Taking out the trash

(7/27/21)

I was working the other night and ushering people out of the venue the way it’s usually done—by standing at the door and saying “bye” or “thanks for coming” or throwing up the peace sign or sometimes people blow a kiss so I blow a kiss back.

So some girl was leaving and she looked in my direction and yelled “You suck!” and I really really wonder what I did to piss her off. It took me a few seconds to register what happened and what she said and for a while I was sad, but in retrospect it was pretty funny–you know, like most things in retrospect.

So regardless of what I did (put her wristband on wrong? doublescanned her ticket? talked too aggressively? looked at her weird? I truly have no idea.) or what she was thinking (maybe i looked like someone she knew? maybe she was drunk and thought it was funny? a dare? I don’t know.) that moment has achieved a significance to me. No stranger has ever yelled “You suck!” at me before. Honestly it was thrilling. I hope someone does it again. But like in a friendly way, not because I did something wrong. But that would be fine too, we all make mistakes.

The last week I was feeling kinda shitty, not gonna lie, and I think I accidentally pit the world against me the way you do when you harbor shitty feelings–it just propagates. So I’m gonna try the opposite and see how it goes. I don’t know the exact mechanism of how your brain informs reality, but it does–even if it’s just perspective or if it’s something deeper. I don’t know how all that shit works. Right now I’m reading two books–A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. I finished Gut last Sunday during a grunge-metal show with like thirty attendees. I was outside drinking one of those energy beverages that advertises itself as healthy and has like ten calories. The H-E-B Plus near my house that markets itself toward the liberal middle-class did not have any Red Bull I could find. I think the sweetener in the beverage (the flavor was Hawaiian Shaved Ice. It reminds me of Ultra Fiesta-flavored Monster. Just call it Mango. I promise no one will be sad, just less confused.) was sucralose. So, Splenda. What my mom puts in her coffee. According to Wikipedia, my favorite religious text, “Animal studies suggest that high doses of sucralose may inhibit beneficial gut bacteria, and may affect glucose and insulin levels, indicating it is not a biologically inert compound.” The irony of me reading a book on gut bacteria while simultaneously inhibiting my own little small intestine buddies is retching.

Eckhart Tolle is a weird guy. Some of the things he says I agree with and I can make sense of where he’s coming from more than I could’ve two years ago, but still…there are some parts I question. I think the guidance that came from going to that meditation retreat and reading normaler books has prepared me for the…I don’t want to say mindfuckery, but maybe mindticklery that comes from reading Eckhart Tolle. I tried reading that other book he wrote, The Power of Now, two years ago, but I stopped because that was around the time I found out I was in a South Korean cult and I was getting super confused and like I had just had the rug–more like the world–pulled out from under me. I used to journal then but one day I tore out all the pages out of my moleskin notebook and threw them away. Like I think I’ve said (actually I don’t think I’ve ever said this), I strongly dislike keeping a record of my past. So I hate journaling. I actually started journaling at the beginning of this year and threw those pages away too. Thoughts are disgusting.

The way they test depression in mice is that they put them in a little tub of water with no ledge for them to grab onto, and see how long they continue to swim before giving up. I wonder if giving mice near-death experiences can also produce the profound changes in attitude that sometimes happen to people who almost die. Anyway, they fed some of these mice a certain type of gut bacteria called Lactobacillus rhamnosus that made them swim for longer and produce fewer stress hormones. 

So I learned this in Gut, but I also learned that one time some South Americans took pregnant women to the South Pole to give birth so the babies could stake claims to oil in the region as natives of Antarctica, but the babies died on their way back to South America because they didn’t get the bacteria they needed to survive.

Also, apparently if you consume probiotics, you need to keep taking them because they don’t really stick around in the environment of your gut flora for long. Also I think your gut bacteria need to eat a lot of fiber or something to stay healthy. Something like that.

Someone told me that Pope Francis used to be a bouncer. I’ve also been trying to read this book, Sex Lives of the Popes, which exists and is real. I really wonder what makes somebody good enough to be the head of the Roman Catholic Church. And like, what would be a dealbreaker. I feel like most people could make for a good pope as long as the circumstances were right.

I was thinking about this one couple that lived by a cliff in Australia and would save people from committing suicide by inviting them in for a cup of tea. The husband’s name was Don Ritchie and he would go outside and apparently he was really charismatic, and would ask the people who were about to jump to come in and talk. He saved over 150 people from suicide before he died in 2012 at the age of 86. I read this article on him posted in 2010 that said he was battling cancer and spent most of his time at home reading. The book he was reading at the time was The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama, which I happened to buy at Half Price Books a few weeks ago. People called him an angel (Don Ritchie, I mean maybe the Dalai Lama too, people throw around that moniker a lot), the “angel of the Gap.” The Gap is the name of the cliff, but it makes me think of the clothing and accessories retailer The Gap.

I mean Don and Moya didn’t just decide to move to a cliff where there was a high suicide rate, they just happened to move in across the street and notice. And that’s how Don became the angel of the Gap.

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