I am feeling mighty arbitrary lately. Who are these people and why am I here and not somewhere else, or nowhere? Often you find yourself closely or even intimately associated with people who don't seem like a good match for you according to some list of desired attributes or interests, but nevertheless it's a situation that's actually really good for you, with people who are somehow the people you are supposed to be with. How does that happen? Does it really happen or do we shape the story however we need it to read? In other words how much of it really has anything to do with the people themselves and not some delusional projection? Not that I mind the occasional delusional projection.

I have these moments all the time, this questioning. It's really not a productive or enlightening activity, it's like disorienting yourself willfully, spinning until you're dizzy like children do sometimes, the slow ones.

The other night I found myself in the most depressing karaoke bar it's possible to imagine, it was so insanely horrible that it seemed to force upon me a shattering existential moment or identity crisis, the kind of place where you find yourself propelled beyond sadness and struggle and into a state of benumbed acquiescence, a torpor of futility that has the feel of a permanent condition not only of your own little life but of life in general. This state of affairs is familiar to anyone who's been to Olive Garden, a blockbuster movie on opening weekend, or church. You think, well this is obviously what people do, this is what happens, no use complaining about it and no point in trying to hide from it, it's everywhere. This is life. This, depressingly, is the best people can come up with.