Hey, dude that walked past me on my way back to my truck and muttered epithets in Spanish because he didn't like how I parked, thinking I didn't understand but I did because I speak Spanish at home to my wife, “¡Chinga tu madre tambien, pendejo!” “Hey, what's up?” I am not separate from this individual, this manifestation of the One Source. He and I are brothers, cosmic brethren sprouted from the same ejaculated All That Is. “Hijo de puta.”
A suped-up cherry-red Honda Civic with spoiler and anime stickers along the rear window weaved in and out of lanes on Marguerite Parkway, only to end up parallel to me at the red light. Stupid motherfucking mouth-breathing troglodyte with more RPMs than IQ points, you're lucky I don't have you on the jiu-jitsu mats, where for sure I would hit you with a snap-down, lock in an arm-in guillotine, and separate you from your consciousness that would be better relegated to a red-bellied toad looking for crickets to snag up with its prehensile tongue. I look over. I hope this kid finds peace. He deserves it. His willingness to subject all the drivers around him to his dangerous driving is not only a symptom of youth but a failure on his consciousness's part to realize that we are all one, that all cars and all the drivers inside them are sparks of the Universal Oneness currently taking form in the shape of separate units of light coursing through the conduits of our great nation's roads and freeways. Piece-of-shit driver. Solipsistic asshole. Knuckle-dragger. Liberal.
My wife and are at an Italian restaurant called Mario's d'Italia. Date night. The little one is with her great-aunt. Mario's has lost its cache in my eyes by employing a possessive apostrophe in the name but I overlook it because they have bomb-ass gnocchi. My wife orders a cappuccino. When it arrives, she asks the waitress/owner if it has any sugar. “I don't know,” snobbishly says the waitress/owner, “try it.”
I step in. “Figlia di putana, perche tu pensi che mia moglie sai se un cappuccino ha zucchero o no, nonostante lei essendo una filistina? Tu sei veramente un pezzo di merda! Che servizio! Tu devi morirti adesso per avere risposto cosi, troianna del inferno, cameriere che non meriti il diritto di respirare l'aria come una persona normale. Perche non ritorni al tuo paese? “Grazie!”
As a continual practitioner of spiritual work and someone always trying to improve one's lot in life vis-a-vis the rest of humanity with which I am inextricably linked, I have come to value self-talk as a useful tool. It serves to put the brakes on one’s ego. It helps as well as a form of therapy, feedback, and a sounding board. The results are often fruitful, sometimes alarmingly so.
You worthless POS. You'll never achieve anything noteworthy for the rest of your days. How do you expect to thrive if you've proven to be nothing more than a lazy bastard with no moral compass, no backbone, no Bugatti? If you breathe in one more cubic foot of air and don't get up off your ass and go for a seven-mile run, I suggest you make a beeline for the gray utility knife in the garage near the basin wrench and use it to introduce the insides of your wrist’s veins to the outside world. Mediocre fuck. You are an integral part of humanity. You are unique, a manifested center of the All's expression, shaped into a pillar of vitality, placed upon this earth to affect change, to inject hope into humanity, to don a cape as a crusading warrior extinguishing flames of ignorance wheresoever they may appear. Useless piece of monkey puke. How exemplary an individual you are. Fake-ass enlightenment seeker. Yours is a noble pursuit, a praiseworthy leap into the abyss of uncertainty. You’re likely to reincarnate as a tardigrade, supercilious twit.
There's this dude in jiu-jitsu class I am lukewarm about. He's younger than I, bigger, and more liked. Yet he's nice to me, so hats off. I have three years more training than he has.
We slap and bump. We tie up. He arm-drags me and takes my back. He's way better than I thought. He sinks his forearm under my neck and squeezes. I tap.
Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy. “Wow, bro. Great job.” He smiles and nods. Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy Fuck this guy.
I am glad to have training partners like him. They make me better, they keep my ego in check. He's better only because he's younger and born taller and stronger. Plus he doesn't have responsibilities like I have: work, family, writing novels, writing Substack articles, spiritual work. Hats off because he's good. His self-deprecating nod after he submits me speaks volumes of his character. Fuck this guy.
He goes on to win local jiu-jitsu competitions and gets all kinds of accolades—medals, belts, pats on the back, Instagram tags. He proves to be a class act through it all and still addresses insignificant me by my name. Take away his physical attributes, tireless work ethic, and, let's face it, luck, and he and I would be on a level playing field. And whenever the playing field is level, I do damage. I see red, bro. And if we did MMA instead of only jiu-jitsu, he'd be my bitch.
“Yo, Harold! Fuck. What's up? This. Congrats on the W!” Guy.
I go for a six-mile run. Going for a run has manifold benefits: it improves cardiovascular health, this hurts so much, increased production of serotonin, shin splits acting up, right pinky toe screaming in agony, improved metabolism, dumb-ass podcast interviewee is boring as hell and it hurts to even hit ‘Pause” on my wraparound earbud, and overall general well-being. only pain, so why live?
I totally endorse running it sucks donkey dick.
Thank you for reading Third-Eye LASIK. If you like what you just read, why not check out my brand-new novel? It’s an LA noir mystery with an alcoholic private detective, vegan crime bosses, guys who cut cocaine with borax, and AI Charles Manson.
Suicide by Jiu-Jitsu? Hmm. Tequila? Of course. Crushed Trachea Blues is live and livid. You in?
Perfetto! Sei proprio uno stronzo. Damn. Where is that strike-thru? You're such a great writer.
You are so much mature and admirable and full of forbearance than me, or is it just that I don't have a strikethru function in my brain?