the_living_gaul lycanthrope The Living Gaul To survive this fallen world one must romanticize their own suffering. Christ on a cross the angry father booms. Bring yourself to my hand or I swear my hand will find you. But the boy is already standing there, defiant, away in his head. He didn't sneak a cookie, no he's a defiant Gaul standing before Caesar and civilization's legions. He can see through time to the statue they'll erect - eyes cast upwards to heaven, cookie crumbs like battle scars. He could be paraded red assed through the streets but the triumph is his. In high school he's in prison. He does yard pushups and fashions tattoos from broken pens. He checks out books of Russian poetry He sneaks downstairs at midnight and watches the Taxi Driver monologue on a VHS tape that jumps, and dismisses it. That's not romanticizing suffering - that guy needs to be the hero. That guy needs delusion. He takes mushrooms with skater friends near the pond in the park and is undone entirely by a duck calmly approaching him in peaceful curiosity. He sits against the bodhi tree and everything exhales and gasps and exhales. One does not need to imagine Sisyphus happy. I have seen documentaries on dung beetles where one pushes a shit ball up a hill for what must be years of its life, possibly most of its life. Suffering is what insects do. With a shoulder shrug and laugh, bouncing like a prowrestler thrown from on high into gravity and pain. The trick isn't to land softly, it's to sell what doesn't need to be sold. In young adulthood he purchases French poetry. He is drunk on his suffering and also alcohol (or virtue if you like). His hangovers are exquisite sweaty torture – He twists in blankets and feels his heart in his wrist with the same indulgent masochism that leads one to press on a sore tooth. He is sexually deviant, the Gaul lends his torque, he swears his hand finds them. Decades of orgasms and other pained expressions. The pushups never stop. And then, a cutscene in a nature documentary, suddenly you're burying your friends, leave alone the harder losses, but it isn't so bad as you have lofty poems to share for every occasion on account of checking out all that Russian and French poetry. The secret to public speaking to being dominant even, is to romanticize the gentle suffering their eyes inflict on you. You're a prowrestler now, suffering is your art. You imagine giving the Taxi Driver monologue to the grieving throng, but you speak sweetly, give solace. You lay your words on the spill like a towel. Then one day years later, you're holding little hands in the park. You're a gentle father, a lamb lying with a lion and you hardly understand it. You have a house. A duck of all things calmly approaches you. Nothing in you screams. Nothing in you is desperate. You nod and say hello fellow traveler. What's good in this fallen world? Bread? I agree bread is good. You must romanticize your suffering. 260827 what's it to you? who go blather from