise you, that others will but I will remember it." "Fine," I said "I guess that's about all I can ask for or expect."

"Our boy Serge, which isn't his real name, was just a normal lad, well as normal as any of us can be in this madhouse we call a world, and around oh twenty years ago you wouldn't have ever thought Serge would turn into the 'man with the apples' that he is today. It isn't like he started to run with the wrong crowd or anything. In fact, Serge is a bit of a loner, and crowds bother him. I think it is his intense dislike of people that might play into his almost pathological hatred of crowds. But, that is his and his therapist's problem (if he has one, he certainly could use one or three). The process that got Serge behind that apple cart was a slow one, it wasn't some Kierkgaardian earthquake that hit him one day while he was singing show tunes in the park. It wasn't some piece of Chinese space junk that landed on his life and flattened it for miles in every direction. No, it was an slow, subtle process of the little things that most of us fail to notice, but that for Serge started to add up to the sum of all its parts."

"Let me know if I'm going too fast for you boy, and by the way this is thirsty work" I waved what was now my empty pint glass towards him and then the bar "be a good lad and stand me a pint, I know she can afford it, and I know she knows it's the price of doing business with me." He nodded and said "yeah she mentioned that when she handed me the money, she said you'd need some lubrication in order to talk." He got up, and walked to the bar while I pondered the double meaning of 'lubrication' and whether or not I was going to bring it up to him. I decided against it, no need to antagonize her even further I thought. He slid back into his side of the booth with our pints, and I nodded my thanks. "Since we had to start at the beginning of this story, I certainly hope she was generous with our allowance for the lubrication. He smiled "she wasn't stingy, and I would imagine that if her money runs out, and I have to use my own she will reimburse me. Oh I am sure that she will lad, I am sure that she will."

"Anyway, back to our boy Serge. He is a clever fellow, but he is also a bit too narrowly focused, which at times makes him look surprisingly stupid. I know it's a bit of a oxymoron but he is what we would call a "clever fool." It makes sense if you know him, but I seriously doubt you'll ever get that chance, so you will just have to take my word for it. Serge is mostly a closed book to new customers now days, and I would not recommend you trying to cozy up to him. He would, more than likely, figure out who sent you, and things would not go particularly well. Serge's path to the glory of his apple cart was not a smooth one, and he spent a long, long time wandering the "desert" as it were. He had, still has, an unique ability to make enemies, and he compounded that talent by making enemies in the highest places he could find. He is fond of saying that in order to judge a person correctly you shouldn't judge them by their friends, but by their enemies, and he made some pretty powerful enemies in his time. Remember I said he was a 'clever fool' and his enemy list is proof positive of the 'fool' part. Still, somehow he survived his wanderings in the desert, and though he would never admit it, it probably made him a better, stronger person in some ways. Sadly, in other ways it also made him a proper cunt, and it is that dichotomy that is central to figuring out Serge as a person. One example is that he will go out of his way every year like clockwork, to buy someone, who publicly at least, seems to loathe him, a birthday present. If you ever want to figure him out try to figure that bit out. I mainly gave up trying to sort out what makes him tick (if anything), and just try to stay out of his way for the most part. That is until, your mistress and others send idiots like yourself to bother me in my golden years."

"Even when he was wandering in the desert, a desert that he was responsible for putting himself into in the first place I might add, Serge was making progress. He probably didn't even realize it himself, because again he's a fool, but he was. Wisdom, if it comes at all, comes late, and that is doubly true for our boy Serge. Don't get the impression that Serge is an idiot, he's not, he's just too narrowly focused for his own good, and deep down he expects more out of people than he is willing to admit, and when they 'fail' him, it usually surprises him, even though he would never admit that out loud.  He will loudly proclaim his hatred of people, then turn around and trust one with something of major importance. It makes as little sense to me as it does to everyone. It is the fundamental flaw (or the multitude of flaws that he has) in his character. I don't believe he has ever really resolved it, and he probably never will. He is torn between the polar opposite ideas of trusting no one, and trusting everyone. And it seems he can't reconcile the two, or find a happy medium. More the fool to him."

I put down my freshly emptied pint glass, and gave him a look "don't gawk boy, go to the damn bar, get us another pint, and be generous ask them to 'leave space in one of them'. "They will know what that means, even if you don't." He toddled off to the bar, and I began to wonder if perhaps he couldn't hold his liquor. That was going to be a problem if he was to continue to listen to the story of Serge and his apples. He managed to make it back to the booth, and I took the one with space, and topped it off with the contents of the flask I had in my coat pocket, took a long drink of it. "Good stuff, boy. If I liked you more, I'd share, but I don't so I'm not. Also, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps you might not need to slow down on your drinking the story isn't even half finished yet. In fact, let me help you out." I reached across took his pint from in front of him, and downed about half of it in one gulp. "There you go, don't say I never did you any favours lad." He took the now half empty pint glass back with a morose stare, and said "yeah she cautioned me against trying to go pint for pint with you. Guess she was right." I laughed "that she was boy, that she was indeed. Now, settle down, nurse your drink like it was your favorite dying auntie, and pay attention."

"Your attention will have to wait another day boy." Both he and I looked up to see who the intruder into our little chat was, and why he was being so very rude to people clearly engaged in a private talk. I let out a long, deep sigh. "Hello, Felix how are you doing today, killed anyone yet?" The tall, thin and exceedingly dangerous man that I had addressed, looked down his aquiline nose, and replied. "Not yet, GI, but it is just barely past 2 p.m., so the day is young. You know we like to visit people we need to talk to after dark." I laughed "well I guess that makes me a special project then huh?" It does indeed GI, it does indeed." I looked around the bar, and noticed them "I see you've brought your usual playmates with you." Felix, or as we call him 'Iron Felix' wasn't the muscle type, make no mistake. He is a bastard, and will make your life a misery, but usually he won't have to lay a hand on you to do it, it made him even more of danger than if he had just punched you in the mouth like any honest thug would. I gave a little wave to Felix's companions, Viktor, and Lazar, large men with very little skill in the finer art of communication, and even less in the way of a sense of humour.

Felix glanced at the boy, "run along to your mistress, and tell her that GI will have to finish his sad tale of woe and neglect some other time, for now he has other, more pressing business with me and my people." I nodded over to the boy "it will be fine, Felix here is an icy bastard, and loves to put the fear of god or devil into people, he's good at it so he does it a lot. I figure his mother didn't love or hug him quite enough as a child, which is why he's such a cunt, but that isn't really the point at the moment. Tell your mistress that I've not become a grave man yet, she will understand. Maybe she will fill in some blanks for you before she sends you back for the rest of the story of Serge." Felix rolled his eyes at this "you daft bastard, you're telling this whelp" pointing at the boy "about Serge and his Apples? You've gone madder than Sully thinks, and he thinks you're round the twist already."

I sighed "Felix stop being such a fright, you'll give the lad a heart attack or a complex. I'm just telling him what she wants to know, and you already know. It's not like I'm giving away the keys to the castle." I looked at the boy, "trundle along lad, I'll be right as rain, after I talk to this lot. Just a minor misunderstanding of the ways of the world among old friends. We are old friends aren't we Felix?" He shrugged "I've known you a long time, and haven't needed to kill you yet." I smiled "see lad, for Felix that's almost family." The lad got up, turned tail, and left in as much haste as a husband whose wife has found the naughty pictures of his boyfriend, and 'needed to talk to him'." I stood up, "lead on Felix, and tell Mutt and Jeff there will be no need for their unique brand of persuasion. I've known Sully has been wanting to talk to me for a week. I was beginning to wonder what was taking him so long. Let's go and get this beating over with, I've other things that must needs doing afterwards."   To be continued ...

Serge and his Apples

"She told me I would find you here" the skinny kid who just slid into my booth on a bleary Thursday afternoon said with some smugness. "She? who in the actual fuck is she boy? That is what the stricter among us call an unattached pronoun. I know and have known a lots of "shes" in my life boy, and I've no time for guessing games with some whelp such as yourself." That took a bit of the smugness out of him, and he tried again "s.s.she said to say the one without brown eyes." I narrowed my own eyes at that comment, and replied "well that does shrink the field considerably, and given that today is Thursday, I believe I know this mysterious "she" of which you speak. Alright lad you up for a walk? Where we need to go is about a 4 mile walk from here, and I need the exercise, or so the quack that pretends to be my doctor tells me." He nodded silently and slid out of the booth, as I did the same on my side and beckoned him to follow. I had hoped that he wouldn't but I was already resigned to the fact that he would. They all do.

I was taking the piss out him on purpose the "hike" I  took him on was twice the length it needed to be, I took the scenic route, if such a thing can be said to exist in this shit hole of a city in which I dwell, but I figured that I really did need the exercise, and if he gave up after 2 miles or so I could just go back to my bar, and my pints.  Sadly, he didn't give up and we eventually arrived at our destination. A market square, if such a thing could still be considered to exist in this world, and the stall we were looking for was where it always was, tucked away in a corner leaning drunkenly against the wall of some pawn shop, and trying to look respectable.  It was not doing a good job of it, and when I pointed it out to the boy, it took him a minute to find it. I begin to wonder if "she" had sent me a dunce on purpose, it would be just something "she" would do. We had that type of complex relationship, or at least I thought it was complex. I never really got around to asking her, what her views on it were. Probably because I was afraid the answer might distress me, and I try not to cause myself too much distress.

"That, boy, is Serge, and that is his apple cart/barrow. Not much to look at is it?" He took a long look, now that he was looking in the right direction, nodded and replied "this is what she sent me to you to find, a fucking apple cart, manned by what appeared to be a homeless man? What in the actual fuck can be so important about an apple cart?" I sighed, and cursed her under my breath, she was really going to have to start sending me people with at least a modicum of common sense, or I was going to have to find a new place to not be found. "Take a closer look, you mouth breathing idiot, and see if you notice anything unusual about Serge's cart of apples." He squinted a bit, probably half blind as well as a half wit, and finally after what seemed an eternity said "wait he's not selling apples is he? No, lad he's not, our boy Serge despite outward appearances is not a seller of apples." I tapped him on the shoulder, "you've seen enough I think, and the walk has made me thirsty, I know a pub around here that pours a proper pint, and you owe me one for all the education you're about to receive. Let's go before Serge spots us, he's a little bit more observant that he looks."

Safely ensconced in the new watering hole with two half way decent pints in front of us, I looked at him and said "so, junior what do you make of our boy Serge, has "she" told you anything of substance about him, or am I going to have to start from the beginning. I hate starting from the beginning every single time she sends me one of you lot."  I could tell he wasn't fond of me referring to him as junior, and made a mental note to continue to do it just to get a rise out of him. "No, she told me quite a bit about Serge, like for starters that isn't his real name, but she has no idea what his real name is. I smirked "few of us do, and that is the way Serge wants it, and Serge isn't exactly the type you want to cross in some back alley, hell I don't want to cross him in the middle of a public square in broad daylight. I happen to be one of the few who do know his real name, but you'll not get it off of me."

"One thing to never, ever forget junior, is you can't trust Serge. As far as I can tell Serge cares only about two things; himself, and his apples. Forget that, and it is all likely to end in tears, and those tears will be yours not his. That is the best advice I can give you in relation to Serge, and it might be the only bit that is worth following. Serge is a slippery bastard, and he treats every person he meets differently. He has some long winded explanation as to why he does it, but over the years I just stopped listening to it. He generally treats me a like I'm a proper cunt, and he's not precisely wrong. I just don't take it too personally, because one thing Serge isn't is too personal." I wasn't sure how much of what I was saying was sinking into his thick skull because he kept the same neutral (or was it bored) expression on his face, but that wasn't really a "me" problem. He could listen to any, part, or none of what I had to say and take any, part, or none of it as truth. I certainly couldn't care less, and besides part of it was certainly not true. Never tell the entire truth to one person, it just makes things complicated when things go tits up, and thing almost always go tits up.

"The point of Serge and his apples, as far as I am able to tell, is that he collects them, like little kids with baseball cards or spinster aunts with matchbooks of bars in exotic places they will never visit. He, as you were correct in pointing out, does not sell his apples. Whether they be Akero apples from Sweden, Golden Nobles from England, Granny Smiths from the US, or any of the other 750 plus types of edible apples in the world, once Serge gets it, he keeps it, or so the story goes. He raised a questioning eyebrow at this last bit, and before he could open his mouth to say something particularly stupid, I raised a forestalling hand, and said before you start with your idiotic questions, I'll go ahead and answer them for you to save me the trouble of listening to you stammer over them. "It is more likely the reason you've been send to me, and I guess she didn't bother telling you that. Typical of her sending a fool off on an errand with as little information as possible. Did she at least tell you what she wants you to do in regards to Serge?"

"Only vaguely" he replied." She seems to have some sort of grudge against him, but wouldn't tell me what it was about or what exactly I was supposed to do. I don't know if she wants him kill, in which case I am not the man for the job, or she just wants some type of vague revenge on him." I smiled "no lad, you are not the man that will take Serge out of this world, that person's identity has already been decided, and you'd be a damn fool to try it. Of course she wouldn't give you too many detailed instructions before she sent you to me, she does that just to annoy the shit out of me, and as usual it has worked." He arched an eyebrow "wait, you mean I'm not the first person she has sent to you about Serge and his apples?" "No you damn fool, you aren't and you probably won't be the last, but that isn't exactly the point. Though I am not sure exactly what the point is anymore. But, since you are here and are paying for these pints, whether you know it or not, I'll give you a quick crash course on Serge and his apples. Speaking of go get us another pint junior, this is going to be thirsty work."

He wandered off to the bar, and I began to wonder how much she wanted me to tell him, I didn't know him from Adam, and even though I'd known her for years, she had become a stranger to me recently, and I wasn't sure if his visit to me was a genuine request for help, or some sort of test that I was surely destined to fail. One of the many things I have become skilled at in my lifetime is failing tests, especially ones that I wasn't sure I was taking or not. Luckily, the line at the bar was long enough for me to formulate the answer to the self asked question of how much to tell him. It was going to be dicey to tell him anything because first of all, he seemed a bit of an idiot. Secondly he was going to run back to her and tell her everything I said which I was sure he would garble, and lastly I wasn't exactly sure about Serge's role in all of this. This being a very broad term for life in general, and mine in particular. He finally made it back to the table with our pints, sat himself and them down, and with a look of expectation said "You going to tell me the mysteries of Serge and his fucking apples or not?"

I pointed at his beer, and said "Don't let that liquid courage let you get ideas above your station junior, I don't owe you a fucking thing. My loyalty, such as it is, is to her not to you, so calm down, and try, just try, to keep a civil tongue in your head." He seemed to understand his misstep, and merely nodded his agreement. "Good, now that we've an understanding of the general situation I will give you the information you need. It might not fully satisfy you, but I really give fuck all about you or your satisfaction. As you so cleverly noticed, Serge doesn't sell apples, or at least he's never sold one to me, nor have I seen him sell one ever in the time I've known him, and I've known him a long, long time. No, our boy Serge is more of a collector of apples than a merchant of apples, and I am fairly certain that by now he has a fairly decent sized collection of apples to his name. However, the story goes, and I've not been able to confirm it yet, that Serge once upon a time trusted someone with one of his apples, and it ended poorly. Very, very poorly for Serge. The precise details are a bit fuzzy, and a couple of them can't be proved or disproved with any degree of certainty, but the general theory is that Serge, the man who didn't trust anyone finally made the mistake we all make, and trusted someone. It was, for that mad bastard, quite the Kierkegaardian leap of faith, and like most leaps of faith it ended in tears."

"Serge himself will tell you, if you get him drunk enough, that he was wrong for what he did. In a rare case of accepting responsibility for what he has done, which for him is very, very rare, he will say that the reason he has amassed so many apples is because he didn't trust anyone, and that people who knew him, knew that. That was his selling point, it certainly wasn't his sunshine like personality or good looks. But it would appear that our boy Serge is, despite his repeated attempts to not be, human and therefore a sucker. He gave away one of his apples to the wrong person, and his whole apple cart had a terrifying moment of near complete upset before he (barely) managed to keep it from collapsing entirely, at least so far. There are those among us that aren't exactly sure that Serge is keeping his apples in nice little stacks like he used to, and that makes quite a few of us nervous, myself included. For you see, junior, Serge has a considerable number of my apples in his collection, and that is why she sent you here. To make sure that I don't do anything untoward to Serge to trigger the complete upsetting of his apple cart. It is her making sure that I am still stable, and on the path of the "righteous" smart people, and not going off the rails entirely. Therefore, lad, finish your beer, pay our tab and get the fuck out of my sight. Tell her that I've not gone as crazy as she thinks I have, and that, for the nonce, I am sober, sane, and safely under control. Whose control I am under is not, as of yet, any of her business."

He nodded, finished his beer, and got the fuck out of my sight. I don't know if he will get the full message through to her or not, because again I think he's an idiot, but if the gist of it gets passed along then it will have to do. I hope, for my own sake, that he gets it through to her that I am not quite the fool she used to know, and that the slumbering loyalty I once had to her has re-awakened, and perhaps that will be enough to repair things between us. I don't hold out much hope, but then again I've never been the hopeful type, hopeful types, even one time hopeful types like Serge, end up with bastards like me looking over their shoulders, and the last thing I need is a bastard like me in my affairs. I wandered back to my usual watering hole, ordered a pint, and thought well at least I should have some peace until Monday, because Monday was the day the other one usually sent their lackey around to check on Serge and his apples.

précédent titulaire des mêmes droits

He is asleep, it is something that he hasn't done much of in the recent months. The months you've been killing him slowly, but for now he is asleep. While I've gotten him asleep, and it took a whole lot of alcohol to do, I am going to write this down for him. In fact, the only way I've seen him sleep in the last three months is either getting him black out drunk, or just finally becoming so exhausted that he collapsed. This is what you've done to him, I hope you are enjoying it.  What makes it worse (in my opinion) is you know you're doing this to him, you know what it is that is keeping him awake at all hours of the day and night, you know what is gnawing away at his insides like a dog at a bone, and yet you refuse to give him the truth. The answer he knows, but still somehow needs you to confirm in order to move on with his so-called life (his words, not mine). Of all your crimes, and he has told me about them make no mistake,  this is your worst one. I can only hope that it is worth it and that you are proud of yourself.

Given the stories about you that he has shared, and the things I can suss out for myself, I am convinced you are proud of yourself. It is what you do. The thing(s) you did to him that is. He is overly fond of the expression "if people were horses, I'd be rich", but I truly think that his prediction of you is accurate to an amazing degree. However, that is his story to tell, this will be mine. You won't enjoy either one, and that is ever so fine with me. I don't want you to enjoy them, I want you to "suffer" for your crimes, we are not friends, we will never be friends, and I don't think, even if the chance presented itself (which it won't) we should ever meet. I am not exactly a member of your fan club, just to be clear.  There are people who are (you know), members of your fan club, people you've bamboozled into thinking you're the kind hearted type who loves her mother, Jesus, and America, and are the dutiful employee/daughter/friend/lover that is above all the dirty little secrets that seem to permeate your environment. You're not, and from what I can tell of his, mostly drunken, ravings there are a surprising number of people who agree that you are not the saint you externalize. Few of us are, but you seem to take a particular pride in attempting to occupy the moral high ground. Just make sure the moral high ground doesn't turn into a "hill to die on." Things look different from higher up, or so they say, but it is from high terrain such as the moral high ground that a lot of people fall, and the higher the ground the further the fall.

It is from those drunken ravings of his that I have gleaned most of the information I have about you, watching him, the person I now know as the Romantic, desperately try to explain to me (an almost stranger) that "he's going to kill me you know, he is going to murder me" was very difficult to understand, and as I began to know him better, very difficult to hear. Of course, he was raving drunk, and going on about the Rationalist, the one he thought was going to kill him, but even his amazing ability to predict people isn't infallible, and he didn't realize the identity of his killer would be you. We can't all be perfect, but I suspect you know that already don't you?  The biggest problem with that particular rant is that it was in public, and getting his drunk ass out of there was a task that I did not particularly enjoy, I blame you. Not that I suspect you care, sure you told him you did, you told him how worried you were about his not sleeping, and you knew him well enough to see him unraveling before you, but I just don't think you cared enough to help stop it. I am fairly convinced you could have, stopped it that is, and it is a bit of a puzzler to me why you didn't just tell him what he wanted to hear, and move on with your story, it would have helped him move on with his.

Instead, you kept silent and now his story seemed to be stuck in some sort of self-destructive loop. Many people have told him to stop kicking the shit out of himself (me included), but as far as I can tell not one of us (me included) have figured out a way to make that unhappen. He is, as you and others know and like to point out to him, his own worst enemy, and the biggest explosions generally come from the inside rather than from an outside source. You might be the fuse but, the jumble inside his head is the dynamite. I can see that you know? I can see him when we are out having the drinks required to get him unconscious the moments when he 'disappears' inside his own head. He thinks he hides it well, but then again why wouldn't he think that? It is a certain far away look that appears in his eyes that give away the fact that he is trapped inside his own head tearing the mental furniture to shreds, and engaged in yet another vicious battle in the war against himself. The problem with that war, the war that is probably still raging in his fitful sleep as I lie next to him, is that the only loser possible is, in fact, him. That is tragic to the rest of us, but for reasons he can only explain, he seems to find funny.

He likes to think the lack of sleep has made him numb, he's wrong but I don't have the heart to tell him that. Maybe if I had your ability to walk away from disasters of my own creation I could tell him, but I have yet to figure out that skill.  He's not only not numb he's emoting like a godsdamn 15 year old schoolgirl, it is (so I've been told) quite unlike him, and I don't know what to think/do about it. Perhaps all those emotions just need to come out like the water behind a dam, and when the flow stops, he will be back to as normal as an emotional cripple like him can ever be. Or maybe the flood will drown him, and anybody in his path. I rather hope the latter isn't true, because I am, clearly, in his path. I can see what a number you did on him, and the hard landing he is trying ever so much to soften has, as he likes to put it, "broken the springs of his soul." But you know that already, because he told you that. He has to turn you into a monster in the hopes that eventually he can heal himself. I am not sure the world is sweet or tender enough to allow that to happen.

He's muttering now in his sleep, and most of it is utterly nonsense, or too unintelligible to understand one of the only words I can ever hear clearly is your name. Have you ever had a man utter another woman's name while in bed with you? Even if I know the reason(s), even if I understand it is a by-product of the struggle within, it still smarts. Maybe you've never had that experience, though for reasons I'll not share, I rather expect you have. If you have (and I rather hope you have) you will know that it doesn't endear you to me, I don't hate you exactly because hate is something best reserved for people that have wronged you in some major way, and in theory you've done me no actual harm, but I can certainly say there are several not so nice words I would like to say to your face.

It is a tribute to your destructive skills, that I am able to even get to write this, his control (which people have told me is iron clad) is slipping so much that I gained access to his computer because I found him passed out in front of it. He had written some half of a blog post before he drifted off to sleep/passed out, and so here I am with unfettered access to the kingdom of him. He will probably be furious when he finds out, and I will probably get a slating, but I felt the need to write these things down on his behalf, because he could never bring himself to do it, and it needs doing. Not for you mind, I don't care one little whit about your feelings (if you have them), but for his sake. The sake of the fellow you left behind to do what it is you're doing. Make no mistake, he knows what you are doing, has known, and that is the rub. It is the awful realization that he was right that is tearing him to shreds. I can only hope that when he is done, there will be enough of him to put back together again. However, that, as he would put it, is "a J___ problem" and it need not worry you overmuch. I somehow doubt that it does, but I thought I'd be polite (this once) and let you know that your input in the rebuilding is not necessary.

Morning is kicking in the door on this new day of misery for him, and my time in control of this blog is drawing quickly to an end. I am not the wit he is, I don't think I have the pithy ending that would both sting you (which I would very, very much like to do), or make you feel some sort of guilt for what you've done (maybe you do, I doubt it). There are many, many things I'd like to say to your face about this, but I know that will never happen, and isn't a good idea even if I had the chance. I can only hope that he survives this, he's a lot stronger than he thinks, and other than me he has some really, truly awesome people in his life.  It was his mistake (and he would say that it is his mistake, let him make it) that for a considerable length of time he thought you were a different kind of horse.

successeur dans l'intérêt

 This was, I thought, the last thing the Romantic ever wrote. It turns out I was wrong. It's not very good, but I feel it should be published. After all, he wrote it in the throes of dying, and we all want that "don't let it end like this, tell them I said something" moment.




You won't thank me for this even if you bother to read it, which knowing you as well as I do, I know that you won't.  I have been assured that I can't  know you because you don't exist and that you are a figment of the imagination of my demons. Demons that come out from under the bed, or out of the closet at 3 a..m. to raise hell with my logical, unsuspecting mind. If I am wrong, (which I'm not) the sentiment is the same to the eventual fool be they friend or stranger who takes the position I once held. That position will be filled, because that is just the nature of things, it is just a question of when, not if. The who only matters in the scheme of whether I'm as good as puzzling things out as I think I am (and I am, forget that to your cost). Therefore, this is mostly an exercise in futility, which is fine because you will, when you "exist" officially or not, soon enough figure out that your newly minted status will also be that as well, futile to the point of despair. However, that will be a "you" problem at the time it happens, and while I hope to be around to see it, I am quite sure I will give exactly zero fucks when it does. This is the only attempt at "help" you will get from me, and since I won't publish it directly to you, and you are too lazy to read it, it is the exact amount of help you deserve. Which is to say none. I never claimed to be a nice person, but (if you exist and you are who I think you are) you "know me so well" that you knew that already. I will do you the favour (that you don't deserve), and tell you what will be the outcome of your new adventure. She will do to you what she did to me (which is you), because how do you think I got to precede you? She will make a muppet out you just like she did me,because people are sometimes horses, and it pays to know past performances, they do sometimes predict the future. 

 You should enjoy being my "successeur dans l'interet." It isn't a bad gig at first, and you are in that first bloom. Everything is new, and whatever trick you pulled to become the new one is still working. I know the trick I used, but I am not sure it will work for everyone, and I am not exactly sure if it would work on her again. I suspect that the length of my "reign" would make her less likely to fall for my trick again. The good news is that I think she is more likely to fall for a simpler trick than the one I used. Whatever trick you use(d), it will work for a while,  and during that time you are going to have a whole shit ton of fun in the place where we all want these things to go. You'll get there (I suspect you probably already have, but I've no proof), and you will get there many times. It will be a mind blowing (among other things) experience. You will swear all sorts of lies during that time, and so will she. She will rave about the "best they've ever had" and all sorts of other nonsense that you will believe mainly because you want to believe it. You shouldn't because while I am sure you are a talented fellow (I was sure I was too), you aren't the best. No one is, in this case "best" equates to "latest." Forget that to your cost. We always believe every word that comes out of a beautiful woman's mouth, and while some people doubt the beauty of your oracle, you don't. Therefore, you'll believe that lie, and the many, many others you are going to hear, and trust me mate, you'll hear plenty of them.

The newness is sort of like buying a new car, it's shiny, it's probably a newer model than the one you had, maybe it goes a little faster, is a little sleeker, and has all sorts of bells and whistles you aren't used to because you've been driving the same car for a whole lot of years. Take the new one out on the "expressway" of life and see what she can do. Take a couple of corners too fast, and see how she handles. Spend some time in the fast lane with the throttle down, and see if you can red line it. The glorious noises she will make will add to the pleasure of driving her, and you might find yourself thinking you could get seriously used to driving this new car forever. Don't. That is exactly the point of a new car, they are fantastic to drive at first, but eventually that first payment becomes due, and the luster starts to fade. Of course, you will not be warned of that fading, in fact you will be told quite the opposite. You'll hear all sorts of wild tales (otherwise known as lies) about how you're the best driver on the road, and how you steer with just the right amount of pressure, and how amazing you are on the straightaways. Go ahead and listen to them, but never, ever believe them. Few roads are completely untraveled, and the title of this post is the title for a reason, forget that to your cost.

 If the car analogy sails too far over your head, and it's possible that it will, think of her as a racehorse, not all ponies are created equal, and there is no Daily Racing Form to help you out in this situation. Sure she has a history, but whether you are privy to that information is up to her, and she is quite possibly an unreliable narrator. The only other historical source available to you, that you have easy access to is me. And I am certainly not inclined to help you out too much, and I am certainly an unreliable narrator. However, I will give you some tidbits to ponder over, and you can sort out which bits are true, if any, later. You will have all kinds of time to do that when things go pear shaped, and things will go pear shaped.

 Keep in mind, if you can (it will be difficult) that she is built for speed, not endurance. This is a critical thing to remember. Don't bet your money as if she's a closer, she's not, she's a front runner, and one thing that all the punters at all the tracks in all the places in the world will share with you (free of charge) is that front runners fade without fail. It is quite simply what they do, and she will as well. You won't realize that, won't want to think about it, and that will be a mistake. You have to remember the posted distance of this race. If  you get confused when you see her out in front at the quarter pole, and you start to count your money too soon, well then brother you are fucked. You won't hedge your bets, because you've been dazzled by the newness and the lies, and you'll be left clutching your, now losing ticket, as forlornly as a clown that has realized the circus left town without them.

You should be extremely reticent as to the fortune those bets you placed foretell. You aren't playing with house money. The bet you placed is your own and exactly no one else has anything at stake, and the only one that can lose when your horse doesn't come in is you. The horse just walks away to the stable and awaits the next race, it is a horse, that's just what they do. Forget that to your cost. Fast women and slow ponies will ruin your life, or at least that's how the saying goes, but you're smarter than that, smarter than me (she will tell you that), and she's your horse after all, you have to trust her right? Trust her assurances that this "race" is the best she's ever run, and the other horses can't compare (she'll tell you that too, and she makes a very compelling argument), and that even on their best day they would run a distant second to her, no matter how nice some of their legs are.

It is quite possible that you think your "finish line" and mine are different, and that it makes all the difference in the world. That may be true at the moment, but I can assure you my "line" at the beginning was the same as yours probably is now. The greatest trick she will pull, and she will pull it because that is what she does, is convincing you to move your "line."If you fall for that trick, and it will be hard not to, I wish you luck getting across it. Remember what kind of pony you've bet on, and if you think it can change its running or finishing style, then you my friend are living in a fool's paradise. If it is any consolation the population is not going to solely consist of you, the bad news is that the other residents might not be the most welcoming sort. Few of us like to admit we live in a city of fools, since that requires us admitting to be a fool ourselves. Some of them might welcome you, but do you really want to spend your time with a bunch of fools? Just because they lost their money the same way you did, doesn't make them boon companion material.

Of course, as I previously stated I think I know you and therefore think you exist, but even if I don't, even if we've never met or are never destined to meet (which I think would be the preferred theory for us both), the ideas expressed here are the same. I do not plan on welcoming you to the city of her fools. I may still reside there and there is a school of thought that says a part of me will always reside there (I feel this to be true, even though it angers and saddens me at the same time). Hers is not the only city of fools that I populate, and even though it feels like it right now, hers won't be the last. Ponies want you  to think they are running their hearts out for you, and some of them even do a bang up job pretending they are, but at the end of the day they run for themselves,and sometimes even though it will harder than Chinese math, you have to let them run away from you so hurriedly. Forget that to your cost.

Disintegration: A Fragment

Before you killed him, the Romantic wrote two last things. This one which is a fragment and I post with only the comment that the person on the stairs wasn't me, and one other that I am saving for a more opportune time.



The world as I had known it, as I had believed it to be, as I partially constructed it, collapsed on a Tuesday at 1:30 in the afternoon. An odd time for a world to collapse I guess, but then again is there every really a good time for it to happen?  I'm not in some doomsday cult that predicts worlds ending on certain days due to the Mayan calendar, global warming, or too much methane coming out of cow's asses. My world collapsed when it collapsed because I found something out that I had suspected for months, and then the collapse. It ended more with a whimper than a bang, as these things are wont to do, but it ended nonetheless, and I fear that this might be the last thing I write for a while. Actually, Since  I both fear and know the Rationalist, and his feelings (if he has feelings). I am fairly convinced that this might be the last thing I ever write period. If you ever had any fondness for me, and since Tuesday I have begun to doubt that, you will read this and forget it. If you ever want to remember me, and I doubt that you will, go back and read the stuff I wrote for you back when I was wooing you. Some of that stuff is quite good, this will not meet any standard of goodness.

Knowing him as I do, and I do know him, I fear that I might not even be granted the time to finish this properly, but I will do the best I can (which has rarely been good enough), with the time allowed to me. I don't know why you did it, I will probably never know why you did it, because as I said, my time here in this collapsed world is drawing to an end. I am the Romantic, I am the guy who got you, kept you, and thought made you mine for a considerable amount of time. Even now, even after you collapsed my world like a ton of bricks falling on the first little piggy's straw hut, I won't "out" you. I will write in vague terms leaving out the identifying details that would lead to people sussing out your true identity. This is both the last favour you'll ever get off of me, and no promise that the Rationalist will do the same for you. He is a bastard, you know this, he knows this, and I know this. Bastards can be useful, and to give him something to do, I have left a lot of detailed records for him to sort through, and do with what he will. I can't stop him, but I am not exactly encouraging him. It really doesn't matter to me what he does with them, because when he finds them, I'll already be dead as dead can be, and will be past the point of caring.

Of course, there will be gaps in those records. No records are totally complete. He won't have provable evidence of the things we said to each other during those lazy, naked afternoons or those "stolen" trips out of town. He does have shared access to our collective memory, but as for those conversations well it will be his word against yours, and who is going to not believe you? Your carefully crafted, but ultimately fake, reputation for being "above it all" will stand you in good stead if the Rationalist tries to use the "my word" approach. After all, he's a cunt, and few people like him, almost everybody loves you, I did. The fact that they have the wrong impression of you, and of him for that matter, won't matter. You will smile sweetly, and say all the right things to get you through. It's what you've done for years, the several years before we were together, and several years that we were together. You're a well practiced, well drilled, well proven liar. I am certain you are of the opinion that your lies will see you through any trouble in your future, and maybe they will. You seem to come out smelling like a rose when things go pear shaped, and trust me sweetheart, this too will go pear shaped. It's what you do, make things go pear shaped with your lies, and then use another set of lies to walk away blameless. It is quite the talent, and we should all use the talents we have as much as we can, otherwise it is just a waste.

I can hear you (barely), and others (more clearly) saying "you're the Romantic your world has collapsed in the past, and yet you survived." This is entirely true after all, even I admit people have done to me what you did to me on Tuesday, but sadly for me it wasn't on this scale. You were at least three of those previous collapses rolled into one, final, devastating, and eventually fatal disaster. The awful part of it, the part that probably proves to be the fatal bit, is that you knew it.  You knew it, because my dumb ass told you. I told you the plan I was following when I met you all those years ago, a plan that would be almost 60 percent complete by now IF I hadn't met and fallen in love with you as hard as I did. I told you that too, I told you the new plan, the future plan, the happy plan, and I foolishly believed you when you agreed to it with me. More the fool to me. I won't live to see if the Rationalist reactivates the original plan or not, I suspect that he will, but again I will be as dead as dead can be (thanks to you), and I don't care.

I did say that "almost everybody" loves you, you do have people who aren't exactly fans of yours, we all do no one can live their entire lives without enemies (at least not well), and the Rationalist knows this too, I don't know (and again will be dead so can't care), what he will do with that info, but caution is a good word to live your life by, I wished I had. Ah but wait! There is the tread on the stairwell outside my door that I've been waiting for. I knew it was coming which is why this post is slip shod, I tried to get as much of it out as I could but it seems as if the devil is at the door, and since I purposefully left it unlocked there is nothing left for me to do but say good-bye my sweet.

Death of a Romantic

You are a killer, a murderess, a cold blooded taker of life. The fact that the life you took is mostly a fictional construct doesn't alleviate your crime. Your murder of the Romantic (in me to be clear), was a premeditated act of cruelty that Genghis Khan would be proud of, and he was a monster. Granted you're a monster too, just not quite on the scale of Genghis, but to the guy you killed, the Romantic, that just doesn't matter. Dead is dead, no matter if you are murdered along with 5 thousand fellow citizens who skulls (along with yours) are going to make a lovely pyramid as a warning to others, or if you are killed in single combat in the Roman Coliseum. The Romantic, the guy you killed, is dead as dead can be, and he is no Jesus Christ there will be no resurrection. Perhaps he will be buried in the graveyard of relationships that the guy still alive (the Rationalist) carries around in his head, or maybe he will just lie where you left him to rot or be eaten away by the carrion circling over head. I've never heard a corpse ask how he got so cold, nor heard one complain about the accommodations of their final resting place.

Your murder plot (for I can only see it as such now) started over three years ago, you were bored (or so you said at one point), and you swanned into the Romantics life at a time in which is was undergoing another crisis of faith brought on by your predecessor. At the time, it was a crisis that he thought was going to also be fatal to him, he was not in a happy place, and things were looking bleak. Then he found you, or you found him, or you found each other. Either way, he did owe you a lot, you did him the favour of prolonging his life by three years. Though I doubt he would, if he were able, thank you now. Since he is as dead as dead can be, it has devolved upon me to pick up and move forward, to shift through the detritus of the time you spent killing him, and try to puzzle out why the fuck you did it. The good news, if there is to be any good news, is that he kept very, very detailed records.  At least that is good news for me, for you, his killer, that might cause you a moment or two of panic. After all, you know the details of your killing of him, in fact since he is dead as dead can be, you are the only one who does. However, those records are like his mind jumbled, and it going to take the patience of Job to sort them out, luckily I posses just such patience. He didn't write everything that he should have down, and I am not a mind reader (especially of the Romantic), and while I have a pretty solid case, I don't know if all of it can be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt."

However, luckily for me, and I guess for him (maybe not so much for you) it doesn't have to be. This isn't a courtroom, there isn't some fellow in a black dress and a white wig sitting on the bench waiting to pass judgment on you for your crime. There aren't 12 bored citizens sitting in the uncomfortable chairs, doodling in their notebooks, and paying as little attention as possible to the litany of your (and his) sins. Let us not fool each other, you and I, his sins were just as great as yours. There are no innocents here, there were never going to be innocents here (well maybe one, but that's another story).  His problem, which since he is as dead as dead can be, has now devolved into my problem is that he didn't listen to me. He never really did, he ignored me many, many times each one to his cost. Somehow he survived ignoring me all those times, until you came along, and killed him dead. I guess congratulations are in order, several people tried (some of them more than once), and you were not exactly the one I would have pegged to  be doing the deed, but maybe that's why you succeeded. You weren't as high on the danger list as I should have put you, and so maybe I am partly culpable in his death as well. I let him, in regards to you, convince me you were different, you were the one that was going to wash away the pain of the multiple mistakes of his (our) past. You fooled him completely and that allowed him to lull me into a false sense of security, and for that failure I will be just as condemned as you are. So, let us not fool each other, You and I, let us stand in the dock together, and answer the charges against us. Let us plead guilty to the crime of the killing of the Romantic because, quite simply, we are.

My crime is one of inaction, an inability to notice the signs that were directly placed in front of me by you (and your other partner in crime, but again that is a different blog post) those signs were as simple to read as a child's book. And they were (are) obvious, you should know this for your own sake. Consider it a favour, me telling you that bit. Because if I can see them, with the limited access I have had, then others with far more access can see them too, and remark upon them. It doesn't take Philip Marlowe like detecting skills to see them, consider that while you are sitting there in your smug little world of thinking no one would ever suspect you of doing anything untoward. Lily white reputations are hard to maintain in this dirty, dirty world, and no one's is as white as they like to think, yours included.  I think I have all the proof I need to lay this crime on your doorstep, I know I can prove my culpability, there are no real witnesses to the actual event, no video recordings or anything so concrete as to be considered the "smoking gun." There is just enough here for me to be convinced, and really I'm the only one who needs convincing. This is not a threat, I don't care to threaten, that isn't my job. My job is to take as much responsibility as I have for his death, try to sort through the various details of his death, and to point out to you that you are, in fact, a killer.

Your crime is one of action(s), you reeled him in by listening to his Baudelaire, his Arnold, and his Rimbaud, and "oohing" and "ahhing" over how clever it made him sound, and pretending it was having the effect on you that he wanted it to have. Maybe you were honest (at least in the beginning) I do not know, and now do not care. He clearly thought you were, which is why he silenced me completely. Maybe I fell for it too, maybe I wanted to believe the him believing you, and that I would be a lot less necessary to him for the remainder of his days. I didn't  realize that his days were numbered as low as I thought. I figured he had a long, happy life in front of him, and so did he for that matter. He convinced me just as fully as he convinced himself, and thought he had convinced you. That is the tragedy of this event (if there has to be one), he convinced both the one person who could have saved him, and the one person that killed him of the same thing. That it was real, and it would last. That is why I am in the dock next to you. I am nearly as guilty of murder as you are.

You are no Lady MacBeth, there is no actual blood on your hands, you didn't kill him quick, but you did kill him clean. There is no blood smeared crime scene for people to come and gawk over, or pictures to be taken of, and placed on some detective's bulletin board. You strangled him, not literally of course, or I wouldn't be here to write down this little love story, but strangle him you did. You took away his supply of oxygen to his (overactive) brain and he died. There is a school of thought that would say that all of us die from a lack of oxygen to the brain, no matter if we are stabbed, shot, or beaten to death by clowns, a lack of oxygen to the brain is what kills us all. You, on the other hand, made sure of it by strangling him just as if you had wrapped your pretty little hands around his throat, compressed the carotid artery or the jugular vein and squeezed the life right out of him. It was (is) a particularly cruel way to kill a man. It certainly is an up close and very personal way to do it, but that is what makes it so cruel. Just shoot the next one in the heart and let him die quickly.This one, your killing of the Romantic, was not quick. You squeezed, and then you would seem to let up, saying something, doing something, that would give him just enough air (or hope, same thing I suppose) that he would think he would survive, but then you'd apply the pressure again, and eventually it became more than he could bear. Trust me, shooting the next one will be a mercy killing, because make no mistake there will be a next one. You are a killer and that is just what killers do, they kill.

I am even convinced that in those details records of his, when I am able to sort through them without soul crushing guilt, is the identity of your next victim. I think the Romantic knew it, and I even (fancifully perhaps) think it is what eventually struck the "death blow." I can't be for certain, and the records are a bit unclear, but they are lengthy, and I figure a clever man such as myself, especially since I no longer have to worry about the Romantic trying to convince me other wise, will be able to suss out your next victim. Because make no mistake sweetheart, that's what you create, victims. I am unable to decide, at the moment, if I will warn your next one or not. I suppose that if I figure out who it is in time, I might be obligated to, but then again I might not. I suppose that just depends, and on what it depends even I am not sure. And if I (the Rationalist) am not sure then, brother we are fucked, but you know that all ready, because after all you're a killer, and you have to be one step ahead of muppets like me don't you? I wish you luck. 

Unraveling

Watching someone you care about unravel is a deeply disturbing event, and the realization that no matter how hard you try, you can't stop it is even worse. All you can do is helplessly watch as the person starts to come apart in front of you. It is not for the tenderhearted, and I, for all the tough exterior I present to the world, have a very tender heart. Don't tell anyone because I don't want my carefully crafted reputation of being a bitch/bastard to be called into question, but even if you did tell the world, most of them wouldn't believe you anyway.  This is an attempt to describe the unraveling of a close friend of mine, it is also an attempt to arrest the progress of that unraveling, and it might (just might) be an attempt to serve as a way of getting other people involved in the attempt to prevent his unraveling. Finally, it will try to serve as  "for the education of others" post, a post that says if you know someone in your life that is coming apart. Try to help if you can, and if you can't, get an adult who can, don't just watch the unraveling happen with a mixture of fascination, pity, and horror.

Of course that is all easy to say, but it is a real Herculean task to do. The person who is unraveling, even if they admit it, and few of them will admit it because admission equals weakness and no one likes to show weakness we are all John Wayne or Clint Eastwood and they weren't weak. They will probably tell you to "go fuck yourself." They may tell you that multiple times, or they may just shrug and tell you they "are fine." Fine is a very dangerous word in our language, it rarely means fine. It generally means (especially in this context) "not really okay, but too stubborn to give in and admit to either myself or other people that I’ve a problem I can’t fix.”You can hope that they have a wider support group than just you that allows them multiple chances to get whatever is unraveling them sorted. If you know the others in that group, it is best you band together and bum rush the bastard, sit him down, and work it out as a "team". If you are like me, and don't know if there exists a real group of people he trusts to do that, then you might just have to try to tackle the job solo. If you are really stuck, like me, and you know that he doesn't tell any one person the whole truth, or the full story of what is going on in that awful mind of his, well then you are stuck doing the best you can. It will be similar to plugging a leak in the hull of a desperately sinking ship. You know they are multiple leaks, and you know you are bailing out the ocean with a very small, slotted spoon, but all you can do is fight the demon in front of you.

He has demons, awful ones that I don't want to think about too much because if he's spent this much time creating them I know they have to be demons that would make H.P. Lovecraft proud. I know this because he lets slip about the demons under the bed, the demons at the door, you don't know if they are the same, if they are different, and I don't know how many of them there are. I do find it funny that for a man who professes no belief in a higher power uses the term "demons" but I suspect that is a language issue and not a belief issue. The small glimpses he has (mostly by mistake I believe) given me of these demons has lead me to believe that they are very, very real to him, and whatever name he wants to give them doesn't matter to their existence. I've known him long enough to know the identity of some of his demons, and those are the ones that I think he will carry around forever. I do not think (and I hope I am right) that these demons are killer demons. If they haven't done him in yet, I am hopeful that he has enough control over them to prevent them from ever managing to do him in. However, my fear is the new demons, the freshly minted demons that have caused the recent downward spiral will be the tipping point. They will team up with his long serving demons, and make the game no longer worth the candle to him, and he will do something truly untoward.

I don't see him as the type of person to resolve what is a temporary problem with a permanent solution, but one can never be completely sure, and that "permanent solution" can be a siren's song that even the strongest of people have been unable to resist (and there is a history of it in his family). He has, and has had for years a self-destructive streak that is quite impressive to see. Self-sabotage, and the ability to cut his own nose off to spite his own face is something that he has taken to an art form. It is not pleasant to watch, and myself and the others who I know care about him have 'cut him off at the pass" of self-destruction several times. Our fear is that one day we will arrive too late, that he will bottle up the demons long enough to fool us into thinking he is fine, and get out of the range of our help (or ignore it entirely), and self-destruct in some spectacular  fashion. We think it appeals to the "poet" in him, the ultimate denial of himself by blowing himself up like a bridge the enemy needs in order to invade some neighboring country.

He hides them well for the most part, he didn't get as far as he has on the stages of life's way without being able to fool people into believing things he wants them to believe. Maybe he believed some of those things himself, or maybe he didn't it is usually difficult to tell, and asking him is an exercise in futility that I learned long ago not to attempt again. But he can't hide it all. I can see the two major emotions at war within him in his eyes. The anger flashes out pretty easily, and he doesn't try as hard to control it as he does the other emotion in the war. That emotion is hurt/pain, I can see it in his eyes in the moments he doesn't think anyone is looking, and it is a painful sight. It is not something he shows much of at all, and rarely if ever on purpose, which makes it all the more heartbreaking to see. I know he's fighting to keep it at bay, and when I see it I realize he is losing. His is a suspicious mind, and those suspicious thoughts are tearing him apart. I don't know whether to believe him or not when he gives voice to them, they seem to be flights of fancy of someone not sleeping enough, but then he starts with his "theory" and even I begin to waver. If I am wavering (because I do deep down think he's wrong) then what chance does he have at 3 a.m. when the demons come out to play? During the daylight hours, the hours I see him (thankfully, his nights sound a horror) he laughs these suspicions off like they are nothing, but I can (just barely) tell that he is trying to convince himself of that more than he is trying to assuage my concerns.

 Losing the ability to keep the hurt at bay, is what the serious unraveling looks like. It is becoming more and more frequent to see the hurt winning out over of his self control, and rearing its ugly head in his eyes. The shake in his voice when he talks about the latest demon is difficult, but not impossible to hear. He tries to talk it out with me, not because he thinks I can help (I really can't), but because he thinks that saying it aloud will provide him a way to answer the demons' questions. I don't think it will, but I don't have the heart to tell him that. He is probably clever enough to realize it won't help either, but I think the trying is more important that the succeeding. The anger has mostly faded, but when (in the beginning) he let it out, it was not a pleasant experience to behold. He is, and he knows it, a bit of a hothead, but most of the time it is the "letting off steam type of anger" nothing that will leave any permanent scars, and will pass off after about ten minutes. This anger is not that type it is colder, more severe, and the look in his eyes when he shows it is not something I care to see very often, if ever again. He makes the joke that when he is truly mad you will notice because the temperature in the room will drop by a couple of degrees. He's not wrong.

I will sit here, and watch him unravel because I don't know what else to do. Pulling at any thread seems a bad idea, and much like all the king's horses and all the king's men were unable to put Humptey Dumptey back together again, I don't think me, or anyone else (other than maybe himself, if he's willing to try) can re-knit him. He hasn't (yet) fallen into the simplest trap that people in his situation fall into, he hasn't climbed into a bottle full of rage and stayed there with no plans of ever coming out. Maybe he thinks he's too old for that shit, or maybe he's gained a little wisdom, or maybe there's something going on in his head more awful that anything contained in a bottle. I don't know, and can't know until it is too late, which is (I think) exactly how he wants it, so he gets it. I will grant him that wish because I know his defiance disorder would make any obvious attempt to help him result in even more self-destructive behaviour, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  I suppose all I can do, all any of us can do (other than him) is wait and hope.

Down the River of Broken Dreams

Ever trusted someone? Well of course you have because you are a fucking human being (unless you're Spock or a Klingon), and therefore you've trusted someone. And more than likely, eventually that someone betrayed your trust. That's the beauty of betrayal only the people you trust can do it. You gave them your secrets, and they may have returned the favour, but that was then, this is now. Now is there someone out there with your secrets that might no longer be a fan of yours? They know what you like, what you don't like, who you like and who you don't like. Are you concerned you will suddenly see them talking to a person that you expressed your utter disdain for to them? Maybe they are friendly with that person, but more than likely you can sort out if that conversation goes on for too long what the topic will eventually come around to, your secrets. Or maybe you sent that person you trust some stuff (emails, letters, plans to rule the world), and are now concerned that all filters are off in regards to the secrets you gave to them, you know back when you trusted them. No one wants their door kicked in by some version of the Gestapo vaguely waving around some papers (containing your plans to rule the world with your army  of cats) and "saying now we've got you, you bastard!"

There exists a school of thought, and I should know because I belong to it, that the problem you are now facing i.e. the fear that the person you trusted will put your secrets on blast for the world to see, is exactly one person's fault, and that person is you. It is what you get for trusting them in the first place, it is your own fault. If you get hoisted on your own petard, well you should have left the damn thing in its scabbard in the first place.  Sure the more common and widely held belief is that if the other person puts you stuff "out there" it is their fault for being a cunt, and betraying your trust. But remember we are now talking about someone who has already betrayed you to begin with, so what do you expect them to do? You can hope that the human decency you believed they possessed (or you wouldn't have trusted them in the first place) will be enough to keep them from sending you down the river of broken dreams, but are you really that sure of your judgment? After all, you are still trusting them in some odd, dangerous way, and they've just got done betraying you.

That river, the one of broken dreams, is a river of grief, and just like rivers it can come in all types of sizes, shapes, lengths, and depths. It can have a swiftly moving current (if you are lucky), or it can meander, slowly along its way taking you for the longest, most brutal trip of your life. Each river has its own signature, its own DNA, and very rarely are two rivers alike.  Like all rivers, the river of broken dreams doesn't exist in a vacuum, there are "towns" dotted along its course all the way to the end of the line. I mean rivers were the earliest superhighways for all sorts of things to be traded. Wheat, barely, hops, honey, grain, monkeys, etc, etc. They help the free flow of commerce no matter what the trade is, be it dry goods, or secrets. That just what rivers do, and when you get a batch of defective monkeys, or if someone starts trading your secrets along the river, you can't blame the river. It's a river and that's just what rivers do. They just simply exist, it behooves you to try to stay out of the river of broken dreams.

Some people jump into that river, fed up with the circumstances that life has created for them, and probably in denial that they helped create those circumstances themselves. Those people want the deep, swiftly flowing river with all the rapids and rocks involved because they don't plan on coming out of the river. They are not waving, they are drowning, and it is what they want to do. There is no need to follow them into the river in a misguided attempt to save them. They don't want to be saved, and if you try, they will more than likely drown you with them. They will fight you not the river, and it is best just to watch them go, nod your head in the eventual acceptance of their choice, and if possible recover enough of them to bury when the river does what they intended it to do.

Other people are pushed into that river (I would posit this group makes up the majority), and they had no intentions of taking a "swim" in the river of broken dreams, either that day or any other in the near future. But we are humans, not Klingons, and we all live in fairly close proximity to the river of broken dreams. Generally, we know the person who pushed us into the river, and generally it is a grand, unhappy surprise to us. Maybe if we are clever enough, we saw it coming, but eventually the river claims us all. The "surprise" guests of the river aren't here to drown, they aren't looking for some quick, painless (we hope) resolution, most of them are shocked at how cold the water is, and bemused by the identity of the person that put them in the river.

And that person will watch from the banks of the river broken dreams as you struggle to comprehend why they did what they did. The torch you were carrying for them, and make no mistake you were carrying one, extinguishes itself in the river, their eyes will be lit by its flame for the last time. Gone are the days when they would rescue you from life's drains. They knew this long before you did, and that is the pity of it.  They will never break your fall again. They have now become your betrayer, your own personal Judas as it were, and as you drift away you would do well to remember that, and turn your focus on the problem at hand, and that problem is the river of broken dreams. Maybe you've been here before (it is more than likely you have), but as Heraclitus tells us, you can never step in the same river twice, and the river of broken dreams is no different. And the river of broken dreams is chock full of broken reeds.

Again, like most rivers, the river of broken dreams, is going to be dotted along its course by "towns" these towns are going to be familiar to you, after all you've been in the river of broken dreams before. And like most "towns" they have names, after all, they have to be distinguished from one another, and what better way to distinguish them than to give them different names. Each of these "towns" have their own character, and their own purpose, and your knowledge of them hopefully isn't entirely complete because if it was it would mean you've been in the river of broken dream way too many times.

The first town is pretty much right next to the point where you entered the river, it is the "town" of denial. You want to deny you are in the river to begin with, but here you are wet as a June bride on her wedding night waiting for her newly minted husband to ravage her for the "first time." Denial is not a pleasant city, and the less time you spend there the better. Denial also usually consists of your disbelief of the identity of the person that put you in the river to begin with. The largest "building" in the city of Denial is the Identity Bureau. The place where people in the river line up to hope against hope that the identity of the person who "rivered" them is a horrible, horrible mistake. It isn't and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can leave the unpleasant town of Denial. Most people stay here quite a long time, after all the line at the Identity Bureau is long, and the other popular hang out in Denial is the Pourqoui Department. It is an entire waste of time to go to the Pourquoi Department, they don't speak your language (no matter what or how many languages you speak), and it is fruitless to try to understand them. However, that doesn't stop people from spending way too much time in the Pourqoui Department, and by extension way too much time in the sad town of Denial.

Once you float past Denial the next "town" you will encounter is Anger. Anger is a very dangerous place. All sorts of miscreants walk around in anger, and most of them intend harm upon their fellow citizens. Of course most of their anger is directed at the person that "rivered" them in the first place, but if you happen to be in their way, they will settle for gutting you like a fish on their way to get revenge on that person. The people in Anger don't really give much of a fuck who they hurt, they just want to hurt someone. Sure they have a person in mind, but collateral damage is not really their concern. It is best to get the fuck out of Anger as quickly as possible. After all, you might commit some atrocity here yourself that you will later deeply regret. Anger has its charms for people who are on their first, or second trip down the river of broken dreams, not as much for people who have been here multiple times. Anger is a dangerous, sometimes deadly place. The river is the lesser of two evils, and that is saying something.

Jump back into the river and thank the god you've chosen that you survived a lot of people don't and the graveyard outside of Anger is full to bursting. The next town you will encounter on your journey in called Bargain. And it is just like it sounds, it is a merchant town that exists solely to trade. It is full of market stalls and bazaars full to bursting with all sort of commodities that you think you need, and you probably do. But here is the problem with Bargain, you've got fuck all to trade. You were surprised when you were pushed into the river of broken dreams, and you didn't think to pack anything to trade. Few people do. Think back to the god you've chosen, and ponder is he/she fair? Have they ever listened to you before? The answer is mostly likely either going to be "No" or "I don't know." Neither one of those answers is helpful to you in the town of Bargain. You've got nothing they want, and whatever you do have, they've already got plenty of. It doesn't stop people from lingering in the alleys of Bargain, vainly trying to concoct some deal that will get them back upstream to where they entered the river. It won't work, it hardly ever works, and if it does work then the next time you are in the river (and there will be a next time I promise), will be exponentially worse. Anger is a physically dangerous place, Bargain is a place that takes your soul. Get the fuck out while you still have what's left of one.

However, the next stop along the river of broken dreams isn't exactly an improvement. It is a town called Triste, and it is a gloomy, grey, and joyless place. The great sad clown Pagliacci, would make a fortune in Triste. His plays and performances would sell out the largest of venues. And Triste is a very, very large venue. There is no joy in Triste, there is sadness and sadness alone. Some of the greatest creations in the world have been forged in Triste, but unless you have an sturdy constitution, or a death wish, Triste in not the last stop on your trip down the river of broken dreams. It is a solitary crowded place, a paradox to be sure. Triste is full of people to be sure, but those people have little to no desire to interact with their fellow citizens. It is a place full of Eeyores, not a Tigger or Pollyanna will be found in Triste, they don't exist here, they can't exist here. No matter what your disposition or outlook was before you entered Triste, Triste will impose its sadness on you whether you like it or not, and trust me, you will not like it. Most people stay a very, very long time in Triste, and a great deal of the ones that do leave (and you will really have to leave) leave with a unfathomable reluctance.  Stay as long as you want or need to in Triste, it has a little something for everyone, and a little too much for a lot of us.

Your final stop on the river of broken dreams, the last town before it enters the "Bay" is Acceptance. It is an odd town. It is like a "twin city" in many ways. There is the one side, the side you generally enter first that is, at first blush, a bit like anger. It seems to lead back to Anger in some ways, and sometimes it can but don't fall for that. That just leads you back into the river in the wrong direction. It is the side that says "well here I am, I can do fuck all about it now, so I accept it, that doesn't mean I have to like it." That is the wrong side of the tracks in Acceptance. It is a faux dream, and don't fall for it, there is nothing there for you on the wrong side of Acceptance. If you make it past the wrong side of the tracks in Acceptance, well good for you, because a lot of people don't. A lot of people see the 'posh' side of Acceptance as defeat. It isn't but it sure as fuck does a great imitation of it. It is hard to see, and a lot of people refuse to see it, but Acceptance is the place you need to be, whether you know it or not. It isn't surrender and don't confuse it for such. It is, in many ways, the top of the mountain that Sisyphus reaches with his burden of a rock just before it falls back down to the bottom of the hill he has been pushing it up for so long. You might not stay long in Acceptance, it is a gloomily happy place, and your stay here will be both joyful and yet still very, very sad. It isn't the overwhelming gloom of Triste, but they are neighboring cities, and sometimes Triste's clouds block out Acceptance's sun. You have to leave Acceptance whether you want to or not. It feels like a final stop, but it isn't. Acceptance is a bit of fool's gold. It gleams, but it really is quite as real as you want it to be.

Your journey on the river of broken dreams is over, whether you know it or not. You're probably still wet, and probably still cold, and each of the towns you went through have left a little of themselves in you. It is just what they do, and it is just what the river does. Crawling out of the river of broken dreams must needs doing, and it is now your job to do it. Sure there are people on the banks who might want to help, and maybe in someways they can. But those helping hands are not always as helping as they seem, and take hold of them with a degree of caution. Caution that you should have displayed in the first place, after all a lack of caution is what put your dumb ass in the river of broken dreams in the first place, and even though you survived your trip (if you survived your trip) it was not some river cruise that you want to take again anytime soon (or ever) again. But of course, that won't stop you, it never does, and sometimes the trip into river of broken dreams doesn't end in tears. Sometimes the river adds an odd strength to a relationship you thought was weak in the knees. The river may drown certain expectations, but it rarely fully drowns hope.  It is rare,but it can be done, and it is incumbent upon you to try. I wish you luck.

J____s' Plan??

Comrade S______v,

You address me as Citizen now do you? What the blue fuck is going on at the Central Committee? I do not even know you, and you address me as Citizen. Be aware COMRADE that until I am put against the wall and shot, which may happen sooner rather than later, I do not response to the honorific of CITIZEN.  I am aware that out here in the provinces we are behind the news rather than in front of it, but where is this Citizen coming from? Has there been a "fronde" that has been successful and we are now are going to be required to wear powdered wigs, and short breeches?

I am also informed, though not by you shockingly enough, that the J____s' Plan has been renamed the "Imperial Plan"? I guess because it carries a bit more gravitas, and sounds better in official dispatches? Or maybe you lot finally put the author of the plan against the wall, and while the plan can still be used his (since he is now a "non-person, and doesn't have one) name can not be attached to it. What sort of madness is this? Are we all drunk on our own sense of power, and somehow still cowards at heart? What happened to the boisterous debates among the party rank and file? Where is the intellectual rough and tumble that gave birth to us as an organization? Buried in some history book that no one bothers to read? Trapped in old photographs in worn leather frames in some sweethearts attic with no identifying postscript on the back to tell future generations who we were? Strangers without a name in a picture torn, tattered, and stained, faded to yellow in that worn leather frame? Have we, while somehow being present, already become history?

I even obtained a rather tattered copy of the newly minted Imperial Plan, and again I see no difference from the original plan named after that newly minted traitor J_____.  Perhaps I am a bit thick, but I do not understand the direction the Committee is taking, is it to lead us into a new(er) glorious future where we call each other citizen, and prance around with our dogs on fancy leashes, and push our babies in jewel encrusted prams on the Prospects that our previous generation bled out upon for the principles that allow us to choose our own futures? Would they know why they died if they were to peruse the Imperial Plan, or would they roll over in their plainly marked graves, disgusted with the last post and chorus of the band playing the dirge over the plan they so painstakingly formed all those years ago?

We (and I mean the collective we, not the royal we, Imperial Plan or not) broke with our past because we refused to be condemned to repeat it. We were stuck in a recursive loop, that led each successive generation to the same brutal (and ultimately fatal) destination. Certainly, there was hope as each new generation came of age, but that hope was quickly dashed as we watch helplessly that new generation make the same awful mistakes that the previous ones had made. We knew, all too well, the outcome. No man can be said to have the ability to predict the future, there are no tragic Cassandras among us.  But, we were clever enough to see the pattern, and that if that pattern remained unbroken the result would almost inevitably be the exact same as before. Prediction isn't the same as prophecy.

Like most men, I expect you to hear what you want to hear, and disregard the rest, but I hope for the sake of us all, that you keep an open mind, and make no rash decisions. You ask me to remain "loyal, steadfast, and true" but you neglect to tell me to what I am remaining loyal to? The Party? The one currently tearing itself apart with nightly debates that have ceased to become stimulating but are merely accusatory? To the State it created? The State that seems to be crumbling from the center outward, staggering from poor decision to poor decision like a punch drunk, broken down, old boxer that is merely doing what he has been trained to do for years before finally taking his final dive?  Or should I take the advice of Polonius and "too thine own self be true'? If we all do that COMRADE, then we have created a monster, and not only have we created it, we have taught it how to kill. These are not the "monster under the bed type" these monsters have weapons wrapped in burlap, and they are very, very real. They will laugh at how we feel, and will keep track of each of us as they track us down and exterminate us like the rats they believe us to be.

Or perhaps I should remain loyal to god? Should I say some prayer to some god I think is fair? Which god is that COMRADE? The one we torn down all those years ago? Are we now to place it back on the pedestal we ripped it off of nearly 35 years ago? How would we explain that to the people, or more importantly could you explain how I would explain that to myself?  The god that we were convinced abandoned us, and we in turn abandoned.

You say that "plans are in place to resolve tensions in the Empire." What are those plans? Where is the manifesto that delineates the plan(s) of which you speak? Platitudes have never won the day COMRADE, pretty words written on expensive paper do not a plan make. Plans are active, they do not sit around like the homely girl at a dance vainly hoping some dashing young man will ask them for a turn around the dance floor. That is not how this works, that is not how any of this works. Make your plans if you must, but action (preferably of the brilliant type if you can manage it) is required. Many a success has been obtained by action first, and the writing down of the plan of that action later. All it requires is changing the date on the top of the paper in order to be able to (with a straight face) say "See comrades, we had a plan all along, and it has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations!"

I hope, for all our sake that the "plan" whichever one it is, is adopted soon. You say the center is chaos, but if the center cannot hold, then we are all of us, every last one of us COMRADE, CITIZEN or whatever title you give yourself, are lost.

Yours,

COMRADE  U_______y