a sinking thrill @brianhuther - Tumblr Blog

Clubs

As I was chalking up the streets of LA, I came across a beautiful rendition of depression, written in white, all caps, simple font, as beautiful renditions of depression should be:

Flashback 16-18 years: the neighborhood kids are giving me big news: they've started a club. This is monumental. This is earth-shaking. A club means that where there was once only milieu, now there is conglomeration. Chaos has become order. I ask questions. I learn there is a clubhouse. This is all I have ever wanted.

I learn that I am not in the club.

This is monumental. This is earth shaking.

I was home-schooled. I did not go to school with the other kids. I was hyperactive, I was not allowed to watch power rangers, I craved attention. I understand why I was not in the club.

Scene change: Superbowl party at the neighbors' house. I cannot and do not understand football and also I don't care because the neighbors have a swing set that swings you out over a hill and you feel like you're flying. Football is broccoli, relatively.

The clubhouse is, believe it or not, on the other side of a creek bed, and has a drawbridge for a door. I am swinging. I am flying. The neighborhood kids enter the clubhouse and the door swings shut.

"That is the club" I must have thought to myself, "this is my chance to be in the club."

My brother and I trot down to the clubhouse and stand on our side of the moat.

"Hey can we come in?" "No." "Why not?" "You're not in the club."

Kids watching at home, this is where you walk away.

We didn't walk away. I don't remember what was said. They probably stopped short of pointing out specific things about us they didn't like, but once the emotional groundwork is laid, you don't really need specifics, do you? You can always fill those in later.

Sometime that next week, I believe, I was talking to a club member outside his house, expressing my intense desire to be part of their club.

"There's a way in," is the kind of thing he may have said, "you have to do some challenges" "Okay no problem yes I can do challenges. I do challenges all day."

He takes me out into the woods.

That's just the scariest sentence of any story, isn't it.

He takes me out into the woods and leads me through challenges.

"walk lengthwise across that fallen tree trunk" "jump over the creek" "find a leaf"

I don't remember what they were. None of them were difficult. He was making them up as he went along and there was no purpose behind any of the challenges but damnit did I want to be in that damn club, so I crawled across that tree trunk, I jumped over that creek, I found that leaf.

At the end, I was able to walk up to him and say "I have done all that you asked." Proudly, I could say, "I am eligible for salvation. Out of the chaos, I have joined the order." This meant a lot to me.

"We'll talk it over at the next club meeting" he may have said.

And I waited. I waited days. The next time we spoke he told me the club had "disbanded." There was no longer a club. Had my desire to join ruined the fun of having a club? Was he lying so I would stop bothering them? Did this mean so little to them that they would throw it aside on a whim?

I can't say I was crushed, but something inside me went wrong that day, I think.

I have lived my life assuming that what matters is somewhere outside of me: a beautiful life that I can't live, some club I have to join, conditions to meet so the chaos will disappear. The neighborhood kids can make me cool, the girl can make me happy, art can make me important, God can make me good.

I'm used to challenges. I will do them all day. I can do anything, if you offer me acceptance. I am a serial club-chaser, and when there isn't a club to exclude me, I create one in my imagination, just to keep me in my place. Somewhere deep, I believe I am meant to be crawling that tree trunk, on all fours, wishing you loved me.

You know where I want to be? I want to be walking away from the clubhouse, back to that swing set on a hill where I feel like I'm flying.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL AND I WANT TO LIVE

feedfeedfeedfeedfeed

I'm going to write a blog that's entirely lists of things generalized groups of "others" need to do/stop doing, because I don't think we have enough of those.* *He said in the same sarcastic tone as everything† that was ever said in the year 2014. †Qualifying his post with a disclaimer that although he was participating in a thoughtless zeitgeist he was also totally commenting** on it. **Even though his comment only amounted to "I have one hand†† above the cultural sea-level." ††Even though he knew that lungs, not hands, are what drown, the symbolic gesture presented a juxtaposed sense of victory and futility which made him feel powerful in powerlessness and clever in a wash of apery, and although he was polluting his joke with layer after layer of self-critique, turning his post into a feedback loop of vain and ironic selfies with no core reality at all, he somehow felt a sense of comfort knowing the thing would probably exist on the internet forever and ever, and that someday, someone would extrapolate meaning from it that, while unintended, was relevant to a future society.*** ***Except almost definitely not.

If Me Counting the Number of Different Colored M'n'Ms in the Package of M'n'Ms I Just Bought Doesn't Make you Outraged at Economic Inequality in America, then You're not Paying Attention.

I used to think that America was fine. As a white man born into a middle-class family, I didn't see anything wrong with America's capitalist economic system.

But then one day I bought a package of M'n'Ms and everything changed.

I used to believe in the American dream: that any person of any color or creed or sex or flavor could rise up and achieve their dream, ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves and their offspring.

But then I counted the M'n'Ms and the evidence is overwhelming. What hope do the greens have, the blues, the reds, of making a name or a life for themselves against the inequitable majority of purples, yellows and oranges?? The greens make up just 3.8% of the total number of M'n'Ms, while all the other M'nM's make up a whopping 96.2% of the total number of M'n'Ms.

If looking at this picture of M'n'Ms in the package of M'n'Ms I just bought doesn't make you sick, then something is wrong with you.

And if you don't believe me, get a package of M'n'Ms for yourself. Count them. If that doesn't convince you, maybe you should check your privilege, because the verdict is clear.

My Addiction

Friends, this is difficult for me, but I think it has to be done publicly so here goes. I need to get it out in the open and ask for all of your forgiveness and help as I begin the long path to where I'm going. For the last few weeks, I've been sliding down the road toward something I promised myself I would never do, and it's time to come clean about that. For my entire life, whenever someone would ask me to join in the "fun" at a party or online, I would simply say no. I never really thought about joining in because I knew how addictive it could be and I just didn't want to be one of those people. But in the last few weeks, as my normal methods of coping with life's ups and downs have failed me, I turned in a moment of weakness to that same vice I once rejected: I downloaded Candy Crush. At first I could start and stop whenever. It was fun and easy. But then it got harder and harder to get that sweet candy-crushing feeling, and now, today, I finally hit a wall: no more levels until I really cough up the dough. My dealer knows I'm hooked. He says if I invite three facebook friends, he'll give me the next hit for free. I promised myself I would never do that. The first day I played, I looked myself in the mirror and said "if you ever feel the temptation to push this 'candy' on anyone else, that's the day you go cold turkey." But I didn't understand the power of addiction, so here I am on this day, not asking for your help, because it would do no good, but pleading for your forgiveness. I am going to invite some of you to play candy crush. I beg you not to accept. Don't become like me, a miserable, slowly fattening, unproductive mess of a man. While holding conversations with coworkers, I can see the candies sliding back and forth, making sweet combinations and exploding in mood-altering firework displays. When I close my eyes to sleep, all I think about is clearing that jelly. I'm going to ask you to play candy crush, not because I want you to play (believe me, I don't) but because I am too far gone to quit now. The candy devil has me in his sweet sweet talons, and he's comin' for to carry me home. If you feel you can help me in this, if you feel you are strong enough to withstand the temptation, let me know and you will be one of my three invites. If you have any doubts about your ability to say "no" to this powerful drug, then please PLEASE run in the other direction, as far as you can from this terrible ruiner of lives. Thank you all, and my deepest apologies for what I am about to do.

This backslash might change your life forever. Click to see more!!

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did it work

#duofest2014 was a very nice experience. Philadelphia is a beautiful place. As with many leavings and comings back, I treasure my life-as-it-is a little more and see my life-as-it-may-be with a little more hope and endurance. I loved life today- and will love it tomorrow, if I can. (at The LOVE Statue)

#duofest2014

11 photos of miserable twenty-somethings that prove life is too hard and I shouldn't have to try anymore

Until a couple years ago, I thought I was just living a normal life. But then I got the bad news: I'm a millennial. At first I didn't know what that meant. And then I found out that being a millennial means that the world is not unremittingly in my favor and that I can't understand how that's possible. With no exceptions, all the people in my generation were taught to expect life to be one long massage, but somehow, unbelievably, that's not true. So now we're frustrated, victimized, poor, and disaffected. Despite this crippling disability, I was determined to keep at it and live a fulfilling life. But then I saw these eleven stock photos, and now I'm convinced: life is WAY too hard for twenty somethings these days and I shouldn't be expected to try. So I've included the photos and what i learned from them. (note: I don't own any of these photos. Why would I want to? Owning things is hard.) 1. we're sad

Even though she's both attractive and well-dressed, this 20-something is straight-up stare-out-the-window-at-a-rainy-cityscape SAD. If someone so photogenic and picturesque isn't seen smiling in this photograph, how can the rest of us possibly hope to smile in photographs? I think I'll lay in bed a little longer and take a bored-looking selfie.

2. we kind of try to work hard

Can I tell you something without well without backtracking or being afraid that within this one moment I I I had something to tell you that I may in somefuture have redacted Forexample I once thought we could not know things but then now that I have watched the west wing I am positively sure that we can So is it okay if I speak to you in a certain manner one of certainty, lest there be confusion and tell you something about my mind, myself, myday, might perchance be of use or useless but in any case I I will be using language and I will lean heavily on my assumptions and I will probably resort to cliches in any case, and for the moment, although notwithstanding, it is likely enough. If I had that thing to say now's when.

One of those #Saturdays. #vscocam

#vscocam #saturdays

20 lines of incomprehensible poetry on the occasion of my 400th twitter follower, to vie for the approval of Eryn Bates, and be her poetry hero.

once upon a time (and a very good time you know the drill) it was ours to land and shuttle further from the sun, for we have lost a son. …and yet to have begun and peeled our wings? from wax: the pains, the tacks. the paints, the tax, repealed: the panic attacks, we warded away, and then rewarded, and they pre-boarded that Boston ship, a steady clip, and tossed our tease into the bay. my fine china! my Indiana diner! my plaything has reclined (I’d meant for it to stay) OH Dedalus Alivealus is Sickofus for Icarus been tossed and turned and sunk and burned today. (our mother. Yes. Our precious, and precocious other has found it in her Pinterrest to simply run away). Fly to the isthmus, and celebrate Hanukkah (if you wish, with the fish and wish the fish eight days without... stingrays.) at the bottom of your tea. leaves. leave us. bereave us but believe us when we say Helios and all his rays have stung our songs in shade.

ecantwell

The sky outside is outside. We are passed from one hand to another like a ring taken off and fiddled with. Don’t put us down anywhere to stay. If there is a throat it is rising. We live and die as a group, we are tethered : cloves bound by thin, papery skin, a war whoop of drum sets. What comes...

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Some people flying from DC to KC had this bright idea. The snarky 23 year old in me hates that I have to wait for my plane next to this, but the whatever other part of me thinks it's probably pretty cool, I guess, if you're in to being publicly earnest. (at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA))

garfieldminusgarfield

G-G the book - G-G on Facebook - G-G on Twitter

A new Tumblr compiles self-portraits taken at funerals and shared with the world. Here are a few, interspersed with more traditional efforts at celebrating life and publicly reflecting on mortality.

Delightfully twisted inward, this self-obsession knows no bounds. And I am smiling, though displaced. What occasion isn't laced with death? And how do we honor the dead, if not through the observance of our living desires? What selfie isn't just a "before" shot? Should we not envy the child who can see no further than her makeup and hair to the dark silence of the casket, though it be placed not fifty feet away? These are questions I hope you don't feel the need to answer. It's just a disquieting and hilarious blog. And life is life is life is life is life and what comes after.

Your advice is like an unwanted massage I can't outwalk, cannot shake from my shoulders, even for days, when your certainties and remedies, hit square where I've been bruised. Your intimacy is fallow, your embraces are perfunctory, they are pointed and untrue: "if I squeeze you hard enough you just might pop and re-converge as something I can back." You put my life in your mouth just then; I didn't say you could. If you want to colonize my heart, my caring friend, then learn the language, sing the songs, hear the stories of my people, wear the clothing of my sorrow, join my hunts and celebrations, learn to say my name the way it falls from my lips, and only mine. But if you barter with your blankets and your beads and proudly print my picture in your post then you will hear my name clearly, you will hear me, clearly from the mountains and the slopes you will hear me crying, rushing, free: indignant, indigenous me.

humansofnewyork

"Having cancer hasn’t been nearly as bad as worrying about getting it."

(Lights up. We see a Costco food court. Two women, mid twenties, dressed in nurses' scrubs sit on opposite sides of a tiny white plastic table, overloaded with an especially large pizza in a box, lid folded under so the box sits at a jarring angle. They have finished half the pizza. They are really going at it.) Beth: Brad's like out of the picture. (takes a bite) I've completely let go, emotionally. Not like May. (a bite, interrupted) Hm! Now that I think about it, this is the first time I thought about him all week. (a bite and a long chewy pause) I think it's because of my new passion for Syria. Jen: (chews) hm. (takes a bite) (Lights fade)

#tiny plays #plays #theatre

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