Tag Archives: Despair

Thought of the Week: A Day in the Life

6:07 AM

UP Band starts vibrating. Don’t get up; it’s not worth it.

~

6:30 AM

iPhone alarm goes off. Try to keep your eyes open, but don’t get up; it’s not worth it. Check for emails and WordPress notifications. They’re all boring.

~

6:42 AM

Get up, because you’re going to be late for work. You should have got up at 6:07 AM and had plenty of time for a nice breakfast, cup of coffee, but no…it wasn’t worth it. Sleep would have been worth it, but you didn’t do that, either. Just…wasted time. Great start to the day.

~

6:52 AM

Devour an english muffin. You used to prepare a bagel and eat it on the way to work, but even the preparation isn’t worth it. Bread, butter, done. That’s about all you can manage. Maybe make coffee; you desperately need it.

~

7:21 AM

Start driving to work; you’ll probably just make it in time. Try not to fall asleep driving; play loud music, put the a/c on high…still no luck. Swerve into the wrong lane several times.

~

8:03 AM

Get to work 3 minutes late and hope no one notices. Try to drink more coffee (if you made it). Slap on the happy face: no one at work can know how you feel. Dread the next four hours.

~

10:00 AM

Break time. Fifteen minutes – not nearly enough. Keep smiling and joking; you’re still surrounded by people. Finish your coffee. Decide not to brush your teeth, even though you deliberately brought toothbrush and toothpaste to work. Have a mint instead. After all, who cares if your teeth rot.

~

12:05 PM

Lunch time – finally. Did you bring lunch with you? Then heat it up in the microwave. No? Go out and spend $10 at Starbucks, even though you’re almost out of money for the month. After all, there isn’t a lot else around. Bury yourself in a game on your iPad, listen to music on your earphones, try to pretend no one’s around you. Finish your food, set an alarm for 12:55 PM, and go find a chair out of the way from everyone and try to go to sleep.

~

1:10 PM

Wake up and realize you didn’t set the alarm right and now you’re 10 minutes late back to work. Panic, but try not to show it. Remember: happy face. Oops, I lost track of the time, etc. Dread the next four hours again.

~

3:00 PM

Miss your break. Fun times.

~

4:53 PM

Start counting the seconds until you can go home. Not entirely sure why – what’s there to look forward to when you get off work? You finish with your customer, clock out, change your shirt…the happy face is starting to crumble – just hope it lasts until you get in the car. It does. Try not to fall asleep on the drive home. Fail, and doze off at the wheel, just like the morning. Somehow, you don’t crash. Again.

~

5:55 PM

Arrive home. The kitchen is a mess from the morning. The recycling has been piling for days. The dishwasher hasn’t been run. It’s stinking hot, and there’s no a/c in the kitchen. You turn it on in the living room and upstairs, at least. You’re supposed to start preparing dinner, but the bed is too tempting. You lie down – just for a moment.

~~

7:45 PM

Dinner’s finally ready, way, way late. The kitchen’s a worse mess from the dinner preparations. You don’t feel like eating at all, but make yourself.

~

8:30 PM

Finish dinner and stare at the kitchen. There’s really only a few things to do: most of the dishes can be put in the dishwasher, and there’s only one pot. It’s too much anyway, and you go back upstairs. You look at the computer: you’re supposed to write this week’s blog entry. The floor in your office is too tempting, and you go to sleep.

~

9:30 PM

Wake up briefly. Think about doing the dishes. Then think about doing the pile of dirty laundry you’re sleeping on. Then go back to sleep.

~

11:04 PM

You’ve slept now for almost two hours since getting home, and you’re more tired than ever. Maybe you find the energy to get up and clean the kitchen, if you’re lucky.

~

1:36 AM

Wake up on the floor of your office. Decide you finally need to do the dishes. Come close to panic doing them, but you get it done – barely. There are still glasses that need rinsing, but you leave them until the morning. The recycling still needs to be done. The floor still needs to be swept. The stove still needs to be wiped. You just. Can’t. Do. It.

~

6:07 AM

Repeat. Forever.

~

Featured image from http://mombizcoach.com/time-focus-money/.

Satis Logo with ©

Poems: Nonentity

Satis Featured Image.005

Nonentity

July 2, 2007~

~

I am a sociopathic entity.

 ~

~

A channel for the thoughts and words

that are not mine,

and leave no trace.

 ~

A conscious with a conscience.

 ~

A vessel for the inconsequential,

detrital components

of a human society

beyond the grasp of redemption.

 ~

 ~

 ~

Disconnection

between sight

and mind,

hand and thought;

weeping utterly fails

to bear me any relevance,

and my laughter is a mocking shadow –

a chameleonic parody

of the insensate culture

that bore and  now surrounds me.

 ~

 ~

The concept of meaning,

the thought of another’s

thought

– life –

these things a ghost of recollection,

a memory too threadbare to discern.

 ~

I see living, breathing shells,

hosts of emptiness,

pass around me and out of sight;

I cower into corners

and smile convincingly out of the dark.

~

 ~

My weaknesses in flesh

and state of mind

collapse in on me,

and my beliefs

and confidence

and surety of sanity

collapse in on me,

and my negligible awareness

of the matters that go on all around

and mean so much

to such smallness in the eagerly oblivious minds here and there;

collapses, too,

and I long feebly to withdraw

into the self-contained (centred) safety of black,

but cannot.

 ~

 ~

I am incapable of passion,

of emotion,

of sympathy and empathy,

of deviltry

or constancy.

 ~

Love, life, lust,

anguish – all rust.

Alien tongue,

and distasteful in my mouth.

 ~

 ~

 ~

 ~

Watch me stare

don’t blink;

I am a sociopathic (non)entity,

and I am ruinous.

~

Satis Logo with ©

Music I Love: “Suicidal Emotions”, Abyssic Hate (2001)

Deliberately blurred – the cover is extremely graphic.

Deliberately blurred – the cover is extremely graphic.

Apologies if this is not to everyone’s taste; it pretty much qualifies as extreme black metal. You won’t find it on iTunes, and probably won’t find it on Amazon. It’s utterly bleak, horrifically depressing and extremely explicit metal, and even today it’s not something I can bring myself to listen to very often. However, there was a point in my life when this epitomized everything I was feeling, and allowed me to drown in an empty world of utter loathing and blackness.

Abyssic Hate is (possibly was) a one-man project from Australia, created by someone called Shane Rout. A misanthrope if ever there was one, he once said in interview that he believed “99% of all humans ought to be exterminated”. In the mid ’90s he released a number of demo tapes with such lovely titles as Cleansing of an Ancient Race. Then in 2001 the production values stepped and he released his one and only full-length LP, Suicidal Emotions. There have been no further releases since then, and no further word on Shane or Abyssic Hate since 2005. The website is defunct, and Google searches provide essentially nothing. I suspect it’s very likely that he’s now dead.

The track listing is unsurprisingly disheartening: Depression Part I, Betrayed, Depression Part II, Despondency. Here’s a short excerpt of his lyrics:

I think about life and feel pure hate about being trapped here on this earth

Envying all deceased souls who’ve passed on from this ruined plane

My dormant hours are filled with fear, my waking hours I will not face

All will to live has expired

I just want to f***ing die!

Depression Part II – Abyssic Hate, 2001

The average song length is around 12 minutes, and the music itself is extremely distorted and droning, changing and evolving throughout each song incredibly slowly. The ending track, Despondency, ends with an atmospheric outro, eerie synthesizers and unsettling clinking, as though of someone despairingly hammering at shackles that will never break.

And with all of this, I really feel like I should explain my attraction to this music. I imagine to most people it would be pretty much unlistenable. To me there is a comfort to the constant droning, an escape into mindlessness and a drowning in the comfort of darkness. It returns me to the days of the worst of my depression, and although I would never wish to return there, there is something soothing about those memories. After a while you become accustomed to the distortion, and there are surprisingly beautiful harmonies and melodies underneath it all. The dreadful and terrifying vocals are guttural and screamed, and essentially unintelligible unless you already know what they say.

I absolutely do not recommend you listen to this, or try to track down a copy of the album – this is one to avoid.

00-front-mictlan