3.28.17

There is no consensus.

To some, including myself, I am detestable.

Others find my derangements entertaining.

What none of these people,

including myself, understand, is that I am

deranged for better or worse

because I’m chasing hope

as a dog chases cars,

up the road, into traffic,

oblivious to danger, drooling in anticipation,

seeing the metallic glint of a bumper

as more than light

reflecting off a piece of metal

assembled at a factory

in Mexico.

I suspect that hope deranges

the mind, as sex deranges loins

as loins derange entire civilizations.

Here is an experiment:

I will lose all hope.

In doing so, I aim to prove that it is possible to make the entire world love you,

if only you are brave enough to abandon hope.

I will, however, leave my loins intact.

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Written at 5:19 in the afternoon, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA, while approaching the kind of hunger that drives civilized people to eat the rubber off their shoes.