when i was in high school and much more social than i am now, i worked as a waiter. i know. that sounds amazingly different than anything anyone would expect from me now. my entire wage was dependent upon sucking up to strangers. i was good at it though, at convincing them that i cared in the slightest whether their steak was cooked to their specifications. all i cared about was how much they would be willing to tip me if i was willing to pretend i liked them for half an hour or so. i pretended well. they tipped well. it was a good combination.

but even a good actor gets bogged down when there are too many shows to perform at one time. everyone knows that. so we had a code, me and the people at the restaurant. whenever you were in over your head you just yelled "i'm in the weeds." anyone who heard that phrase knew that, for whoever uttered the tragic phrase, the world was falling apart. not falling apart and drifting away into nothingness, but falling apart and collapsing in on itself like a supermassive black hole. nothing escapes. it all condenses into infinitely compact nothingness.

i remember those days, when the weeds seemed like such a tragic place to find yourself. straining to see the world above the green masses that flowed with the wind in front of you.

it's funny to hear myself say this, but the weeds seem boring. i'm in the jungle now. not the "i'm on safari and trying to pretend to be a man" jungle. i'm in the f---ing jungle. like, "i'm being mauled by tigers" jungle. and it's not like i just stumbled into the outskirts of the jungle either. i live in it. in the rainforest of all places. there's no sunlight. no outside world. there's only the black dampness of the jungle.

it sounds cliche to say (what doesn't these days), but i think you get use to it. eventually life in the light, in the fields of weeds, or, god forbid, the grassy hills, feels boring. you don't know what to do with yourself. so much light. so much wind. so much...

silence.


in the jungle i'm on my toes at all times, ready to spring into, something. in my first days in the jungle i was springing into a run from whatever ridiculously odd noise came too close to my ear. usually an innocuous insect. occasionally a hungry tiger trying to rip me apart and snack on my lower intestines. these days i'm springing at the noise. strike first. worry about the consequences later. i've become amazingly adept at wrestling with tigers.

i'm an adrenaline junky. it's one of my many addictions. i don't get enough chances to put my life in danger now. so instead i put my sanity in danger from too much thinking and far too little sleep. some days i thrive. some days i go insane. i'm not sure which today is.

i've lost track of what day it is.

all i know is what i see. orange and black stripes in the darkness. moving through the day that is night that is day.

i am in the jungle, laughing. i am the jungle. and it's time to start hunting.