Today is raw, unfiltered, and unrehearsed. It’s just words. There’s no plot, no plan—nothing.
In addition to designing the future, I’m also writing the past. My past. It’s my backstory. We all have one, and much like the past in general, my backstory, much like yours and your past, exerts itself on the present in varying degrees through us. We are the media our past plays out. We are the story. And if we want to be stronger than it, to tell the better stories we need to tell in order to get anywhere new, we need to be stronger than our past. I need to be stronger than who I was then if I want to be me now.
I don’t know what it is I’m writing—I’m calling it a book for now. And I didn’t know how I was writing it when I started—I’m figuring it out as I go. But I know I’m writing about a sort of addiction, as if addiction were a person and it could do things like tell you everything was fine when it wasn’t or slowly move itself into your house and pretend to be you so you wouldn’t notice it taking over your choices.
And I also know I’m writing about seeing through addiction, to see addiction’s darkest truth—its supporters. For all its destruction and misery, addiction makes billions to trillions of dollars, euros, pesos, pounds, rubles, rupee, won, yen, and yuan—year in, year out—to name just a few players. Addiction employs. Addiction recruits. And addiction is a well-versed apologetic.
I’ve been afraid to tell this story, but I’m not afraid anymore. I need to tell it. I’ve been afraid of what people might think forgetting the reason I write is to get people to think. This is not an autobiography, but I am in this story. It’s what I saw. It’s what I saw someone do to someone else.
What follows are prologues to Rabbit—a working title to a project I started years ago without realizing I had—the story I’m writing now. It’s raw, unfiltered, and unrehearsed. It’s just words. There’s no plot, no plan—nothing.
And thirdly, none of what's here, is. Or isn't. It's a project of mine: A book. You've already started reading it--and you're in it. Enjoy. 10:55 PM - 27 May 2014
This might be where the trouble starts.
See—people don’t like to be observed. People also don’t like to be specific. People don’t like to reveal themselves. But people do like to know about other people. And other people like to know secrets. And people do like to talk about knowing other people’s secrets. Some people like to talk about revealing other people’s secrets, but all people who talk more about other people are usually almost always only talking about themselves.
See—people hide in other people.
Yes. This is where the trouble starts.
—
"Fuck you! I can have three long swallows and put you back here behind the basement stairs, Mr. Belvedere. And good night!" 7:53 AM - 31 Dec 2012
Quotes mean it’s not me directly. I’m speaking through someone else’s words when I quote. It’s referential metaphor. Or as I like to call it: metaphor.
This time I’m referencing Clancy Martin’s Vice essay—The Secret Drinker’s Handbook—about being an alcoholic:
“Every secret drink guzzled is, in essence, an act of defiance against the tyranny of others, or the tyranny of a partner, the tyranny of society, or even the tyranny of one’s own addiction: ‘Fuck you! I can have three long swallows and put you back down here behind the basement stairs, Mr. Belvedere. And good night!’ Or a better, more realistic idea, even if it’s a more modest statement: Buy the half-pint and just drain the whole damn thing.”
The distinction between protecting the addiction from the truth or the life from the lie is meaningless because it all starts to look the same. The entirety of your existence becomes isolating everything that’s not the addiction from everything that is—including you. Once you can lie to yourself, once you can believe it, the rest is easy: you go away. The addiction is all that’s left.
Happy New Year.
Act I
Hello—I’m pup. That’s what they started calling me. I didn’t correct them, except when they started spelling it Pup. It’s pup. Not Pup. I’m case-sensitive. There is a difference to me. And as Data said, “One is my name. The other is not.”
I’m pretty sure I’m a sled dog pup. At least I have thought this for some time. I get praise when I’m good, food when I work, and scowled at when I don’t know what to do. That’s a sled dog pup’s life, right?
I live at the edge of the city beside a ravine with many animals. I don’t know this yet, but I’m going to go on an adventure, and then I’m going to get lost. And you don’t know this yet, but you’re going to come with me while I do.
See—when bad stuff happens you’re supposed to write it down. I didn’t know this, but a part of me did. A part of me documented the entire thing. Think of it as a message in a bottle only it’s actually several years of tweets with pictures all floating around on the internet. A part of me knew I’d become ever increasingly lost on my adventure. A part of me was calling out for help in the only way it could without being detected. I had to be subtle. I had to avoid drawing too much attention to myself. The part of me who know I was lost also knew I was being watched. Yes. They were watching.
Who would watch a sled dog pup? From what I understand about English, a pup can be the offspring of, in no particular order, a fox, a coyote, a hyena, a dog, a wolf, an otter, a shark, or a tiger. I think they wanted to see what I’d be when I grew up.
Remember the part where I said you’re coming with me? It’s time to go now. It’s okay. All of this has already happened. We’ll come back together, you and I. And then I’ll get to go home, and you, as you’ve always thought, are free to do what you’d like.
…and so I will continue to write.