{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

The Great Tiredness is every bit as good as death.  There was no color here, no pain, no emotional weather at all, just an occasional oddness that was the outside world trying to puff itself up into significance when, of course, the secret of the Great Tiredness, the truth of this realm, was that everything was arbitrary and meaningless.  In the Great Tiredness, the transition from sleep to wakefulness was often blurred.

From 1995:

The Calculus sessions with instructor Jay Deshabandu were very stimulating, and I was acing the exams.  I had mastered the fundamental theorems of Calculus on my own.  Now I was fine-tuning my algebra skills as one doesn’t really “use algebra” until one applies it in Calculus.   In the meantime, I began to distance myself from Sherry.

Deshabandu suggested that, instead of pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, I should cut to the chase and start taking computer programming courses.  He had a Master’s degree in mathematics, and he was taking computer programming courses.  He told me I could easily become a programmer with my mathematical aptitude, and that to spend years studying higher mathematics seems to be an unprofitable game plan with the current demand for programmers (at that time … 1995) being so high.

I believed I had discovered an escape route from my monotonous and mundane career as a maintenance man.

~ from DEAD END: The Demented Avenger



Twenty Years Later, 1 November 2015:

 On the TV outside this little room, the New York Marathon blaring ... last night it was the New York Mets in the World Series, a team my parents would take me to see when I was a child.  I would cry after the games ... it brings back memories of meaningless misery ... and here I am, thinking of Spencer's words about the outside world trying to puff itself up into significance when, of course, the secret of the Great Tiredness, the truth of this realm, was that everything was arbitrary and meaningless.

I still write in my notebooks even as I am paying each month just to store the 125 volumes of scribblings of a clinically frustrated man which I still haven't been able to destroy by fire.  I burned about 20 of them.  They burn so slow!  It's all so utterly ridiculous, and yet I continue to scribble.

Today's excerpt:  "Surely I am some kind of antisocial negative defeatist aging Hikikomori weirdo.  Yes, I am a weirdo bookworm, and what makes me even weirder still is the kind of books I worm into: mathematics textbooks, obscure pdf files from course notes ... built-in reference manuals of mathematics software ... I wonder how many others like me exist in our dystopian societies.  When one writes, does one present oneself as likeable?  How authentic can one actually become before one finds oneself being analyzed and supervised by mental health professionals in this perfect day where outcasts are made to feel that they are failures unless they are 'fathers and productive workers' ?  "

"Rather than waste my energy ranting against whatever is blaring from the television in the other room, I will just continue my private studies ... these days: Abstract Algebra ... Rings ... The ring Z/nZ of integers modulo n.  I do so with an emotion that can only be described as shame as I reflect upon my 73 year old father who still works 7 days per week building walk-in freezers and is a long distance runner."

"I identify more with cripples.  No, not even that.  I prefer sitting in a rocking chair smoking a cigarette ... meanwhile a woman with no legs is going the 26.2 mile distance.  If it were not for my fluctuating yet continued interest in mathematics, I would be writing the most vile and negative poison ... I think, therefore I am a thought-criminal.  Ashamed of my authentic feelings, I am not fit for polite society."