profoundly-mediocre

[profoundly-mediocre]

Ben Cortman Was Dead - 3

A 63 year old Ben Cortman sat in a large luxurious hot tub made of marble in a sleek modern bathroom. His penthouse overlooking Central Park was a favorite summer retreat. This was his 6th life now, each rebirth a rude intrusion to the natural expectation of mortality. But this was the first one he’d been born back into his original family. Ben Cortman, take 2. What was this? A glitch in the matrix or something?

“Fuck it!” he had decided early on. He wasn’t a history buff, but he knew Google, Nvidia, Netflix, and Bitcoin were going to be huge. Ben Cortman 2 lived a decidedly wealthier existence than the first, despite his chaotic childhood with an alcoholic father and absent mother. He worked hard as a young man and lived a frugal existence. He invested every extra penny in what he knew would be successful companies. He avoided all entertainment and anything that cost more than what was necessary to survive. It paid off.

His investments throughout his 20s were on point and grew exponentially throughout the early years of his life. Now he was extremely wealthy, which included not only material wealth, but all the extras that came with it like status and stunningly beautiful young girlfriends. 

#

A young woman entered the bathroom and her silk robe crumpled on the floor silently, revealing a slender and magazine gorgeous body. Ben caught her elegant motions in the reflection of the large floor to ceiling glass panels and popped a small pill into his mouth. She was 23 and had never expressed any interests to him beyond luxury goods and vacations. She willingly gave her body to Ben and even made it feel as if she truly desired him, but Ben knew it was the recent month on his yacht in Monaco and a shopping trip to Milan coupled with several visits to Fifth Avenue, not his winning personality or charming good looks, that she really desired.

She was graceful as she entered the water and made a show of it, slowly descending into the water. Ben’s eyes soaked her body up, fully appreciating what he felt must be a cheat code on life.

Her feet disturbed the nearly silent water surface. Then her long legs glided into the water. He paused and appreciated her well-groomed womanhood. That grooming alone had cost an excessive amount for most people, but Ben enjoyed it and she knew to show it off. The sapphire in her belly button was a mere trinket from one of many recent shopping trips. He happened to know her plump perky breasts were real, but he took in her eyes the longest as she slowly swam to him. Yes, she wanted him alright and he didn’t care that the desire centered on money. What a life he was having.

The pill was doing its job now and he welcomed her as she climbed onto him. She was an amazing lover. Right as he climaxed, Ben Cortman’s richly luxurious diet made sure that Ben Cortman was dead… again.

Pop… If that’s how Ben could describe the sound of entering the space between, there’d have to be sound. But there wasn’t really and so the pop was more of a sensation, if there were sensations.

Ben knew where he was. The last few times he’d been here he’d experienced more of it. He knew it was more than what his normal senses were used to. The warmth, the bright light, the sound were all he was equipped to experience, but there was more here. The five senses were almost perceiving it, but the wires were crossed or out of phase.

“Please, tell me why this is happening,” Ben… said? Maybe it was more of a verbal thought. 

Something was here and Ben knew it, but not directly. The sound of more warmth. Light that smelled sweeter. He heard something press on his… being… What was he just now anyway?

The Space Between. That’s what he’d come to think of it as. Not really a place. Had he started experiencing more of it this time? This felt… longer or maybe just more defined. 

There is definitely something else there, but Ben couldn’t figure out how to… look at it, touch it, listen to it, see it… It’s definitely here.

#

The previous 5 times Ben Cortman had been born with his conscious mind could be described as painful, or at least uncomfortable. The sensation of being squeezed from a woman’s body cavity came with a massive headache usually followed by an uncomfortable cold and overwhelming need to take a shit. Being poked and prodded by blurry beings while you screamed for them to stop. That was his experience of birth.

But he was now birthing into a different reality, unlike the Space Between or the material world. Ben felt more like a sheet was being removed to reveal a world perfectly obscured by it. But he wasn’t an infant or even a child. This was different from his 6 life times and the Space Between. He tried to take in the details of his surroundings, but nothing would come into focus. He could have been in a shopping mall or on a beach. An office setting. A coffee shop. Details of an abstract painting so abstracted it could be anything.

Ben raised his hand and looked at it. This was an odd experience. Space felt like a fluid and he couldn’t focus on his hand or even determine that it was a hand, but there was something where he was looking that could have been a hand. Was he hallucinating? 

“Hello?” Ben spoke/thought. The sound/idea bounced oddly in ways that didn’t meet Ben’s expectations of a solid world. This was like someone’s idea of what human perception of space-time was. Someone that had read about it, but not experienced it. 

Before Ben could formulate more thoughts, a familiar and unwelcome sensation struck him. The headache. The feeling of extreme constriction like he couldn’t possibly be squeezed through a tiny pin hole. The cold didn’t follow, though, and it was more like he was unpackaged than pushed through.

#

2341-A439-K329 was born in the year 2341, one of nearly 10,000 genetically identical androgynous bio-engineered humans. Born for the purpose of servitude to a class of elites that measured their wealth in terms of planets, this was unlike any of Ben's previous experiences. It was a vast and cruel galactic empire he would barely get to know.

Ben would get his chance to see the Space Between again at the young age of 13 when he made the unforgivable mistake of looking at his master's lover. He was hung upside down and whipped in the servants quarters as an example and then left to die slowly of thirst while his peers were forbidden to help unless they wanted to join him.

[profoundly-mediocre]

The aspects of capitalism that we say are bad come from focusing on making money in a capitalist society. That's not necessarily capitalism, though. That's greed. That's giving more attention to the outcome.

Capitalism does have some positive characteristics, though. Innovation is one that comes to mind. This comes from focusing on the service or product and what problems it will solve instead of money. The money will happen if it's a good product or service that solves a real problem.

We can see lots of examples of greed under the guise of capitalism. A landlord that raises the rent, not because they need to but because they can. While a landlord that raises the rent to meet new expenses is not greedy.

I think this can get lost in nuance, but I won't declare that I'm a capitalist. Hope that helps someone somewhere.

[profoundly-mediocre]

Penpals

One of my pen pals recently sent me a writing prompt and so I thought it'd be fun to respond here and make them look at my blog :P Also, we've been handwriting letters, which I find very endearing, but this is a little longer and my hand tends to cramp when it's not on a keyboard.

I met this pen pal at a writing retreat for a memoirist, so it makes sense that it's much more of a personal memoir type prompt. I'm not usually inclined to share experiences unprompted, because many of them are deeply painful, but I do tend to share when I'm asked. We're all human, after all, and there's nothing I've experienced that hasn't been repeated by a lot of other people throughout history.

So here's the prompt:

"Tell me what you forgot to say. To whom?"

What comes to mind is something that I didn't exactly forget to say, but I left it unsaid. More like I purposefully didn't say it.

I had a fling with a very attractive and younger woman once. We were very compatible in just about every way, not just physically. A few months in and things were great. We had started giving voice to the ideas of a longer term committed relationship. I adored her and still do.

Then, she broke up with me suddenly one day. I'll leave her unnamed and try not to overshare her details, but she was having a lot of crises back to back. She had been raped and then had her livelihood thrown into question by the landlord of her business. Suddenly, her world felt unsafe and uncertain.

She communicated with me very well, one thing I really appreciated about her, that she didn't feel safe or have bandwidth to maintain a relationship at the time. She told me she was sorry, but needed to breakup with so that she could focus on the crisis at hand. It really hurt and I think it hurt her as well.

My response was very understanding, though. It was actually a fairly new relationship and we still saw each other through rose colored lenses, but I had started forming feelings for her. I told her I understand and I'm sorry these challenges, especially the rape, had thrown her into crisis mode. I agreed that her life did seem to be full of challenges and that a relationship could also be challenging given the circumstances at the moment. I left everything else unsaid. I didn't want to make it more difficult for her emotionally and I didn't want to come off as pathetic or something. Everyone processed things differently and she told me she needed space to process, so I accepted it because I cared about her.

I let her walk away and didn't try to cling to the idea of something more. It was really hard to watch her in pain and my experience was one of unfulfilled desire to be present and available for her.

Here's what I really thought.

----------------------------------------------------------

G,

I know the relationship is young and it's still in the flirty crush stage, but breaking up with me really fucking hurts and feels unnecessary. Whether it is too soon or not, I have started caring deeply about you. It feels like you're dismissing me when I am capable, willing, and asking to be part of the solution to your current situation. Why throw it away when it could make us stronger? We were just talking about our relationship in serious terms and now this?

I've never been assaulted or raped, so I can't really imagine what you're going through, but I can be supportive and keep my pants on while we work through this. I want to be supportive of you at this time.

Also, I know a thing or two about finances and running a business and can help solution and even implement a pivot for your business.

Why not use me as a supportive friend instead of walking away?

----------------------------------------------------------

So I left that unsaid and you might see why. What a cluster fuck of an experience on both sides. I can't imagine what she was going through and I'm left wishing she'd help me understand.

Time does still heal, but this particular breakup did leave a mark. I've never had a breakup when the relationship was so good. I've never had a breakup because of someone outside of the relationship intruding, either.

In a way, it still feels unresolved to me. Like something was taken from me unfairly. Not in a possessive way, but like a missed opportunity from misjudgment on someone else's part. Excuse the crudeness, but it was emotional blue balls.

Perhaps it wasn't as good as I thought, though. How do you put someone aside that you care about? Was this just an opportune excuse to run away? Perhaps it would have been worse to continue, get to the likely 'I love you' part of the relationship, and then break it off. Was leaving this unsaid cowardly or involve me in the responsibility of a prematurely ended relationship?

Overthinking is something I do really well.

[profoundly-mediocre]

Ben Cortman Was Dead - 2

“Jacob Landrum, surrounded by family, passed away in his sleep early in the morning on May 12th, 2045. Beloved by many, he leaves behind 4 adult children and Miranda, his wife of 52 years. Jacob strived to live a simple life and achieved what many would call a life well lived.”

The day before Jacob passed away he reflected deeply on his life. How different his life had been as Jacob Landrum vs Ben Cortman. He had few regrets and approached life like a blessing. Early on, after fully realizing what had happened, Ben came to believe that there was something Godlike in the universe and that, for some reason, he had been given a second swing at life. Had he really been dealt such a shitty hand? Or had he fucked it up so bad someone felt sorry for him and gave him a mulligan? Either way, he firmly believed that God existed. 

Ben stopped questioning why he’d been given a second chance by early childhood and set about the challenges of being a fully conscious 40 something year old man growing up as a child in the 70’s. He fully adopted his life and even thought of himself as Jacob. To his knowledge, his parents only once questioned if he was like other kids. 

Puberty was a much worse experience for Jacob. His conscious mind in the mid 50s had the body and peer group of a teenager. He took a vow of chastity to himself and used religion as a cover for being a square. He never had a craving for the vices of Ben Cortman and he dared not tempt fate.

Jacob wrote a letter to his wife the day before he died. He had started writing her letters monthly almost two years ago and would tuck them away for her to find randomly. Then weekly in places he knew she’d find them. Now daily. It’d become Miranda’s routine to read his letters with her coffee and she cherished them. 

Jacob knew his time was near. Somehow he felt it. His body was ready and so was his mind.

“A life well lived”, Jacob signed the letter. He struggled to get to his feet, but blew off the walker as he shuffled towards the bedroom. He tucked the letter into his pocket and then forgot to deliver it to the counter. Miranda found it three days later.

At 2:36 am that morning Jacob Landrum, formerly Ben Cortman, “saw the light” and peacefully followed it. His conscious mind woke up somewhere new, but couldn’t fully understand what it was experiencing. His mind attuned to the human senses, his first impression was intense white light and then warmth followed by a sound he couldn’t name or place…

Place…

And then the sensations changed drastically. Constriction. A headache. That blinding light, but different. The sounds? People?

Clementine Rose Montgomery was born 1817 to a wealthy industrialist family. This afforded her a slightly better than average chance of surviving childhood. She was 1 of 8 children to Mr and Mrs Montgomery and 1 of 4 to survive to adulthood.

To Ben-Jacob-Clementine, God suddenly became a lot harder to reconcile. Was this torture? Had he not just lived a good life full of love and gratitude? Was that not the reason he’d been reborn with his memories and experiences?

The blurry beings leaning over the screaming Clementine seemed to appreciate her enthusiasm, but had no context for her motivation.

[profoundly-mediocre]

Ben Cortman Was Dead - 1

Ben Cortman sat in the kitchen of his rundown trailer staring at a whiskey in his hand. The cheap shit that only tastes acceptable after a few too many. A large coin was spinning on the table. He had set in motion before getting lost in thought about how his life had gone from doing well enough to losing everything. The spinning coin changed pitch as it faltered and it drew Ben’s eye. He watched it as it lost its speed and changed sound again, getting ready for landing, one side determined to be facing up.

The coin came to a halt in front of Ben after rattling rapidly and he stared intently at the face of the coin. A triangle in the middle, all three points touching the circle made by the edge of the coin. A large ‘I’ in the middle. He had gotten the coin only 3 weeks ago and now he didn’t deserve it. The symbol made him think of the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows symbol. Instead of a wand, a stone, and cloak it said ‘Unity’, ‘Service’, ‘Recovery’ in big letters. One word on each side of the triangle. Ben glared at the words, daring the coin to judge him.

“Fuck you!” Ben said coldly to nobody in particular. 

Ben read the words around the edge of the coin. ‘To thine own self be true.’ Ben laughed briefly with a ‘hell-yeah’ grin, finding the sentiment more suitable to his current state. He tipped his glass to the coin and threw back the whiskey in his hand, in a practiced motion true to thine own self.

Ben’s mood darkened quickly, though, as the whiskey bottle wouldn’t cooperate. It kept moving in front of him, as if playing some stupid game of ‘you can’t catch me.’ Ben finally caught it only to have his hands betray him in trying to pour the fuckin’ thing! Whiskey splashed out of the bottle unevenly, but some of it did make it into the glass, which satisfied Ben as he concentrated all of his attention to this one simple task. He was beyond the point of it tasting acceptable and well into not tasting it at all.

“Get in there you motherfucker” he grunted stupidly as he managed to get enough whiskey in his glass to call it a shot. He slammed the bottle unintentionally and caught the glass with his other hand before it decided to revolt as well.

Shot of whiskey gone, Ben swayed hard. The room blurry and uneven, Ben started mumbling angrily to himself. “You’re such a... a... fuckin’ cliche... Goddammit!” His words were uneven in volume and intelligibility. “Ooo look at me, all torn up.” Ben mocked himself. The slurred words sounded better in his ears.

Ben had to stand up fast to get to the sink in time, but he made it. The taste of bile. The sting in his nose. Both muted and numbed, but still there. Ben managed to turn the sink on and some of the water made it into his mouth. He spit it out to rinse the taste out and got some more.

“Fuckin’ typical!” Ben said morosely. “Not any better than the ole motherfucker, afterall.” Ben thought darkly, an unwanted memory of his father invading his thoughts. Leaning over the sink still, he gulped more water and turned the faucet off. He tried to pull himself up and found that gravity was working against him too.

Ben’s eye drifted to his snub nose .45 revolver on the kitchen counter next to the sink. What the fuck did he have that out for? Why the fuck did he even own it? He’d maybe shot it 2 times and had been drunk both times. Guess it was his thing now.

Ben snatched up the gun and found his chair with all his weight. He slumped over the kitchen table cradling the gun in both hands as if contemplating something profound. But he was not in a profound state and instead thought about the fact that the majority of his life felt like pain, suffering, and loss. He drank to numb all the bad shit. The bad thoughts. The feelings he didn’t know how to name or even express.

Tears welled up in his eyes, but he refused them. Boys don't cry. Fuckin’ bitch cheated on me AND took everything? That was HIS house. He’d build it. It should be his and she should have to leave.

“Fuck, I’m a GodDAMN cliche!” Ben yelled. Rage and shame competing for dominance.

Ben lugged the gun to his head and pressed it firmly to his temple. The hollow points inside ready to release their potential energy at the flip of a switch.

‘I’ve never done any good for nobody. Not even myself.’ Ben’s thoughts raced with insults on himself. He piled them on. He was a stupid drunk mother fucker, just like his dad, and his fate would be the same because he was too weak to stop it. Pathetic.

The thing that would be identifiable as Ben Cortman left the flesh of his body faster than the hollow point. What hit the floor beside the chair was empty animal flesh leaking its vital fluids on a cheap linoleum floor. All mental activity ceased as the physical parts responsible for it spattered on the walls and countertops. And with it, all electrical signals to the body. The heart stopped, the lungs. All of it. The body fell with a thud that nobody heard. Nobody would even be looking for him.

Ben Cortman was dead… just a sad fuckin’ trope.

#

There was an imperceptible amount of time that the consciousness of Ben Cortman was aware of something other than the familiar dimensions of time and space. But as soon as he started to experience anything, he found himself being birthed to a young mother in 1970.

Ben Cortman was dead… but now his 41 years of experience was inside the body of a newborn child. All of the filters of his experience present in a body and mind meant to contain a clean slate of awareness. He had no idea what was going on, but his head throbbed with a full blown whiskey hangover.

Ben couldn’t see a damn thing, but blinding light. ‘Oh, God!’ he thought. ‘I must have survived the bullet’ and he heard an awful wailing sound like a baby screaming at the world to stop. Ben’s mind, amazingly clear for the hangover, raced. He’d be some fuckin’ vegetable until someone did him the favor of pulling the plug. 

‘I wish that fuckin’ baby would shut the fuck up!’ he tried to scream, but the screaming baby got louder. Ben paused his mind at the sudden realization that he was making the wailing sound. The wailing stopped.

[profoundly-mediocre]

Hands Off! My Post Office?

l went to a Hands Off! demonstration this past weekend. I live in a smaller town and was very surprised to see several hundred people occupying the historic courthouse square in the middle of downtown. The crowd wrapped around the entire block. It was pretty impressive considering Trump won the county with 70%. I was expecting my 1/10th turnout.

Anyway, I found the experience entertaining. I showed up not expecting much, but got a lot. Completely unprepared myself, a guy showed up with extra signs for others (sharing is caring y'all) and so I procured one. My plan was to write a message on the back. Something like "I'm here" or "Hi mom", but the message on the sign was too good not to show.

It read:

Hands Off!

1. Our Post Office

2. Social Security

3. Medicaid

2 and 3 are understandable concerns. You'd be correct if you guessed most of the people there were older, although I was also surprised by the number of people my age and a little younger.

But the post office? That doesn't even register as one of my main concerns. In fact, can we go ahead and close the post office and find better ways to make old people stand in line for stamps? Let's automate something worthwhile.

Where else can I stand in line to get something that I have to pay to get shipped to my door?

I offer a trade. You can take the post office and we'll call it even.

[profoundly-mediocre]

I've often thought of myself as a humanist, which is basically saying I value the human experience and rational thought. I'd go so far as to say that people having their experiences is the point of being alive, but that might be heading down a rabbit hole.

Recently someone thought they might insult me by calling me boring. You can usually tell the intent of a statement like that if you decline to respond, fwiw. Jokes on them, I've been practicing minimalist living and understand the virtues of Stoicism. The Stoics are a set of ancient Greek philosophers that taught the virtues of what we might call minimalism today. Simple living free of clutter and drama. This extends to how we entertain ourselves and is basically the opposite of wanderlust. It's finding contentment in the everyday routine of life. The person that called me boring would even self identify as having wanderlust and it's very apparent in their lifestyle. They're always going out to shows and traveling. They can't seem to sit still and don't have a desire to.

I am way oversimplifying, of course, and a true philosopher would probably over analyze my assessment of it, but my point is this. Someone called me boring as an insult, but what they failed to see is that I'm never bored. They can be bored by my lifestyle, but that's a them problem as I never set out to be entertaining to other people. I'm very much entertained by sitting in silence or writing while my cat nibbles me for my attention or my dog snores on the bed.

Wanderlust and the need for external entertainment can be simple curiousity of the world around you. I've done it myself and wanted to see and do all the things. Too often, though, it appears to be a symptom of a mind that cannot entertain itself, but I'll reserve my judgement because who am I to say what others experience? What I can say is this, I've often found that people that say things like "you're boring" do so out of a lack of awareness more than anything else. What you find boring, I find deep contentment in. What you find entertaining, I might find overwhelming and unnecessarily complex. So let's keep our judgement to ourselves and instead find joy in the fact that we're both alive and able to enjoy things in our own way.

Thank you for attending my boring musing today. Enjoy!

[profoundly-mediocre]

Getting Started

I have the tendency to overthink and overanalyze things. Surprise! Should I start a sub-stack or a wordpress blog on my own server, or focus on the sci-fi book I'm writing? OR should I just go ahead and get started writing something?

So, here I am. I'm a millennial and I remember when tumblr first came out. It was cool and niche and... then it almost died. I'm glad it's survived, because I think it might be just what I need to get started on my writing journey. An easy way to just put stuff out there without having to worry about "is this the right place to tell a story."

I'm not worried about making money right now, although that is my aspiration. I'm worried about writing on a regular basis and receiving feedback for my work. I want to practice the craft of writing and I believe Tumblr offers me the freedom to write in a lot of different styles, forms, etc. I have so many ideas for serialized sci-fi stories, graphic novels, novels, etc. There's even a memoir/treasure hunt rattling around in there somewhere. I just need an outlet.

Profoundly mediocre... and embracing it. Death to perfectionism, completionism, and overthinking it.

I'll be writing mostly fiction, I believe, sprinkled with some other thoughts. I do enjoy some wine induced philosophizing.