There Is No Reason For Tigers To Be Beautiful, They Just Are
By Heiko Julien
If I got really intense on you, would that be a problem?
I want to put an idea in your head: Breathing isn’t that easy.
Reduce complex problems into false dichotomies to comfort yourself in the face of paralyzing ambiguity.
Choose to focus on the negative side of your fraudulent binary, further reducing the scope of reality’s consequences and increasing the depth of your superficial comfort.
Congratulations, you have made yourself feel Good by feeling Bad. Likewise, you have made yourself feel Bad by making yourself feel Good.
I ask myself, if neurosis is an attempt to avoid real pain, will accepting actual pain treat it? Should I hire someone to whip me with a flyswatter? To be honest, it is difficult to hold myself accountable to anyone or take responsibility for my actions because I am so much smarter than everyone else. Been winning arguments at my local Gamestop all afternoon by proclaiming myself to be a Realist before making my point. This is too easy.
I drive home with an unearned sense of satisfaction and make a conscious effort to live up to everything Chillaxing may entail. It’s a lot of pressure, but the cool thing about excessive comfort seeking is that if you do it well enough, you get to be alone all the time. You can work on your Life’s Work. That’s what I do. For instance, I am watching a nature documentary and just feeling sorry for everything.
People accumulate damage, but growth is the only True Love. In all honesty, at any given moment, I would rather be experiencing Intense Pleasure. This reminds me of a musing I have yet to profit from. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese should change their slogan to “Ladies Love It,” and they probably will after they read this.
The coolest people are the ones who remind you that they live in the best city. They are cool because they’ve been to all the cities and they know. Sometimes the people you need aren’t where you are. This is possibly unfortunate. Sometimes people are worth more together. This is probably tragic. Either way, our fates are more or less sealed, but there is an ample amount of wiggle room to make it worthwhile/cool/tolerable.
I just want you to imagine Jerry Seinfeld researching for the movie Bee Movie by watching bee footage.
Now imagine yourself doing what you really want to do with your own life.
_____
Even though I consider myself to be the hero of my own life, I was honorably discharged from the military for taking too many baths and singing and bothering the other soldiers with my sensitive voice.
This afternoon I am simply sitting on a park bench. I am watching a man maintain balance on roller blades while chatting up a Major Babe and deftly controlling an excited pug.
Thinking, “this guy will never commit suicide.”
Now I am thinking about my life. I wish it had gone differently. I had a three-year relationship with the girl from the Verizon Wireless commercials before she was on TV and, I’ll be honest, it hurts to watch her have so much success.
However, despite my failures, I am not so short on successes myself. Will Smith wants me to come to his backyard BBQ & Swim Party to lecture his kids on how to be better people, but I am teaching my mom about zen.
Michael Jordan invited me over to his house to watch youtube videos on his projector but I am busy talking to my dad about mistakes he’s made. Michael Jordan’s wireless network is called HisBadMajesty23Man and the password is ‘Pussy’ (go figure.)
But presently, in this blissful instant, I am high on caffeine, imagining petting a dog.
I will not waste this grace.
I will rise to meet the moment.
Going to write Real Power / Real Results in sharpie on my forearms and challenge the strongest lifter at the gym to an arm wrestling competition to prove to kids that it’s ok to be a loser.
It is three hours later and I did not do that. I am, however, officially High On Life: Drank an expired milk chug (2%) and wrote an entire season of entourage episodes just because I liked the way it felt.
Now I am listening to Lullaby by Shawn Mullins and thinking about all the times I wanted someone else to stop talking so I could talk about myself.
Yeah, I’m sitting on my lily pad, feeling high-def.
_____
I am certainly cut from a Rare Cloth and my family tree is without rival.
My grandfather was the first person to refer to a piece of fruit as being Gay. He said this during one of the wars when he forgot how to open an orange for a minute.
My grandmother was the first person to perform a downward facing dog in a Wal-mart parking lot. Not sure why she did this. Lack the background knowledge to elaborate any further. (Sorry.)
Haters are always riding my jock, so if you want me to give you attitude, here it is: I got a big dick and I call my parents three times a week. I love my family, but I am getting to the age where when I tell people that I love my family, they assume I mean my wife and children. I don’t. I mean my mom and dad. And my siblings, I guess. We’ve been through a lot together. When my brother was an Awkward Teen, my dad told him to call me for dinner. He said: “Dad wants you. Well, he doesn’t want you want you.“ Then he walked away. I don’t remember what happened next. (Sorry.)
My dad wears a hat all the time because he’s bald and his head gets cold. This is the sort of integrity my generation is sorely lacking. I always interpreted Stay-at-Home Mom to be a command, but that seemed alright to me. Us kids grew up under a bridge so our mom was more of a Stay-Under-the-Bridge Mom. It is truly the hardest job there is. Most rewarding too. Bridges are really cool.
Seeing searchlights as a kid, I thought something really great was happening in some magical place in the distance. It was probably so wonderful they were lighting up the sky to let kids like me know where the cool things were happening. Maybe it was a Candy Factory Slumber Party, or perhaps that was where they filmed Pokemon. Found out when I was older that the searchlights were just coming from car dealerships, which is actually even better. Now I know where to find new cars.
Things get complicated for us Post-Kids, but the world has not passed us by. The solution is to be fashionable alone at night.
No one else needs to see this.
You can think your own private, beautiful thoughts, and forget them, wake up, and go to work.
_____
The great pun of the 21st century will prove to be adding a B to Anal Sex in order to downplay all the Hype. History will bear me out.
It is strange to think that your parents are just other people. Becoming aware of this fact feels the way saying a word over and over until you realize it is just noise feels. I did this just now and am now wondering if music actually exists.
Coming to the conclusion that it does not because I have never actually seen it.
In the heat of the moment, I indignantly spit my Surge on the floor of this Alternative Rock Music Venue and skip out the door in 5/4 time. (I am making a statement about the predictability of pop music structures.)
Now I am back at home, slowing down youtube clips of The Price Is Right audiences. I am watching celebrity funerals before I go to bed.
Now I am sleeping and I am dreaming again.
I am dreaming that my daughter is a Hot Server at a Pan-Asian Seafood Restaurant a lot of my close man friends attend regularly and it makes me uncomfortable. These men cannot be trusted.
People always reveal themselves to you. They want you to see what they want you to see, but this is not how it usually works.
People show their true selves to you when they least expect it. Last week I saw an elderly gentleman’s Fuck Face as he lifted a tire into the back of his van in the parking lot of an Ace Hardware.
Maybe the Name of the Game is to make the faces that you like, to feel the way your face likes to feel, but this is none of my concern at the moment.
I am overstaying my own welcome at my own celebrity-themed Halloween party, pop locking to the irregular beat of my own heart, dressed as myself (a famous author.) Society has a lot of flaws, but I probably don’t.
I am wearing a powder blue cardigan tied around my neck and I want to ravage you in the bushes of my family’s beach house with two (2) thoughts:
(1) Life is for Lovers
(2) People should have just never stopped being farmers
Just imagine how much progress we could make if people could be trusted well enough to communicate through a series of Rub Downs.
_____
My controversial lifestyle continues to cause controversy.
Loose commitment to vegetarianism is angering literally everyone.
I’m just hungry.
I want to be from a small tribe.
Want to dance with my childhood friends around a fire.
Want to grow my own food.
I want to die defending my wife in a field against people who hate us.
A human being needs humans to love and humans to hate and I am a human being.
Two people are having sex against the railing of the Grand Canyon.
It gives way and they fall in and don’t stop till they hit the bottom.
That is the kind of life I want for us sometimes.
Other times I wish you wouldn’t move past me so fast.
It is early in the morning and we are underneath the covers and Underneath the Covers is Antarctica and we have to huddle together for warmth.
I am wondering if you are ok even though there is no reason why you wouldn’t be.
I am pressed against your warm body and feel concerned about our quality of death. I am worried about how you feel during your last sentient moments because someone told me your pineal gland releases a lot of DMT and you see a lot of things and feel a lot of things.
What if you felt guilty about your life?
Someone once wrote to me that they were “eating a hot dog with the same despair as a pilot who had fallen out of love with the sky,” and that is how badly I need you right now.