Tag Archives: dreams-following

Sep 15 2014
4 Comments
Writing

What Is the Click Hole of Darkness?

imageEveryone has dreams. Everyone has a pancake they wish they could turn perfectly, or a pushup they wish they could do while clapping.

It’s human, the ability to project onto a future self and say, “That person will be able to do something that I cannot.” Or the ability to project onto the current self and say, “Me, I am capable of doing this thing that feels really freaking impossible, but I can do it.”

But that’s on a good day, when the sun is shining, when an old friend called, when you went out for a run and pushed yourself harder than usual and it felt good to sweat goddammit. That’s the good day.

But there’s something else everyone has. It’s the darkness, the voice that says, “You cannot,” the voice that says you will never be great.

It says that you are not good enough, that the very idea of striving is ridiculous, that mediocrity and unhappiness is your destiny, and that yes, everyone else is succeeding except for you. This voice is always there, but sometimes it’s overpowered by the beams of positivity radiating from your brain chemicals.

But on the rainy days, the days when no one gets back to you, when you feel alone, tired and sick, when your goals loom ahead of you like a cliff and the idea of getting out of bed to wash a dish feels as impossible as parting the San Francisco Bay, this is the moment of your personal darkness.

The most insidious thing about this darkness is the way it works in the silence and the corners of your mind, never voiced out loud but slowly eating away at your will.

This is why I created clickholeofdarkness.tumblr.com. It is the place my negative thoughts go. Instead of pushing them out of mind, I push them to the forefront and magnify them by orders of 10, 20 and 30 just to see how ridiculous they are and how self-defeating it is to listen to them.

Clickholeofdarkness.tumblr.com is where they go to be made fun of in the full light of God and the internet and the God of the internet, and beneath that spotlight, the thoughts die for the day. Sure, they may resurge on another day in a different form, but I will not fight them lying down. I will fight them sitting up and with a keyboard, for this is my sword, this is my battle, and this is my war to win.

Back to your hole, darkness.

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Sep 09 2014
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San Francisco

The Sea Monster at Ocean Beach

The Sunset

I went for a run this morning. The key to this is to not think about anything from the moment I wake up to the moment I put on my shoes and go out the door and start moving my feet. If I start thinking for even one second, then I think about how my knees will be stiff and my ankles will crack, and I’m going to be cold for the first five minutes and then start sweating and breathing heavily and the whole thing is rather uncivilized and awful. That’s why it’s imperative to avoid thinking of any kind.

Out the door I went and instantly uphill. Up and up the hill I went, into the heart of the area directly south of the Inner Sunset, an area I think is called Ashbury Heights but I’m not certain. While the rest of the Sunset is laid out in a neat grid with the streets named alphabetically and numerically (Judah, Kirkham, Lawton, Moraga and 11th, 12th, 13th, etc.) the area directly south of me is a mess of hills and tangled streets.


At some point 9th and 12th avenues intersect, something unfathomable to most people. It’s San Francisco’s equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Houses have yards and fountains, strange intersections occur and streets change into other streets as they curl around hills, and nothing really makes sense.

I was near the point where Pacheco turns into Funston Avenue. If you’re not familiar with the area, you probably don’t get how bizarre that is. I might as well say that I was in the part of New York City which is built like a giant picnic basket and governed by people-sized ants. At any rate, I was in that improbable area when I suddenly got a glimpse of the ocean. This was interesting because I thought I was facing the other direction, but it turns out my inner compass had been Bermuda’d and there it was, the Pacific Ocean with what looked like a giant winged sea monster perched on the beach.

That was strange, I thought, and continued to run because that’s what you do when you’re not really thinking. I turned around about thirty seconds later and there it was again, the view of the Pacific and the giant, solitary, motionless winged sea monster. It looked lonely almost, and actually very tiny against the ocean and the endless street blocks of the sunset and their pale pastel squares. It was probably debating on the best way to attack, which public utilities to hit first or maybe where it could cause the most damage and terror.

Or maybe it wasn’t trying to attack at all. Maybe it had come to San Francisco just like many others have come here, looking for fellow dreamers and creative types to do the impossible with. Maybe it wanted to learn how to code, or already knew how to code and had a cool new app idea but needed funding. Maybe it was frozen against the city, stuck thinking of all its passions and dreams and hopes with no idea of where to begin and feeling a little homesick in the fog. Maybe it was afraid of missing the best opportunity.

I don’t know what was going through its reptilian brain and its cold blood, but I hope it figures everything out, and that it doesn’t cause too much damage on the way to its destiny.

Also, I think it was a windmill.

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