2:25 AM Fear

Shit. Shouldn't have done it. Something dark is coming on. I can feel it.

I hit the water pipe again, all alone in my parents' house bedroom. This was some potent, devilish stuff. High-grade marijuana, kush, they call it. Now I'm overwhelmed. After years of experiencing this modest plant, my toleration's boosted leading to gentler trips. But, this is kush, a whole 'nother animal. And it's sitting fat on my chest. Never underestimate the high-grade. Valuable piece of knowledge to have in Southern California.

...

A few cigarettes later and I'm still not cured. I'm wide-eyed and looking often to the right. The corner of my eye is suspicious. Wasn't something just there? The shadows are shifting. Dark figures are forming and fading simultaneously. My mind is falling to pieces. I am questioning everything and unfortunately, everything isn't pleasant. Doubts come up of my ambitions, my ideals and my purpose. The ego stands alone. It is being interrogated. Ruthlessly.

...

Nightmare scenes play in my head. A large audience is reading some of my written work projected onto a white screen. There is an unbearable moment of silence. I become congested with the greatest anxiety. Soon, it becomes apparent. My anxiety becomes justified. Nobody is convinced. Faces change from disgust to gleeful ridicule. They are jeering at my words. My sentences. My paragraphs. "Boo."

It is confirmed - I have absolutely nothing important to say. They know it. I know it. How could a middle-class, had-it-easy suburban kid like me achieve anything meaningful? I've been comfortable. I was socially acceptable: not too ugly, brushed my teeth everyday, not a goat fucker. Made it into college. Was mostly polite. Clean police record.

Oh Jesus. My fate's spelled out for me. I'm just going to follow a career path and live a true American lifestyle, complacent in shallow success. I am already boring as hell. My life's been devoid of any color of great strides. I haven't proved myself to anybody. A deathbed submerged in defeat awaits.

Paranoia's disguised as truth. Its voice is terrible. Says I haven't suffered a true suffering. Says I was always fickle and lazy with my passions, quickly hopping from one to the other. Smart enough to start it up, too much of a coward to follow through. What if writing's just another temporary fix? Another futile and eventually abandoned attempt at producing something eternal?

The "Fear", as Hunter would put it, dictates that I will die like the rest of them. Just another corpse goin' to worm feed, righteously buried with their rotten wasteful lives. One unfortunate existence joining billions of others. A sad story of wasted potential that has become a redundancy.

The night, along with the "Fear", will die when I go to bed. Will feel better in the morning.

Dear Reader

I only ask of you to contribute your honest, most brutal opinions. I cannot afford false compliments and superficial feel-good comments. That will only instill in me a false sense of security in what is in reality a pool of shit, piss and filth. And that would be the end of me. So please consider my state of well-being with constructive criticism and genuine opinion. There are some things I can't do alone.

I only got into the "writing game" just recently, so I am still in an infantile state. And just as a child learns not to touch a hot stove by actually enduring the painful and stupid experience of touching a hot stove, I can only possibly learn how to write better by the contribution of your most searing, corrosive criticisms. Point out any boring clichés, insignificant drivel and amateur mistakes I may and most assuringly will make. Also, point out anything specific that you liked, for the sake of my most sensitive ego and waning motivation.

You have my most heartfelt thanks for braving the reception of my hopefully thought-provoking pieces.

In complete and utter love of the most vile and most heavenly qualities that make us human,
T. Lee

This was December 24th.

It's almost 2AM and it's almost Christmas. And I am bleeding America onto this paper. Happy Holidays.

Today I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked most of it in one night. I have no regrets.

My friends are sleeping in New York City dreaming of New York City. I am hopelessly awake in Los Angeles and boy, is it lonely.

To my loved ones in the East, look outside of your window and to the West. Squint your eyes real hard and focus. Now, can you see it? Herds of 2 ton metal boxes blinking in the night?

Can you see it?

A God-loving bum sleeps cold and dirty somewhere on the shoe prints of his brothers and sisters. Oil rigs rest and suck on the open wounds of the Earth. An immigrant, his hands calloused and pricked by thorns, smells of tomatoes and dirt. The Los Angeles river is caked with sludge and it moves lumpily.

Hollywood contemplates suicide with dark circles around his eyes. Melrose sinks into the sheets, comfortable and fat and dreaming of vampires. Venice Beach is strung out and drooling into the sand. Beverly Hills is rotting, putrid with the stench of indulgent swine and complacent corpses. Compton, savagely beaten, bruised and raped by the American way, slumbers with one eye open.

A cop fucks and sleeps with the whorish law, a happy gun underneath his pillow. A real estate agent removes his skin and scrapes it raw against jagged metal. Money tumbles out. A business executive is on his knees, praying at his bedside to snakes slithering out from underneath.

And woe to the failed dreamers and the dreaming failures, their heads resting on pillows made out of their hair.

Los Angeles sleeps alone tonight.

And another voice enters the fray - an endless, wonderful debate on the identity of that intriguing, infinite force we label "God".

Purpose is mutual.
I write.
You listen.


Got it?