Attention Whoring, Lonely, My favorites, Nostalgia, Selfish

Love is Pure Mathematics and the Neverending Story

I’ve mentioned it before, but the best thing on the internet is the wikipedia entry on Love. The entry climaxes when love is described as a “thought-terminating cliche.” What I think is so amazing about that is that in three words they are able to describe everything I hate about the world and therefore explain why I don’t feel love. Love is something that halts discourse and thinking rationally in favor of doing something unoriginal. You couldn’t describe anything in a way that made me hate it more.

Love is simply a word, but words are inventions, and love is humans’ most interesting invention because it is completely intangible yet has weaseled its way into our culture in such a way that humanity decided it was necessary. It isn’t. Love is conceptual, which is fine, so is joy or depression or any feeling, but love is a concept that we refuse to define and yet demand for everybody to understand.

“I love you, don’t you understand?”

No. How could I?

Nobody says “I enjoy fantasy basketball, don’t you understand?” because no other emotion demands so much out of another person. You can enjoy fantasy basketball and not give a shit if someone else does. You can’t love someone without them loving you back or your love becomes depression. It’s selfish.

This is why long distance relationships work. Because love is impossible. It is impossible to love someone that you see because they are real and love isn’t – it’s a made up concept that can’t exist between two (or more) actual human beings, but when you are not near that person it’s easier to create the person you love.

I’ve fallen in love before.

I’ve fallen in love before multiple times, but never with a person that I was near. Only with the idealized version of that person that I created in my masturbation memories. The person who made funny jokes about my cum when the tissue I was using got saturated. The person whose jokes were not theirs, but rather mine that I imposed upon them using my made up version of their voice.

This isn’t going to turn into another post about how I love myself.

I said that more to stop myself from going down that hole because loving myself is getting old. But because love is a fantasy, we can only truly love our fantasies, and our fantasies come from our mind.

My imaginary friends were Didi and Dodo and they lived in the fridge and the freezer and they slept in separate beds and they were married. I don’t know if they were in love. I knew they were married. I knew they liked to slide down my railing with me. I knew that they fit in my palm. It didn’t matter if they were in love, but they were. They were the only two things that were ever in love because they were imaginary – and love is imaginary.

This isn’t a disillusioned rant of a young child pretending to be jaded.

I said that to stop myself from making it such. But love can’t be real because theoretical creations are simply that: theoretical.

My entire academic life was in pursuit of studying mathematics, but I couldn’t ever get into the beauty of what G.H. Hardy calls “Pure Mathematics” because it wasn’t tangible and it’s hard to grasp something intangible by definition. Love is “pure mathematics.” Love is something that some people can feel, but only for something that doesn’t exist. Love is like faith, but in a person that you’ve made up yourself – as opposed to religion, which is faith a person somebody else made up for you. In a sense love is noble, but it’s delusional.

I want to get back to my point about how love can only exist with people who aren’t there because I feel like I have more to say, but I transitioned away from that. Well, I’m back onto it.

Love can only exist with people who aren’t there. That’s it. I think I just needed to repeat it.

Last time I was home with my parents, I was forcing volume out of my mouth in an indignant manner about how love was a bullshit concept created by the patriarchal bla bla bla of capitalist bla bla bla in order to enforce monogamy and bla bla bla and create xenophobia and bla bla bla. My mom heard the bla bla bla part and stopped me.

“Nisse, does the reason you think this way have anything to do with Dad and me?”

“No, of course not.” I lied.

I lied only in the sense that of course my perceptions of love are warped by the people who raised me, but I wasn’t really lying. Love is so ill-defined that each of us is forced to create our own definition of love – and mine is: a self-generated, difficult, selfish, act of pure mathematics that is based in noble delusion.

At least that makes it sound better than a thought-terminating cliche.

Attention Whoring, Lazy, Lonely, My favorites, Nostalgia

I Like My Women

One of my favorite games to play is “I Like My Women Like I Like My Nouns.” It’s a game I came up with in high school wherein the participant starts off by saying “I like my women like I like my (fill in the blank with a noun)” and then continues to explain by offering one to three adjectives that are funny. If it makes too much sense with both women and the noun then your joke is obvious and boring, and probably a little sexist. If it makes too little sense, you are an attention whore. It’s a beautiful game of understanding expectations and their relation to comedy.

Summer after graduating high school I was hanging out with some of the other teachers at the arts camp I taught at. We were at one of the richer kid’s summer house on the water. I felt uncomfortable because while I was “friends” with all these people, everybody else was closer friends than I was with anybody. Except Jon. Jon and I were friends. We both felt uncomfortable because we assumed no one wanted us there. My problem (as if there is only one) is that I get indignant when I wrongfully assume I am unwanted. I decide if I’m not wanted for no reason, I’ll make sure there is a reason. I started playing “I Like My Women Like I Like My Noun” by announcing that “I like my women like I like my sailboats.” I chose sailboats because the bathroom that we had all gathered in as Alex showed us her house as though we were real adults who needed real house tours, because the bathroom had a wallpaper full of sailboats. I hadn’t been listening to whatever story was being told by the New York transplant leading our tour under the assumption that it wasn’t interesting, but now I wanted my voice to be heard and I had no transition into focusing attention on me. I then needed to finish my game.

“I like my women like I like my sailboats. … With low self-esteem.”

At the time this was vaguely true. Not that sailboats could have esteem, but rather that I was interested in women as depressed with how their lives turned out as me. I just thought it seemed relatable. It was very funny. Jon laughed. I think I won the game.

Yesterday I played again for the first time in a long time. “I like my women like I like my rice pudding. … Chunky, wet, and full of grains.” This is a different approach to the game, but I think still very funny. Mostly because I like to imagine a woman pooping barley out of sheer pressure on her internal organs. This is why this joke is funny. It allows you the opportunity to believe that there may be a connection between my desires when it comes to women and snack-desserts, then it fucks with those expectations, then you have to go back and realize what if there had been a connection – do I really like my women chunky and wet? Probably. But that’s still weird.

There is still another way to play this game. Earnestly. “I like my women like I like my shoes. … Nostalgically.” I recently switched back to a pair of shoes I hadn’t worn in a while because they don’t breath very well, and I hate sweaty feet. Before that I had been running through a string of barely formed sandals and sneakers whose heels I could typically see through and whose souls were in multiple pieces. I liked those shoes though, because they fit. I saw it was wrong, but I was lazy. I didn’t want to have to find a new shoe. I didn’t want to have to spend another $10 on footwear, so I dealt with it. I pretended that I really liked when my toe touched the sidewalk even though I was supposedly wearing protective gear on my feet. I called them “worn in” when a rock would come in through the hole in the back heel. Now I have on new shoes. They aren’t new shoes, but they are new in that I haven’t worn them in over a year and a half. They are new in that the heel is fully intact.

They are also a little annoying. I have to tie them and untie them to get them on and off because I haven’t worn them enough to be able to make them into makeshift slippers. They slide around, which is fun, but because they are vaguely platform shoes, I sometimes trip – assuming my heel is further away from the ground then it is. But I like ’em. I’ve been enjoying my new height, ability to make loud clomping noises as I walk, and the way my feet look like a a clown’s feet fucked a gogo dancer’s feet. I have had this pair of shoes, or the exact same pair but older since I was a Junior in High School. They remind me of times when I was a cheaper attention whore. When I didn’t quite analyze each of my comedic instincts and rather just wore a funny hat or jacket, knowing it would get me a laugh. They remind me of high school dances, where Jon and I were the only ones dancing because we thought funk music could save the world if everybody just truly felt the groove. They remind me of icy winters in Minnesota when I would pretend I was on cross country skis, gliding to class on my tractionless boot-shoes. They remind me of all of the wonderful free suits I’ve worn with these shoes.

Yeah.

I like my women like I like my shoes. Sometimes I get stuck pretending I enjoy them when their “comfort” is really just my laziness and inability to see what would truly be best for me, and sometimes I jump into something new and exciting and it feels like it’s taking a while to really get, but even that’s exciting, but if I really analyze it – they are just the same as something I had before. I like my women like I like my shoes. Nostalgically.

I think I need new shoes.

Attention Whoring, My favorites, Nostalgia

Awww Hail No!

Mariano was eating hail.

I was calling my dad.

We all grow up in different environments, with different moments that change our lives. We are not the same person. None of us. Except for weather. Weather is the same. Someone once told me that they love small talk conversations about the weather. My initial reaction was to hate them because to me that was like saying “I hate fun” but then they explained that they liked these convos because it was the one time that everybody involved in the conversation was dealing with the same variables in the same way and was discussing the same thing.

The inoffensive nature of conversations concerning the nature surrounding you tends to offend me, but I also like extremes and weather is easily the most inoffensive conversation you can have. You can’t have opinions about what the weather is. You can’t argue about whether or not it’s raining. We all agree on the definition of rain. You can argue about what you like about the rain, but every body respects everybody else’s opinions of weather.

I left Perch for a second to pick up a hail stone. I told my dad that they were the size of ping pong balls. They weren’t. They were the size of my thumbnail. A woman walked by and said “This is crazy right?”

“Yeah.”

“I was in my car when it started.”

I was on the phone but it didn’t matter. My dad could hear her. She could be a part of our conversation.

“It sounded like someone was pounding on the roof.”

She had interrupted me mid-sentence with a loved one and I was smiling.

“I was afraid to get out of my car. I thought it would hurt me.”

She laughed because she thought that that was funny. It wasn’t. I laughed too.

I’m not polite. Being laughed at is a privileged not a right and it needs to be worked toward.

The weather made me a person. Made me a person who fits into this society in a way I am not used to. Made me a functioning member. Because we all were on the same page – a page I typically run from, but you can’t run from hail or tornadoes or earthquakes. I’m stuck on that page so I might as well be a part of that page.

I ate a hail stone.

Attention Whoring, My favorites, Nostalgia

I Live Like I Write

They were right. I did look like a homeless, depressing version of Willy Wonka. I was wearing a knee length purple coat that usually gets commented on for making me look like the Joker or Prince, but this time I was also handing out free samples of Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Gum that I grabbed from the free samples box at work. By “free samples box” I mean a box of free samples came in and we’re not going to give them out, so I thought I’d bring them to the street. Not that I believe in the product, but I definitely don’t believe in waste. Ironic considering the absurd amount of packaging I kept having to hand out with each piece of gum.

I have a beard.

Later I was introduced that way at the Moth – and though it still takes some getting used to to recognize that my most distinguishing feature is distinctly masculine – they are right. I do have a beard. It’s not a trimmed beard, or a stable beard, or a beard that any self respecting human being would don in their attempts to look attractive. But it’s a beard. It’s distinctive. It’s what helped me change my Willy Wonka look into the much more interesting manic depressive hermit/hobo Willy Wonka look that attracted the comments of others.

They were right.

I fell in love with a girl once in as much as I don’t believe in love but saying love now makes this story more interesting. I fell in love with her because she was really good at describing my writing. We had made out. Then we hadn’t talked for a while. I shouldn’t have been in love with her because we hadn’t talked in a while, but I was focusing on what happened two sentences ago. I was pulling off one of my stints of homelessness but friendfullness at the time and was crashing on friends couches before I moved back to Maine. The weather was just warming up in Minnesota but I had to carry any layers I thought I might need that day because I had no home to go back to and change. I was wearing the same knee length purple coat that I had been allowed to take from my high school costume closet that I described earlier. I also was worried about my inability to brush my teeth because of my lack of a sink to go home to so I was carrying a toothbrush in my mouth in case some spare water graced my mouth with its presence. I also had just bought a cane because it was $2. I was now attempting to learn cool cane tricks I could do casually as I walked. “Attempting” being the key word here.

I didn’t have a beard.

I had half a beard.

I had shaved half my face while leaving the other half fully homelessized. That’s when I ran into the girl I loved for her ability to describe my writing well and her willingness to one time make out with me. With a toothbrush in my mouth, a cane spinning wildly around my extended arm, a purple coat wrapped tightly around most of my body, and pubic-looking hair growing on half of my face I said “Hi.”

I didn’t go well.

She had described my writing as “chewing a fully wrapped Starburst without the satisfaction of feeling like a good kisser.” I live like I write.

Indignant, My favorites, Nostalgia

Mi Shiledhode dRaweings

Look at all the funny words that Lady Gaga had on her set at the Target Center. “Death Cases” sounds like the plural of some sort of briefcase full of death. Then we get a series of words associated with pain. Then “Children.”

Agreed, Lady Gaga.

Children should definitely be associated with pain. Which I know because I work in Park Slope. They are all a bunch of explativenouns and they need to be put in a dumpster with purell and razor blades. Purell because they are always sick. They are disgustingly sick. They just snot all over everything that they eat. Can things go into their mouths without snotting all over them? I hate them.

Don’t worry, I hate myself more.

My childhood drawings:

You know that your teddy bear can’t walk, and torsos aren’t half the size of necks, right? God you suck at coloring, and nobody knows what an Adventhr is.

Wait, which airplane did you take: The one where everyone died, or the one made by retarded MC Escher? Good thing you wrote the airline on the airplane, otherwise people would be confused.

First off, just cus you can’t pronounce r’s doesn’t mean you can’t write them. Also, are you descended from giant-giraffe hybrids? And you are gonna stick with that way of drawing airplanes – as if they are made of cardboard in the 6th dimension. Some strange architecture, btw.

Yeah we went there, but then I guess we drank some Alice in Wonderland potion, took up the entire house and then set it on fire. Also, I don’t think more than one person could fit in there, And why is that person smiling?! If I were as big as a house, I would be scared.

Pigs? More like sparrow-ladybug mixes in blackface. Also, did you run out blue ink after “We saw” or does pigs just always need to be in brown. I’m not criticizing, just wondering the artistic merit of your choices.

That is (a) a gross game of uno (b) a bizarre way of spelling “play” and (c) a fuckload of yellow.

AND THEN WE LOST OUR ARMS!!!! And, you don’t need to draw eyes coming out of a head like springs just to show which direction that a person is looking.

The interesting architectural decisions continue, this time with a table that is also taller than my grandmother so that we bake by blindly moving ingredients around on a table that we can’t see.

That made a travel journal? That trip must have sucked.

When? Where? What were you “kuting and pasting?” And does that picture correlate at all to the words being said above it? Details, you need details.

I agree with abortion, only partially because I think a woman should have the right to choose. Partially for other reasons.

Lazy, Nostalgia

Tornado Story

I woke up from my nap to the sound of crashing and the warm green/pink glow of the sky barely lighting up my room. I thought I was awake, but as I looked outside and saw rain drops moving right to left and left to right as much as they were going up and down I began to realize I was dreaming. Wind howled through the barely cracked window my roommate had forgotten to shut. I shut it. This sight was incredible. A tree was swinging back and forth as if it was one of those inflatable punching bags and you had just given it the “perfect” punch. I knew I was dreaming because every once in a while a flash of light would make not just the sky light up but also my entire vision – why was someone playing with the lights in my room? Someone must have been cooking because this light was accompanied by loud crashing sounds. I knew I was dreaming also because I had less clothes on then when I went to bed.

I wanted to go outside and be a part of this, but I knew the second I took my eyes off of this beautiful green blue sight, it would stop because my dream would be punishing me. I watched instead. I watched as the tree masquerading as a boxing toy snapped in half and threw itself to the ground. I watched as it ended. That quickly.

Then I realized it wasn’t a dream. I had just woken up to a tornado.

My sophomore year of college I had my first tornado warning and my first instinct was to chase it. I still had that instinct and had I known that I was awake, I think I would have chased that instinct (and that tornado). This is because I will do any amount of work to get a good story.

I just went to get a library card and was told I needed a piece of mail and my ID. There is a piece of mail in front of me. I have my ID in my pocket. The library is a 4 minute walk away. I’m not getting my library card until 2011. What good story will come from my getting my library card?

At least I’m not these douchebags, bro:

Depressed, Nostalgia, Pathetic

Me: In Cars

Instead of discussing the New Orleans style flood of emotions that has occured upon coming back to Maine – a place I’ve hated my whole life – to realize that it is simultaniously as beautiful as everyone says it is and as horrible as I always said it was, instead of discussing the fact that the familiar water pressure of my childhood shower nearly brought me to tears, instead of discussing how free food and Tivo is making me rethink every decision I’ve made in life, I will be discussing why I don’t like to drive.

Driving is boring.

I love how in New York no transportation is wasted. I get on the subway only to write, read, and occasionaly masturbate. I can do none of those things while driving. Driving takes up the entirety of my energy. I have to stare at a road and hope that my destination comes quickly. In the car I had in high school I could adjust the display so that it would show how many miles per gallon I was getting at each second. I used to turn that on and then try to be the most efficent driver I could be. The problem occurs when you crash because you are paying attention to a small digitally displayed number as opposed to the road.

$3000 is the amount I’ve lost because of speeding tickets and cars I’ve crashed. That is about 10 times the amount of money in my bank account. Being back in Maine frightens me because most of this money was spent here as I would drive 80 mph on roads I knew well at 2am where the only other car out was the cop who pulled me over. This is why I moved to New York – so that I wouldn’t have to drive anymore.

I hate driving.

I also hate crying in the shower because the water pressure reminds me of waking up for high school, but I do it anyway.

Attention Whoring, Lonely, Nostalgia

Me: In Writings About Textings

I found this in my notebook:

For the second day in a row I’ve seen someone cry on the subway. The first was a woman coming home from a shortened night of partying, probably because someone broke her heart and she was looking down so that she wouldn’t have to wipe her eyes and draw attention to her sadness. Below her face was a puddle that kept being added to by the salty rain that poured out of her face. Today there was a man wearing a black hat to cover a large gash in his head. The gash had healed, but no hair had grown back yet. He was texting someone on his Iphone. The text he was replying to said: “text me when you’re on the train so that I know your [misspellings left in] safe” He slowly and arduously punched in “I am on” and sent his response before our train went underground and he could not add endums [misuse of words purposeful] of anger or sadness. I know the contents of these texts because I was peering over his shoulder because I’m creepy and don’t respect privacy.

I also found this in my notebook:

I tutor via craigslist sometimes.

There are all kinds of horror stories of murderers on c-list luring in young nubile tutors for their silence of the lambs style fetishes. In case it happens, I practice sending text messages with my hands behind my back. They always are texts directing people to look at my computer where I leave a google map up of my location. So go to my computer if you get a text that says: “Hekd hostage address on xo.p”

I also found these three sentences written without any context:

I grew a beard because I wanted old men to stop trying to have sex with me.

I like following conventionally attractive girls because I like watching the guys who look at them.

I feel very comfortable around attractive lesbians.

Attention Whoring, Nostalgia

Back With Thoughts From Before

After a trip that away that was sortof perfect in it’s own depressing way, I am back. I had a decent time, and re-realized why I liked all my friends, while simultaneously realizing that it wasn’t a place I could be right now. Recognizing that the past was great for the past and the present is great for the present. Also coming to terms with the fact that the hat trick will not come true and the future will not be great in any way.

I come back to NYC where I ride buses and subways and therefore write on receipts and scraps of paper I have around. Here’s some receipt writing that I found in Minnesota when someone called me out on my busting-out-of its-seems velcro-wallet (despite my complete lack of wealth) and I cleaned house.

UnFiction UnSentences:

Three fat asians, one with gucci knock off sunglasses, and a dirty undersized t-shirt with sweat stains, one with an FDNY bball cap and an ipod, and one with three huge dunes of fat – the first below his elastic of his pants, the second just above that, and the last his breasts. All where arguing about who found the free subway pass.

The smiling man with a ponytail and beard sipping his dunkin donuts mocha frappaccino who knows I’m writing about him as I keep looking up for details.

The kid who is dressed to look like he is coming from the office who keeps attempting to not fall asleep even though two people to his left and right are in dreamland by falling slightly forward dropping his iphone and jerking back up suddenly only to pick up his mini-Macintosh and do the process again.

When I demand attention I don’t want people to think “Man, my life sucks compared to him” not people to think “at least I’m not him.” PDA is bragging.

Attention Whoring, Depressed, Gender, Horny, Lonely, My favorites, Nostalgia

Attract: A Post, A Female Post

Women, to me, are nostalgia bottled into breasts and butts.

I am still attracted to female anatomy, and maybe even more to the pain they feel from being subjugated to constantly being forced into playing the victim card in our patriarchal society – a pain I falsely understand as my own, but I don’t like women the way I did in the past. In the past, women represented an unattainable but very frequent goal. Something I knew I wanted, but didn’t understand how to get. Something that I gave too much power to, too much agency because society took so much of it away from them. When one combines a desire with an unwillingness to chase that desire, one gets nothing, and I got nothing. I wasn’t quite comfortable with that, but I understood it. I never felt anger because others (women) didn’t understand my how my sexual attraction was really just a selfless release of power – that I was constantly attempting to give the gift of agency to women I felt emotionally entangled with only to see my gift re-gifted to a man more willing to play with power. I understood their confusion because I was also confused as to what I was doing.

Whenever we grow, we also grow a comprehension of our past. We look at what we did and say “Why did we do that?” and then we answer that question because now we have to ability to look at the situation in a rational manner as opposed to being wrapped up in the emotional turmoil we’ve convinced ourselves is so important. I’m not saying that emotion isn’t important, but rather that it is fleeting. Emotion takes a lot of energy and to dwell on things that make you cry will make you tired. Constant tiredness is a symptom of depression.

I look back and understand a lot of my mistakes with women – but at least I had goals to fuck up. I haven’t truly desired a relationship in years. When I do find myself into a girl, it’s because I find my relationship to her similar to a relationship I used to have with someone else. Someone I had tricked myself into liking. Someone who I gave power and agency to only to get pats on the head and emotional diatribes back. Someone who makes me resent myself because they didn’t screw up, but I did. I was doing things wrong and I see women now as only an opportunity to make up for my mistakes. My mistakes were not that I didn’t bone them or make out with them or tell them how I felt. My mistakes were that I gave them agency and then forced them to use it. Agency is a lot of work and I wouldn’t let them be lazy. I love being lazy.

Laziness is not about not exerting energy, but also about being a selfless member of society. Laziness allows others to express their opinions. Laziness is listening. Laziness is helping others instead of helping yourself. This may not be the common definition laziness, but I am uncommon and therefore so are my definitions.

I was wrong in the past. I wasn’t maliciously so, but I didn’t allow people I was attracted to the same life that I had because I thought that no one else should have to deal with having my life. Now I do because I recognize the happiness I have, but I’m no longer attracted to anybody – truly.

Recently I hung out with two people that I spent far too much time obsessing over at different points in my life. My relationship to both is similar. They are similar. I miss them.

I miss them when they are right there because I will never be able to feel like I did. I really just miss myself. I don’t like that self that I miss, but he’s interesting. I wanna know what he thinks sometimes. I wanna know how he would feel right now. But I can’t because he doesn’t exist any more because he has been taken over by me. I killed him and I want him back. Not more than me, but with me.

A story I have been working on for a while starts off: “I need to explain to you all that while I hate myself, I hate all previous incarnations of myself even more.” I use the word hate and love interchangeably because as I’ve said before: “Hate is not the opposite of love, apathy is.”

I used to think of the graphical interpretation of my emotions as some sort of strangely oscillating sine wave where hate was below the x-axis and love was above it. Somewhere along my journey of life I added absolute value signs around the function of my life and love and hate became the same thing, but nearing zero became as depressed as I could be. I must be happier now. I at least enjoy everything more, but I want to hang out with all the previous incarnations of myself that weren’t this wise, that weren’t this understanding, that were attracted to these girls for all the wrong reasons.

I now find myself still attracted to them, but I fear it is just nostalgia. It is just me missing that scared little facial hairless boy who didn’t understand why giving didn’t result in receiving. Who didn’t understand that giving results in giving and receiving results in receiving and only once you do both are you truly adding absolute value signs to you emotions. Even I’m confused by what I just said, but I think I want to be. I want to be confused again and fall in love again and hate again and have it not mean the same thing over and over so I pretend. I pretend to myself that I want something that I wanted before hoping that I can get back any of those previous incarnations of myself and play with them. I really just want to play with myself.

I guess I succeed in doing that pretty often because I tend to masturbate to all these feelings of nostalgia, and also to breasts and butts.

Nisse Greenberg

Category Archives: Nostalgia