Outbursts of a Zealous Idealist; Thoughts of a Deluded Lover: Year Six

By Baethan Balor

I liberated Hope from her cyclic cold shower damnation, forced her down onto our bed, wedged my head between her clamped legs, held her resistant arms down, and performed cunnilingus while she fought against me. She relented after two minutes and climaxed after five minutes. I pulled down my pants, removed my boxers, unbuttoned my shirt, unfastened my shirt stays, dropped to my knees, and allowed Hope to perform fellatio on me for one minute. I donned a condom and voluntarily climaxed inside her in less than two minutes within the range of twenty to thirty slow-paced pumps, in the missionary position, as I stared into her eyes, gripped the top of her head, and kissed her elated face.
Harmony is restored; this is an important lesson concerning the masculine and feminine dichotomy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663253859

Baethan Balor

An ongoing testament to the human condition, Baethan Balor’s experience and rendition of love through the practice and documentation of his unique metaethical philosophy offers a frontiersman’s perspective into the reasons for why people love each other, the resulting suffering, and the societal implications on a global scale.

Book preview

OUTBURSTS

OF A ZEALOUS

IDEALIST;

THOUGHTS OF A

DELUDED LOVER

(YEAR SIX)

BAETHAN BALOR

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OUTBURSTS OF A ZEALOUS IDEALIST;

THOUGHTS OF A DELUDED LOVER (YEAR SIX)

Copyright © 2023 Baethan Balor.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5384-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5385-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023910966

iUniverse rev. date: 08/24/2023

November

December

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

- Dante Alighieri’s Inferno

Entities are documented to the best of my truth. Errors in spelling,

punctuation, grammar, and syntax are fundamental. The reader is a fool.

Hope: I want to have sex every day.

Baethan: I do too. That’s how we’ll thrive together.

Hope: Maybe I’ll be called back to being.

Baethan: I hope you find what you’re looking for within yourself and heal.

Hope: I think that’s important too. I’m lucky.

Baethan: I am too.

NOVEMBER

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Saturday, November 20th, 2021

5:05 PM

Journals are self-indulgent.

Today is my 30th birthday.

Hope texted me during my security guard shift at a Civic Center, How is your day?

I said, Pensive. How about yours?

I haven’t felt well.

Why?

I’ve been thinking too much.

About what?

"It feels like everything and nothing."

[END]

Sunday, November 21st, 2021

4:48 PM

There is no ego; therefore, there is no ego death.

The opening of a book is of no consequence; there have been many before, and maybe more after. According to science, your interest is predetermined. According to spiritualistic free will, your interest is predetermined. According to theological notions of fate, your interest is predetermined.

What have you learned, and what have you known before reading these words that you didn’t already know? Love is to be found everywhere other than a book.

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Monday, November 22nd, 2021

1:53 PM

Intellectual rhetoric fails me in the face of love. Only a fool would do what I do; however, a fool with a self-assigned meaning in life is better off than a genius without one.

Documentation of my background information, replete with details of who I am, my occupations, my beliefs, achievements, material possessions, interests, genetic dispositions, idiosyncrasies, and physical appearance, would’ve been the content of this paragraph if I hadn’t been otherwise inclined to incite self-inquiry into a reader’s choice of entertainment.

Wednesday, November 24th, 2021

1:40 AM

There is something sickly about love, whether old or new, regal or puppyish: A slavery to mauldin appetites, distorted perspectives, and enshrouded with the ambiguity of cryptic discernment. Love must be tempered to be wholesome. Wholesome love is holistic. Holistic love is divine. Divine love is selfish.

I’ve worked one shift as a part-time security guard at a small sports arena and will begin full-time employment at a silver refinery within the upcoming week. My studio apartment, located at the center of Glens Falls, New York, is small, white-walled, and common, like a home, or a prison cell.

Hope is my thirty-eight-year-old companion. Love permeates our affairs. We take solace in each other’s flesh: a respite from our own vanities, indulgent in the reflection of acceptance displayed on our visages. If not for this journal, I’d be lying down with Hope for intimacy that constitutes the essential elements of human affairs, of which if we didn’t have, all would be in accordance with reason and virtue, war would cease, and passions would be constrained to personal will.

Thursday, November 25th, 2021

4:34 PM

Acculturation of chumps in this society: From the medical facilities I enter for a drug test, to my email inbox, I’m assaulted with festive corporate America capitalistic feel-good propaganda promoting excessive self-indulgence while simultaneously exalting gratitude. Asceticism is a foreign concept today.

In solitude, without the bonds of family or friends, I thrive.

Hope is the only person I care for and love. She transitions from her older sister’s apartment in Amsterdam to my Glens Falls apartment. My proposed terms of her living with me for free, without stipulations or expectations other than her being available to me when I desire her, are manifesting as reality.

There is never anything other than man and woman; therefore, this year’s journal installment is dedicated to the transition of a wayward boy, rebellious and consumed with esoteric studies, to a man committed to a woman. The details of our obsessive and singular attachment to each other will be of paramount concern until the inevitable dissolution of our relationship via failure or death.

Friday, November 26th, 2021

2:55 PM

Friendships are nullified; everyone wants something.

My desire to write in this journal is void. Mental and emotional states are the only matter of importance, albeit, they are trivial inconsequentialities of an unsettled mind.

There is no intellectual, philosophical, or spiritual discourse worth documenting. Fiction, poetry, and nonfiction exposition are of equal triteness. I’ve been through the rigamarole of each, and reflect on the many authors I’ve witnessed who write over fifty books throughout their lives, with each subsequent publication serving as a slight amendment to a series of recurrent content written with disparate formats and styles. That is the essence of marketing: More of the same and the same old thing, rehashed, proffered, and consumed en mass.

I tire of diatribes on virtue, the phenomenology of consciousness, the diagrams of God, social contrivances, and economic evolutions. Life is simple without this documentation, of which I’d be better off without; however, these paltry words serve as an impressive superficial portfolio and are the core of my egregious, interminable ego.

Saturday, November 27th, 2021

7:10 PM

I’ve worked grueling labor in the grungiest conditions all my life and have been paid less than for what I do this moment: I stand idle in a sublevel basement of an entertainment center. There is no labor involved. I’m dumbstruck with how I’ve duped myself for most of my life with sweat-inducing fervor while I could’ve been a guard, rifling through people’s personal belongings and posing as an authority.

A heater blares and muddles my thoughts. The purpose of thought is to end all thought.

Sunday, November 28th, 2021

1:24 AM

I have nothing to say to anybody.

For long stretches of time there is an abdication of thought; it comes and goes in wholesome waves.

The abstract principles of love spoil one’s equanimity. Hope wants time away from me to contemplate what she wants. She is the nexus of my chosen suffering. I adore her due to the power that I give her over me. I’ve never chosen to love another unconditionally until now. Solitude makes for fearsome men. Hope’s fear of me, wounds me, though I understand. I am an unstable, chaotic partner, whose life is ordered to the utmost, with foolish convictions, one of them being the daily documentation of his own life.

Hope doesn’t know her self-assigned meaning in life; therefore, her intent is muddled and shrouded in a veil of fear. Hope’s elder sister shared her doubts about the integrity of my relationship with Hope, with Hope, due to our brief duration together. Hope cites the holidays as reason for her ambivalence.

An impassioned man cares not for reason, yet is thrust back into the duress of his rational womb when confronted with doubt.

To grasp and yearn is reason enough.

3:03 AM

The autonomy of my will is no substitute for the will of others. I’m a thirty-year-old man; what have I learned throughout the merry-go-round of life?

No one deserves anything; everything is as it should be; it is what it is.

Monday, November 29th, 2021

1:52 AM

There is nothing to report. I value voided states of mind more than any other. Transient moments of ataraxia are nourishment for one’s presupposed soul.

4:46 PM

Hope’s employment at Walmart was terminated in Amsterdam this morning due to her anxiety and depression-induced negligence in attending and ascertaining information concerning her shifts. I arranged for Hope to move in with me, with no financial obligations, where she intends to search for employment via a work-from-home option, and attend my local gym with me. This arrangement has been a due process for the past month.

Hope is a thirty-eight-year-old mother of a twenty-year-old daughter who has moved to North Carolina. At a height of 5'3, a weight of no more than 120 lbs, and a gorgeous face, Hope is my ideal physical type. Compassionate, affable, discerning, easygoing, humble, considerate, prudent, knowledgeable, gentle, contemplative, and ennobling, and driven. With Hope as my reclusive companion, all writing is against reason.

Love is a sinister, nefarious thing, when centered on the flesh, and must be transmogrified with cooperation and survival to attain a semblance of truth.

Hope is precious to me: my sole companion lover, confidante, and entertainment.

Tuesday, November 30th, 2021

3:00 AM

The witching hour. A cloud-occluded moon. A new month, for a new book, on nauseous repetition--oh, I’m grateful, for these idle moments of which my pain is negligible, stomach is full, and the mind centered on airy nothingness in the silence of my simple studio apartment. Moments of solitude will be a memory soon if I am to achieve my greatest desire of Hope as my live-in companion.

Alone at a jagged and frosty mountaintop, or reposed on warm sheets with a beautiful naked woman by one’s side, one remains to suffer. What is a divine human being but the same-self consciousness we know ourselves to be? The life we create and build is a natural discourse of unrelenting want.

DECEMBER

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Wednesday, December 1st, 2021

6:25 PM

The more time I enjoy with Hope, the less I desire to write in this blasted documentation. Pursuits of high-flying ambition have long since faded to oblivion. I’ve always felt this way, even since childhood, when I occupied my mind with numbing entertainment. This journal is a similar substitute. The finished products may be impressive to some—to behold a series of books, with bold covers and a well-formatted interior, though only I know what it all means, and of the minimal toil exacted on me that amounts to a large proportion of my chosen suffering.

This trifling achievement is a mere bane, and I can’t write enough. I could write for God, as many self-accredited sages, gurus, and saints do—and are all the more happier for it, for the divine is open to interpretation. Truth is mere benevolence, reiterated ad nauseam, published inexorably, and rephrased with an adroit understanding of cultural context.

The divine is the back of my palm, a spinster’s gullet, a hand-me-down basket, a bloodied arm stump—no? Political designs and civilization distort truth. Everything that is, is now, etc.

Damn this journal.

Thursday, December 2nd, 2021

3:07 PM

Apathy, my old friend returns. How I feel now—I don’t even want to record it. Hope plays with my heart and mind. In an attempt to love exclusively, one misses the mark of true spiritualism, of true love; therefore, to love wholly, one must forgo exclusive love. A human being’s will cannot be owned. So…

I reorient my will inwards—my sole providence and recourse for equanimity. Disappointment is a rare feeling: a grade higher than apathy, though I’d rather feel apathy.

I lost respect for Hope. Her lack of integrity fails me. I desired to provide for her, to open all my resources, with absolute freedom.

Absolute freedom has been granted; therefore, I’m inadvertently disappointed. This is no shock; rather, a reaffirmation of wisdom.

Hope woke to a request from her sister, Amanda. Amanda recalled Hope to her apartment for there to be someone present for a visiting plumber.

Hope texted me after what I presumed to be when the plumber departed: I’m not sure about going back today, with back meaning to my apartment. I called Hope and she rejected the call after the second ring.

Regardless of potential infidelity, I had scheduled an appointment with Hope and the manager of the gym I attend nightly—James, to enroll Hope in a joint membership with me, that I must now cancel—which, in itself, is of little consequence; however, Hope’s demonstration of character is a stranglehold on my contentment.

A bundle of clothes and a tote bag are missing from a clothes basket Hope brought with her to my apartment; therefore, Hope’s decision to not return to my apartment this evening had been premeditated.

Trust has been destroyed. I sip coffee and ponder, calm and serene, like a mad dog. The human condition strikes me as a sledgehammer upon a slab of concrete. The unyielding concrete vibrates and the sledgehammer recoils, slightly. Pain… a great illusion. This is the moment I had waited for since the inception of my relationship with Hope. Fallible human beings, deceptive, dissimulative… grasping… desiring… wanting… We are the same. There is no fault or blame. The injustice is learned guilt and shame.

Aren’t there better things to occupy one’s mind, like nothing?

3:39 PM

Hope said, I love you, on her way out of my apartment while she gripped her belongings with no intent to return the same night.

I said, I love you too, from the opposite side of the kitchen counter, where I lay on the floor in a half-sleep, trusting and faithful: A chump to capitalism, as usual.

This is what this journal is useful for: I am wounded; I admit it. I, I, I—the totality of this ceaseless egotistical expulsion. A reader deserves to be rewarded with my admission of private sadness, dehumanized through words, lost to the concept of time. I haven’t lost anything except for my dignity.

8:57 PM

The previous entry is an example of the duress of a human mind, i.e., unnecessary suffering.

Hope drives to me now after minor suggestions. My delusions of Hope’s behavior are exposed to me. Depression, anxiety, and fear afflict Hope, rendering her unable to act without an external will to direct her. I desire to uplift her to my confidence and esteem, to secure a reliable companion for myself; however, is the previous journal entry not an admission of my lack of confidence and esteem—to be disheartened and crestfallen, and afflicted with a myriad of illusioned woes unto myself when my will fails to direct the course of Hope’s will, which would be to her betterment, in accordance with my judgment?

Saturday, December 4th, 2021

1:59 AM

Hope is my tether to sanity.

I’m surrounded by anxious men and women, each vying for something more than what they have in this capitalistic culture—yes, this capitalistic culture,—I repeat ad nauseam—just as all cultures should be. Men and women should be anxious in each other’s presence in this ruthless world of consumption—in Hope’s words.

We color affairs with corporate propaganda to distract and entice ourselves away from the reality that we live. The illusions that please us are our finest prisons.

My little screen is my finest prison. It glows for me, with a radiance unreckoned moment to moment, conceived only as a scourge to one’s senses. The amount of time is incalculable; I’m awed. A beautiful woman lays on the floor beside me, yet here I squat.

2,700 steps climbed on the stair-stepper in thirty-six minutes. I don’t know why I do what I do. Strength training is a blip, a miasma, a void within a void. There is a sinister overtone in every thought derived from a will to survive. As human creatures, even the slightest sign of empathy or compassion is wholly unnatural, unless there is a boon to be gained; only then is compassion and empathy holistic and pure.

Unconditional love is for poets. Sainthood is inhuman.

2:55 PM

Hope continued to lay on my floor well into the afternoon, past 2 PM, advancing past the threshold of twelve hours of sleep, or idleness. I sat alongside her, kissed her, and lifted her from the floor, to rest her back against a pillow positioned against my wall. I studied the profile of her face, veiled by a streak of black hair, and watched as a single tear trickled down from the innermost corner of her right eye, past her nose, and settled within the rightmost side of her closed lips.

What thoughts make you cry? I inquired.

After twenty seconds of deliberation, Hope said, I feel like the world is hopeless.

You are the world.

All the more reason, then.

Why?

Hope hesitated for another thirty seconds, shook her head slightly, and muttered an acknowledgment of ill-knowledge.

I said, That’s what I thought, and held her close. Her darkened eyes stared back at me while I brushed her hair away from her face, kissed her cheeks, and rubbed my fingers against her scalp. We shifted against the wall together and I positioned myself in front and on top of her. Our visages became each other’s realities, and our sensual kisses were the full berth of the human condition. I’d be better off if I were born an ugly man, I grinned. I wouldn’t be blessed with this circumstance.

Hope grinned back at me despite her melancholic disposition and said, I guess that’s the same for me too, except as a woman.

If I were born an ugly man I would’ve made something of myself. I kissed her. We don’t own the bodies we have. Ugly people do the same thing we do, anyway. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

… I reminisce on the proximate yet nonexistent past while Hope remains seated behind me and to my left, observing me write. She cracks a knuckle. My recorder would’ve been invaluable for the aforementioned conversation. I refuse to document ill-conceived dialogue, and cannot remember verbatim how our brief conversation manifested, nor will I tarnish the memory with confabulated details.

If I were born an ugly man, and Hope—an ugly woman, life would be unreal.

Monday, December 6th, 2021

1:33 PM

I watched Baraka, by Ron Fricke, with Hope last night, and reflected on the myriad of cultures, people, and landscapes shown.

Objective truth amounts to consumption and suffering. I’m weary of the entire ordeal. My friends from yesteryear—if I am to deem them such, diluted my mind with truth oriented towards Christian precepts—yet, I continue to digest and process the information with a postmodernist deconstructive lens and read from David R. Hawkins’s books of how I am of a low-level consciousness due to relativistic, postmodern, deconstructive thinking.

Modernity: What is it? Anything may be written and published. Karma, sin, and the judgment of one human against another are moot. The axiomatic Golden Rule of Treat others the way you want to be treated, modified to Treat others the way you treat yourself, is the totality of true, unpretentious virtue.

I care not for objective truth, for what I experience now is the singular truth. The history I currently revise in my previous documentation is only a perversion to my peace of mind, for I choose to reread and crystalize the memories throughout an active process of introspective self-slavery.

The swarming masses of crowds and those who died and have yet to live are an iota within my iota of what is real. All of life suffers in ways chosen. The glorious brilliance of suffering is inescapable. Laugh or cry.

9:44 PM

My orientation as a silver refinery worker at Ames Goldsmith begins at 7:00 AM, Wednesday.

Wednesday, December 8th, 2021

6:14 AM

Life with Hope is the best I’ve had with a woman. We are aligned in interests, compatible in friendship, and primed to cooperate and survive together.

Realism is all I care for. I’ve lost the spark of youth that begets unique creation. Life is suffering and work; enjoy it.

2:50 PM

Snow falls. A poem would be an injustice. Orientation at the silver refinery is a rational process without deviation. I thought for a brief moment how I never anticipated the man that I am to be what I’ve become.

I’m in overdrive to work. Life is without limitations, for I am without entertainment. Show me anything under the sun or within the earth and I’ve had enough before I’ve begun to partake. Sentences flow as an easy breeze. Asceticism and self-flagellation are paltry jokes on the ego. My brain sizzles from care.

6:00 PM

Life moves on. A rotunda of spinal columns. Hope exists alongside me and functions on the same mental plane; however, she dared to say that I am transcended, and can better tolerate reality.

Something stupid this way comes. I’m in a dream of unreality. Work to live and live to work; there is no better alternative; therein, lies Hope’s dilemma and cause for existential dread.

Thursday, December 9th, 2021

6:06 AM

Life is a murk, for which there is no light. I laugh at everything that is, for my chosen suffering is easy. My lot in life is splendid.

Friday, December 10th, 2021

6:05 AM

Tears of sorrow, for what was. Tears of self-pity, for what had never been. Tears of grief, for lessons lost. Lust begets lust for life. Tears are no place for a silver refinery. How we choose to suffer determines what we are. Death is everything, all at once.

Saturday, December 11th, 2021

5:21 PM

I miss the struggle of being a dishwasher. To overcome the challenge every day, autonomous and self-reliant, it had been a symbolic affirmation of existence in the face of incessant consumption. I want to go back to the labor, though at the same pay of my current labor.

Ingestion of 1.5 grams of psilocybin with Hope today amounted to an enlightening experience. My attention is focused on her, though I encourage her to confront her fears, pursue opportunities, and explore venues of creativity to overcome her debilitating anxiety. This had been a far cry from my original 5 grams of consumption. I rejoice in my resurged brotherhood with Donald, the seller of psilocybin.

The sound of rain. The voices of passersby. The woman you love at your side. Self-defeat is nonexistent. Life is a template, in accordance with one’s presupposed soul, the same as all others. I wonder too little, in my little box—a hole, of similar sorts, no matter the locale. I hear a verminous man in the apartment above me; he spoils my mind and equanimity, though, he is me, and my disdain is natural. I feel no shame for feeling contempt for inadequate behavior, by my judgment. What can a man do but endure his lot, and those around him, and suffer alongside those who choose to suffer in debased ways?

A car horn is a passing wind at a mountain’s apex. The outcries of a hoodlum are a saint’s whisper. There is no difference between nourishing one’s belly and the emptiness of the soul.

I’m gonna go get high, announced the man above me to the woman he argued with, and stomped away.

Sunday, December 12th, 2021

4:10 AM

I visited the Hyde Museum with Hope after ingesting 1 gram of psilocybin. I love the woman, and the art, subject to entropy. My gesticulations and outspoken exuberance were an uncustomary presence for the security team to deal with.

Be confident in your pain.

How does one not misrepresent another if nobody can ever fully understand another?

This template is a recourse to nothingness, though I have found something in Hope’s companionship that I otherwise lacked without. Humanity is simple.

One of the museum guards taught me that one of the paintings of a woman with crossed arms represented worship, rather than the modern psychological interpretation of low self-esteem, defensiveness, and discomfort.

I had been asked to behave like normal people at the museum, and pondered on the tantamount stupidity of the request.

Monday, December 13th, 2021

4:36 PM

GERD

Dribble on a bib.

A ladle of tomatoes balanced on a

Double chin.

Lard. The stench of hot cream.

Sour milk poured over

Meat pies. Month-old cottage cheese.

Sneezing. Cracked lips.

A lump in the throat isn’t what you

Are thinking of. Chocolate patty cakes

In the oven. Sizzling. Bathroom to the

Left of the coffee pot. Temptation to

Vomit curds

Along the way

Into a bag

Of yellow-colored silk.

Leaking. Mother will be mad. Father

Will be sad, though glad that

I moved out over fourteen years ago.

The carpet stays clean.

Wet hands.

8:30 PM

The quantity of every moment exceeds the quality. This journal is my greatest and dearest burden.

The muffled voice behind a face mask, reduced to a murmur by a cacophony of pneumatic war drums, is a balm to the senses.

When only one person is in your mental world, the tides of care lap as a tidal wave upon an unsullied shore.

A noxious fume filled the refinery today. Over half of the staff, myself included, needed to evacuate for one hour until an orange haze (that overpowered my respirator’s filtration system) had been ventilated out of the refinery.

A suicide prevention notice is taped beside the employee time clock.

10:24 PM

Spiritual platitudes are evanescent balms that fail throughout the acme of now. When most pertinent, mantras and recitations are mere dribbles on a bib.

Tuesday, December 14th, 2021

9:48 PM

Hope is my only company of value. I maintain no friendships. There is never anything to write. I love the woman. All creeds are null in the face of reality. What is discipline except for work for a foolish conviction? Tawdry gimmicks and empty jests. We die alone.

Wednesday, December 15th, 2021

10:47 PM

Technological progression elicits pernicious suffering. I may write of inconsequential happenings of my character where I’m employed to entertain myself in the future; however, I hear a quote from my past reverberate throughout my unconscious thoughts brought to the forefront by a malevolent force: He’s a legend in his own mind. Spoken to me by my father, I reflected on the socialist undertone of his statement, as to diminish my ego while I was still in my adolescence.

This life is a silly joke. Everything I do is a willy-nilly-shim-sham-flam—whatever that means. Language is a crock. Politics supersedes spirit. Society strangulates. Man and woman, what else?

Thursday, December 16th, 2021

8:25 PM

Instead of writing of the intimate moments, in detail—the work, I trim the snippets out. The fringes are curtailed, condensed, and summarized in a disposable feeling without context. The story is lost. The sense of humble rectitude and simultaneous recalcitrance dismisses each moment.

Friday, December 17th, 2021

5:01 AM

Grandiose, self-important metaphysical ascription and application of ideas. I don’t know what to think anymore; therefore, my writing is a convoluted mess of nonsense.

Sadness is the tantamount emotion felt between Hope and me. Her world is perceived through a fearful lens. The more I care, the weaker I become—yet, Hope is the fruit of my life. I love her and want to see her thrive alongside me. Our life is one that I lead. In the face of her sadness, I strive to love to the utmost, and satisfy her every whim, which is nothing. There is no guilt or shame between us, only the grueling phantasms of the past that haunt us. My time and attention are diverted towards her exclusively, quelling the flame of my ambition, and nullifying an intangible fraction of my self-respect. Yes, I love her, unlike any other woman I’ve ever been involved with. Hope is precious and pure to me.

A man must be resolute and firm—a font of power. Every day is a rebirth. Focus and concentration are the foundations of an implacable will directed towards one’s self-assigned meaning in life.

Yesterday morning, a man who has worked for Ames Goldsmith for twenty years checked my temperature while I changed out of my boots into the company-provided boots. I said, How has this facility shaped you?

The man said, "This place hasn’t fuckin’ shaped me; it’s a paycheck man."

I saw the man below me, six hours later, walking beneath the second-story platform I stood upon, and thought Places don’t shape people; people shape places. We terraform and construct. No place shapes anyone, even a prison cell. The man or woman in a prison cell shapes the cell.

10:52 AM

I stand at the refinery with a clipboard and pen in hand. Piping to a crucial vat in the facility has broken down. My supervisor stands with me and banters with other idle employees. A trainee stands to my left and dances in place between intermittent idling sessions. This activity, by which I’m paid $20.25/hr, has become normal to me over the past six days of my ninety-day probationary period of employment. I thought my security guard position had been a stupid boon, though now, having lived this existence as a production worker, I’ve discovered an absurdity beyond my reason. In an environment of rationality and efficacy, there is indolence and wastefulness.

12:24 PM

Again, I stand alone and observe: Corroded piping. Filth abounds, not in piles or layers, but imbued on every metallic surface. Irregular pipes shake and rattle. Mixers gyrate and rotate massive blades at the bottoms of 600-gallon vats. Reactors roil, filled with caustic and acidic chemicals, from sodium chloride, formaldehyde, peroxide, and nitric acid.

Forklifts beep in reverse far off down a wide hallway. Forgotten components rust and degrade in stagnant puddles at the lowest point of cracks and divots in concrete floors. Electric panels smeared with years of silver oxide and catalyzing powder. A clamor of pneumatic apparatus and a repetitive bang of multiple pumps. Only humans and resilient microorganisms occupy the enormous warehouse. I’m paid to write under umbrella shafts of fluorescent lamps suspended from a discolored steel ceiling lined with an array of pipes and wire. Ugliness is beauty: what man has created to create a singular product of multipurpose applications.

Ames Goldsmith is like the innards of a saint. You peer within, and it’s a creature like any other, with mechanisms working in synchronicity, but the product is pure, used to cleanse and heal; however, this construct has many flaws and is costantly breaking down. It’s fools gold to behold the innards of this particular saint who would be found on a streetside after stumbling out of a tavern.

8:36 PM

Everything in life is numbers.

Sunday, December 19th, 2021

10:53 AM

People are scared to empty their minds fearing that they will be engulfed by the void. What they don’t realize is that their own mind is the void.

- Huang Po

The purpose of thought is to end all thought, had been the most profound knowledge spoken at a commune I visited four years ago.

Hope is the cause and effect of my chosen suffering. I love her as I love myself, with a preconceived acceptance of our individual departures from each other’s lives, and eventual deaths. Hope attempts to sleep on the floor while I type, illuminated by a small shaft of sunlight shining in through a vertical slit of my blackout curtains. An office chair I purchased for her remains partially assembled at the center of my apartment. We enjoyed each other’s company all day yesterday on my day off while snow fell into the night. Neither of us departed from my apartment.

1.5 - 4.0 grams of psilocybin ingestion has become a morning treat every day I don’t work at the silver refinery. There is nothing sacred, magical, or spiritual concerning fungus. The food is regenerative; I feel every sensation. A mushroom is equivalent to a grain of rice, a sardine, a fleck of turmeric, an oat, an egg… Consumption is simple, unpretentious, and the totality of everything.

To be with Hope day through night, who is overwhelmed with constant perturbation regarding her past, while she is unemployed, unoccupied, and alone except for when I return from the silver refinery, the gym, or the grocery store, is a catalyst for my improvement as a man: Support and protect. Hope is my mother when I kneel before her and nuzzle against her breasts while she strokes my head; my daughter when I consul, educate, advise and comfort; my sister when we achieve an acme of mutual understanding; my lover when she moans in pleasure beneath me. Woman with man.

Monday, December 20th, 2021

4:44 PM

An old man named Jim whose self-assigned meaning in life is Drink beer, who is also my trainer, whirled around to address myself and Carson—the man who dances throughout his shifts: You don’t need to fuckin’ follow me everywhere I go; if I have something to tell you, I’ll tell you.

Carson and I smiled at each other from behind our respirators and continued to follow Jim around the refinery at a greater distance. An hour later, Jim resumed training Carson and me with an amiable attitude.

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021

6:00 AM

There is nothing to write of but little snapshots of suffering, trivial affairs, and a gradual progression of human affairs from a limited perspective. Pain is known without knowing. The pain of knowing is a distraction from the pain that facilitated the knowing. To quit this little screen would elevate me. Write of God, and what would come about other than an unwarranted boost to one’s self-satisfaction and self-esteem?

The silver refinery and all the people within, with our microcosmic interactions, petty grievances, overt hatreds, and secret compassion for each other, is a template like all the rest I’ve been a part of, there or not there. Chosen meaning or not, the end result is death; therefore, why be in front of a screen with no thoughts to express—and for what merit?—a memory? Posterity?

Brain food today, announced a young production worker who donned his street boots beside me.

Brain food? I remarked, confused. What brain food is here? I glanced at the meager remainder of my lunch within an airtight plastic container.

There’s a lot to learn, he said.

Ah, I thought you meant literal nourishment to one’s brain. There’s nothing to learn but rote procedures and when to pull a lever or twist a spin-dial.

The young worker quipped over the chip on his shoulder, There’s a lot of chemistry, and pushed out of the front door.

9:48 AM

The production process of the refinery is a huge comedy. Carson and I are paid to do nothing. I follow Carson with a clipboard and write (what appears to be notes, but is actually this journal entry) while Carson scouts the facility with a broom and dustpan. Management is hands-off, aloof in the office quarters with paperwork and screens—cameras included. Yesterday I sweat like a pig, garbed in a full hazmat suit, and scooped hand shovels of silver nitrate crystals.

Carson sweeps old dust off the floor and carries scraps of wood broken off pallets. Flecks of concrete and forgotten stones enter Carson’s dustpan. The paycheck I earn for my current behavior is corporate blasphemy. The role I assume, to be observed by whoever monitors the security cameras, or happens to pass by, is a facsimile of a micromanaging supervisor conducting a performance review. I amuse myself as another idle employee who informed me that he once worked at The Dollar Tree, observes me. I may as well be a security guard at this point, though I’d be paid less. Other staff members experience a lapse in work too; however, the majority are better at concealing their void intent.

2:24 PM

An old sixty-something Caucasian man hired as a maintenance technician appraised me and began to talk. The garrulous exposition had been unsolicited. I learned that the man has worked over fifty jobs, identified himself as a player of women, and that his favorite book—that he read at the age of fifteen or sixteen, is Adolf Hitler’s, Mein Kampf.

The less I know of the men here, the better off I am, though I’m grateful for my lot, as a reference for comparison. There are the weary and spiritless, the obese and the lanky, all garbed in washed-out greys, browns, and blues. Flannel shirts and steel-toed boots. Cigarettes, beer, and a woman to blame, or lack thereof, leaving only oneself to reflect on the outcomes of life’s decisions.

Acid burned through a stout Puerto Rican man’s boot today. The man howled vulgarities by my locker in hope of sympathy.

How did you do that? I inquired, acknowledging his pain.

"It just burned through!"

Another man: Bald, fat, with a blank dollesque face, said Crispy.

I looked over my shoulder and smiled at the bald fat man and he smiled back.

"Fuck—shit—fuckin’… shit!" howled the pained man on a bench.

I closed my locker and walked away.

Hope idles at my apartment, though she isn’t paid for the activity by which she afflicts herself with consternation, grief, dread, and hopelessness. Despite my efforts, one can only ever save themselves. With adequate resources, the best one can do for another is be patient and love.

Carson is a delightful coworker with one of the best attitudes I’ve ever encountered. We communicate primarily through gestures, though the little we have spoken in private (in the employee locker room and bathroom) I’ve learned that Carson has partaken, ingested, and injected every (mainstream) drug from marijuana to crack cocaine.

What do you think about all the men who stand around and pace back and forth? I asked a new maintenance technician in the breakroom yesterday.

The man requested that I repeat myself; I did, and he said, "I don’t know what to think about it."

You don’t know what to think? I inquired with a hint of sardonic amusement while I masticated oatmeal.

I just know I’d rather be sitting.

Thursday, December 23rd, 2021

7:01 PM

All communication not conducive to survival or cooperation is an expression of suffering.

Friday, December 24th, 2021

12:44 AM

Conversations with people are useless and worthless. What, then?—if not the paltry opinions that are ever-changing and impermanent of no-name entities born to die and be forgotten, validated by a lineage of self-fulfilling egotists hellbent on more of the same? A poem; a tirade; a philosophical premise born of ashes and dust; a tiring work of fiction spawned from repressed memories; a metanonfictional self-deprecating exposition; more of the same.

Spirituality is a scapegoat for those with no choice but to be weak. Anchorites, erudites, stylites, cenobites, hermits, recluses, and ascetics occupy themselves with the delusional egotistical premise of a null ego. Saints are inhuman. To transcend one’s humanity is inhuman. Cybernetics, immortality, space travel, quantum everything and anything—blast me out of the virtuous prisons of another’s self-imposed methodology to suffer.

Anything else tonight? People want to be validated with your attention. "It’s painful to be lonely," said a clown to a square.

Love with intent. Unconditional love is inhuman unless one is privileged with absolute solitude.

Absolved and free from those who vie to be my friend, I realign myself with myself.

9:25 PM

Weary with the world, an old tart ventured out of a misshapen shack and yearned to create a masterpiece in a spot of mud. What arose instead was a sequence of nonsensical sentences devoid of value.

You’ve lost your genius, your spark, your talent, and any passion that once impelled you to aspire, commented a nearby slave, bent at the knees and broken at the wrists.

Happy Holidays! retorted the tart to the slave with a singular hope that the spirit of her proclamation would assuage her apathetic mental neurosis.

Saturday, December 25th, 2021

5:03 PM

Sex is the cyclic solution to all non-platonic relationship problems.

Sunday, December 26th, 2021

2:26 AM

There is no purposeful intent to be humble or prideful. To be confident in one’s existence, despite the prolific hatred of a capitalistic populace, is crucial. Self-deprecating has become wearisome and a trope. There is nothing to prove. Anyone may do anything with the proper allocation of time invested and gifted skill sets. My books are no achievement. I write for God as I write for my self.

Mantras on the holistic oneness of consciousness may be repeated ad nauseam to fill page after page, e.g., God is love; love is God; everything is now: Boring and tired self-help nonsensical distractions from the innate wisdom known, though arcane, cryptic, and impossible to practice to the utmost, for life is consumptive and suffering. Lie down in the dirt and be subsumed with maggots and rot to be one with everything.

9:26 PM

Hope is still my only companion and correspondent despite her debilitating anxiety and depression that prevents a reciprocal loving state. Hope hasn’t left my apartment except for brief intervals to check the parking ticket status of her car parked in a nearby community parking lot, and for two trips to her sister’s apartment—where Hope once lived. Hope doesn’t work, is perturbed by existence, and suffers from a significant eating disorder and a desire to self-flagellate with cold showers to atone for repressed guilt and shame. Hope’s gastrointestinal problems, incited by chronic stress, compound her anxiety. Suicidal thoughts are often expressed by Hope. She languishes, despairs, and grieves for herself; therefore, she does the same for humanity, described to me in her philosophical discourses of human affairs, by which she is fearful of hatred and anger.

The stagnancy and despondency of Hope’s state are of extreme concern and contention for me to manage. Hope’s energy is diminished. I’ve watched her succumb to a girlish infancy after three instances of shared psilocybin ingestion, whereby she laid down in the fetal position and announced her terror, to which I responded by comforting her, physically, emotionally, and mentally.

I’ve utilized the heating system in my apartment this winter for Hope’s sake and have the thermostat set at 71 degrees Fahrenheit. I now own a mattress, three sheets, a desk, and an office chair, purchased for Hope, to enable her comfort and to promote a productive work-from-home life; however, none of these furnishments have bolstered her will, nor rekindled the ambition that she once had before her daughter moved to North Carolina two years ago. Hope is primed for death ideations and often withdraws to the bathroom for compulsive cold showers. She maintains a journal of affirmations and poetry. I worry for her wellbeing and love her like a confidant and wife. Most of my free time is with Hope, engaged in conversation and intimacy; however, sex is a vexing issue, for Hope states that her anxiety inhibits her from enjoyment. Hope fawns over me and expresses her overt attraction for me on multiple instances daily, though my sexual initiations are met with frequent rejections and inaction.

I questioned Hope on her permissiveness, wherein the first month of her living with me, she allowed and accepted my sexual advances despite her discomfort and anxiety; therefore, I declared that I had no intention of raping her, and that I respected her No. Henceforth, I’ve been frustrated, having relinquished force in favor of patience, ennobling a higher consciousness for Hope and myself, yet, I’m taken advantage of; however, I’m no victim in the lustful charade that begets the most exquisite forms of suffering. The want is not a need. My care for Hope’s humanity supersedes my selfishness. I issue no command to her, only proffering my advice and recommendations for a life with meaning, which Hope has yet to determine. I’m devastated and heartbroken when I witness her prominent sorrowful visage that streaks her natural beauty with dark lines and sullen eyes.

Hope neglected to visit her immediate family for Christmas as she had planned, preferring to stay with me for my customary lifestyle of solitude, now shared with her. Hope has no friends, and communicates only with her daughter, two sisters, and one of her two brothers. Hope’s activities in my absence are unknown to me, though in my presence she practices periods of fasting, browses content on her phone, and engages in light physical exercise; however, the majority of her time is spent either in bed or in the bathroom.

Tuesday, December 28th, 2021

6:07 AM

My previous journal entry is a declaration of selfish victimization: a pathetic testament of my lust.

I’m grateful for chemical burns on my right ear and upper back; each twinge of sustained pain is a reminds me of one’s mortality. There is beauty in all forms. Spiritual charades needn’t be written. The life I live has always been ideal.

Some love the idea of greatness, thrust into a spotlight of inadequacy.

9:23 AM

Wearisome pursuits highlight the trivial mundaneness of outcomes. Our social discourses determine character. Integrity is a byproduct of survival efficacy. Pipes, valves, barrels, and pumps.

My trainer at the silver refinery, Jonathan, mentioned Vlad the Impaler and Diogenes the Cynic when I inquired about his historical interests. The men at the refinery are of pure form, reduced, akin to the chemicals we work with. Entropy is subconsciously embraced. Vanity has no mirror. The bounty of life, at the moment, with transmogrified nature, is akin to being at the zenith of a rocky outcrop jutting towards the stars.

I don’t care about others’ emotions or my own, said Johnathan.

I questioned, Why don’t you care about your emotions?

They’re useless distractions.

I recall your similar thoughts concerning women.

I don’t have time for that shit, said Johnathan, Girls just want to talk about their feelings and the past all the fucking time. The past is the past; only today exists.

7:19 PM

I learned at the end of my shift that Johnathan has a girlfriend.

On my return home to Hope, I alternated between strength training and intense sex with her. We’ve come to understand each other with excellent fidelity. Hope shops for sexy lingerie, exercises, and never leaves my apartment. I feel the prime of my virility.

Wednesday, December 29th, 2021

7:21 AM

Johnson inserted a long rod with a cup attached at one end into a reactor to test the temperature of the contents with a small electronic handheld instrument. I removed my respirator and inquired, Since you began working here four years ago, have you begun to appreciate beauty more?

Johnson shook his head, removed his respirator, and said, No.

Do you find beauty here?

I find beauty in the chemicals—the chemicals. Johnson’s brows furrowed and his eyes