Almost Everything

August’s almost gone. What I notice is all the absurd shit that’s possible right now, in this narrow window before everything snaps back into place. I think about dancing with eight friends dressed stupid, or what it would feel like to just start yelling like everyone in that Newsroom scene, or all the small rebellions that feel necessary even though they don’t actually change anything.

There’s a logic to it that only makes sense in late summer. Showing someone your genitals to end a conversation that’s gone on too long. Smoking weed even though I know it probably makes me stupider, which I already suspected and anyway the stupid part is usually fine. Looking at pictures of attractive people on the internet because I’m bored and alive and that’s what the internet’s for. Wanting to punch my boss when he starts sending Christmas marketing emails in August, like we’re all pretending the world hasn’t already ended.

The Eastwooding thing made sense once—Clint Eastwood had a conversation with an empty chair and then everyone copied it, having dialogues with invisible presidents and dead relatives, and it was dumb but it worked. That’s what absurdism is. Doing something because it makes no sense and that’s the entire point.

Some of it’s darker. Writing things in blood on walls, even as a joke, even knowing I’d never actually do it. Wanting a ridiculous golden Game Boy just because it’s beautiful and pointless. The wanting is enough sometimes. September will come and all this dissolves. I’ll be back in the rhythm, back in the machinery, and none of this will matter. But right now, late August, there’s still this feeling that I could do any of it. Usually that’s enough.