The Satisfaction of Calamity Unrealized

Stream of consciousness-style writing has always been a somewhat irksome thing. If not done well, it can be disorganized, distracting, or otherwise scatter-brained. But the thing of it is, I don’t think there’s any way to avoid using this particular style of writing for this entry.

Put simply, I’m quite mad right now. Very mad. Inexplicably angry. And it’s not going away. I thought that I had released this anger yesterday. Because that’s when it originally started. Yesterday I was very upset….very angry.

And then I made the effort to let it go, to get over it, and to move on. And I did for a little while. Until something I did or said or didn’t say caused more difficulties with the people around me. These difficulties escalated and I became angry all over again. It’s difficult to think clearly when you’re angry, you know it. Things which you’d not do or even entertain the notion of doing when you’re thinking rationally occur to you and seem perfectly ok when you’re mad.

The world’s against you when you’re mad, and that’s a shame, but then who cares? You’ve always slogged through the same kind of unpleasantness before, and no one was around to help you—you did it all on your own, and you can do it again, because if nothing else, anger will make you stronger, and why not? You’re entitled to be angry. If you weren’t, then why would such an emotion even exist? And no one will tell you otherwise, will they? Not if they wanna keep their heads.

It’s a troublesome thing—anger. So it’s like a drug that obscures rational thought, and it’s your right as an American, but what else? Nevermind. I don’t care. I’m tired of feeling angry.

Anger is a great many things, but ultimately, anger is useless. Anger just causes difficulties. Oh I suppose that I should throw in right about now that yes, anger can be useful…. There’s such a thing as righteous anger and it can be used to motivate a good action. Anger can lead to a stronger conviction or the affirmation of a specific opinion, I guess. But keeping anger turns it into something it’s not supposed to be…

…What’s the phrase? Don’t let the sun go down on your anger? Well I succeeded in that, all right. The trouble was that as soon as it came back up, I found a new reason for being angry. I’m sick to death of it. But what can I do?

I’ll tell you what I’m always—without fail—told in these kinds of situations. “Make a new choice.” Or “Make a better choice.—Choose what is better.”

And it’s true, that’s all I suppose you really can do. Maybe it’s not a choice to be angry, but it is a choice to dwell on your anger, and the thing which can be done about it is the release of that anger. And that’s a particularly hard thing to do, I think, because it’s such an anti-climactic end to a perfectly good potential catastrophe.


It’s like watching the fuse on a stick of dynamite fizzle into nothing and you realize the explosion you were expecting isn’t going to happen. What you have on your hands is a “dud.” It just doesn’t seem like a fitting end to something so potent, but that’s how it’s supposed to end. People shouldn’t have to see an explosion or be massacred by it. A “dud” from a pyro’s perspective might be a huge disappointment, but you know what? From everyone else’s, I bet it’s rather a relief.

P.S. Thought of something else. It's like poison gas--anger. In its own confined container, but with a teeny tiny (or perhaps ever-widening) hole into another container. Effusion ensues and that terrible gas leaks into the other container. In this metaphor I get to be the initial container, and the world, the second one. The only difference is that eventually a normal gas would reach a state of equillibrium between the two containers, and I think the whole effusion thingy would stop. But anger isn't a normal gas. They cross-bred it with rabbts, and everyone knows that they're all born with an undeniable and irresistable urge to populate the earth. So it is with the gas. It reproduces and replenishes itself continually, with no end in sight.

Well, perhaps even the rabbits eventually get tired.