Father to Newborn Child

Hello Baby,

    You will make terrible decisions. I know that's harsh, but I have to get it out of the way. I'm not judging your future character little one, I am simply stating a universal truth. Everyone makes terrible mistakes.
    Please do not let this stop you in your attempt at perfection in whatever form you consider perfect. I simply need to tell you that there is no way of avoiding it. I wish you find forgiveness within yourself with these words, but I know it will not be enough. It will always hurt like hell when you realize you have made one of your many or few tremendously disastrous mistakes. I simply need to tell you that we have all been there and we will always eventually understand.
   I am telling this to you now because you won't remember a lick of it when you make your first mistake. If you remember it you will have it to hold against me in my early attempts to also make you perfect. It will most likely be a different perfect than your own personal perfect, but hell, a man has got to try.
    I'll be here with you for awhile, but eventually I will have to leave you. This is why I am writing this down now. This will not be the last time I say this, but it is the first: I love you with all my heart.

Good Luck,
Your Father

Aaron C. Molden 
(Dedicated to Jeff Haberlin)

Quote of the Day

  "Anxiety is the capability to rationalize that every action a person makes can eventually have a degenerative effect on reality."
    "Wait. What I meant to say is anxiety is the capability to rationalize that every single action ever can have a negative effect something somewhere."
    "Hold on. Give me one more chance. To rationalize anxiety is to rationalize that every action that you or I or anyone makes can possibly, but hopefully not, but still totally could help result in the total annihilation of everything we know to be true... I think."

-Anxious Person


Aaron C. Molden

Bar Scenes

I.

What makes a human being exactly?

Now, I'm not talking about biology here, 

Homosapien Sapien, I get it, that's not the point.

I am talking about a human being. 

Some one who is thoughtful, concerned, ambitious, useful,

you know, a real human being.

I know enough about history to know that this is a dangerous thought,

but I have thought it nonetheless. I have thought it many times.

You have to, admit it.

Of course I'm not talking about "ethnic cleansing" or some new holocaust.

But, you know, cleansing...it really does make a lot of sense.

Seriously, look around you sometime when you're in the thick of it,

really immersed in a crowd of humanity. 

Look at the people you are inevitably surrounded by.

Look into their eyes sometime.

There is nothing there.   

And these people, you just know they are feeding off the goodwill 

of decent, hardworking useful, REAL human beings without shame.

Let's be honest, these things we still call "human beings," they're trash.

They are trash that drag us down, and keep us from collectively

being a better society of human beings.

Sorry, I'm a little drunk, but you know that what I'm saying

really does make at least a little bit of sense.

II.

Here's the thing, I'm ambitious.

I'm not bragging, but I know I am most intellectually stimulated

and satisfied when I am challenged with a task that my peers

believe I am incapable of doing. I am competitive, but I play fair.

I know that I am attractive, and yes, that may have been one of the reasons

I have been privy to certain opportunities in my life,

but I have always proved to be completely capable of any task handed to me.

I do not, will not, refuse to rely on my looks to get ahead in business.

Nevertheless, since most of the time I am completely immersed in work,

sometimes I need an escape. I need a release.

Sex is the easiest release, especially when I drink.

It's not necessarily about getting off (though I would never complain about that!)

It's more about being wanted, being needed for the most basic thing that I am,

at least for one night.

Sometimes, being called a slut is a small vacation from being called a bitch.

Being called a bitch is the world's equivalent to being called an ambitious woman.

Being called a slut is the world's equivalent to being called a bitch

who still needs to be needed sometimes.

I refuse to feel guilty about my own ambition,

or my need to be loved sometimes, okay?

Now, are you buying shots?

III.

Man, there's not very many girls here.

SAU-SAGE FEST!

I might end up at the strip club tonight.

I started my new job a couple of weeks back.

It's been great having the extra cash,

but, you know, it's a job.

I only have the weekend to really live it up anymore.

It's good though, I've got to grow up a little.

I've got to think about my future a little bit,

at least during the work week.

That's why I've got to make the weekends count. 

You know what I'm saying, right?

I've got to party as long as I can, man.

Because, you know I'm not an idiot.

Someday I just won't have the energy

to keep going the way I've been going.

That's why I've got to get it while I can.

Hey, who was that girl you were just talking to?

You know, the slutty looking one.

Did you buy her a shot?

I think I'm going to buy her a shot.

Did you get her name?

IV.

Why are the most weak minded people always the people who need

to prove to you that they know everything that ever needed to be known?

Smart, considerate, unconditionally good people continue

to stand up for such a fool's right to simply exist and be happy,

year after year, decade after decade, century after century.

And do you know how these dumb bastards react to these

smart, kind, and usually depressed people's support?

These fools accuse them of being weak!

These fools openly endorse some cold politician

with an anti intellectual agenda, who fully intends

to exploit their rage and stupidity for profit!

Maybe the worse thing any parent, or teacher, or whatever

can do is teach a child to care about the welfare 

of their fellow man or woman.

That lesson is a life lesson of eternal misery.

Maybe the best lesson to teach a child is:

"We're shit! Do whatever you want because 

being kind and considerate is a chump's route!"

Here Lies Civilization: Fuck you! Fuck me! Fuck Everyone!

He should have tried harder and cared less.

That's my epitaph.

Bartender, another beer!

V.

What's that guy so worked up for?

Is he out bar hopping?

That's the time to get fucked up!

That's what me and my boys are doing,

we're getting fucked up!

Woot!

Yo, listen to this, last week, my boy, Gordo,

he drank like a fifth before we even went out.

Just pre-gaming, you know what I'm saying?

He told us that the only thing he was going to say

that night was "fuck me" and nothing else.

So we put down about 10 drinks between 3 bars.

Sure enough all night, all Gordo did

was walk up to girls and say "fuck me."

Some of the girls slapped him first thing.

Some of the girls tried to ignore it 

and start up a conversation,

but Gordo would just keep on saying it

over and over to them, "fuck me."

This one girl got real mad 

and she went and got her boyfriend.

This dude started to get up in Gordo's face,

but I made it pretty clear that I had Gordo's back,

if you know what I mean, so he backed down.

Him and his girlfriend left pretty quick after that.

Pussy.

Anyways, the night went on,

and the girls at the bar started getting drunk,

and do you know what?

Finally, this chick that Gordo kept "talking to,"

if you know what I'm saying?

Well, let's just say Gordo most definitely hit that shit.

Chicks are so fucking stupid, man.

VI.

No really, I mean it.

There is enough pessimism in this world to go around.

Hell, there is enough pessimism in this bar to go around.

Seriously, look at all these people's faces!

You just can't let that affect you.I won't let it affect me.

Sure, bad things happen in this world,

atrocities both natural and man made.

I just don't see how someone can use 

such terrible things as an excuse to be

bitter and pessimistic.

Not here, at least. Their are no Elie Wiesels in this place.

None of these so called "atrocities," 

natural or man made, happen to anyone here. 

So why dwell on them? Honestly it does not make sense.

I'll tell you what the core of the problem is,

no one seems to be living in the now.

People are either living in future tense, 

where they can't see anything as good 

because it could always be better, 

or they are living in past tense,

where they believe that everything is too easy

in comparison with every generation before them.

Both trains of thought become an excuse to be depressed.

Depression is an addiction, make no mistake about that.

And, as it should be, depression is the most

depressing addiction I could ever imagine.

Let me put it this way:

You can avoid the ride,

or you can complain about the ride.

Me? I prefer to just enjoy the ride.

Sorry, I don't drink very often,

it makes me a little crazy.

VII.

I don't drink very much these days.

In college I use to drink a lot.

Everything was so confusing back then,

I felt like I was suppose to be striving for some

successful lifestyle that, at the time,

just sounded like an emotionally sterile 

and repressed life.

Maybe that's why I drank so much back then. 

My mind told me that I should be striving for something

monetarily efficient and emotionally void,

but my heart told me I really didn't want that.

So I repressed my emotions so much

because I thought it was right thing to do.

That is, until I drank and when I did, I just let loose.

I made a lot of really bad mistakes at the time.

But you know what, I'm still here.

I may not be smarter, but I do think

that I'm a little bit wiser.

Thank God I found my husband, 

or he found me...whatever.

I have really discovered happiness.

Of course I found happiness where I always

tried to deny it would be. I found it in love.

Whatever, it sounds cheesy, but I don't care.

My happiness and his happiness matter way 

more to me than being sexy or cool.

Happiness is giving up on what your childish mind

thinks is important and realizing what is really important.

Talking about this is going to make me cry.

This is why I don't drink! I get so emotional!

I can't help it.

Love is not passion. Passion leads to 

pain and disappointment.

I don't go out unless he does,

because he wants to.

I try to keep it to a bare minimum.

VIII.

I do think there is something creative, intellectual, 

and romantic about drinking. I like to say,

"Thinking culture is drinking culture."

or wait, maybe it's the other way around?

I guess it's a chicken or egg situation.

There's a lot of cultural evidence to support 

that case, though. Look at writers:

Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas,

Raymond Carver, John Cheever,Charles Bukowski, 

I mean the list goes on and on.

You'd be hard up to find a writer who 

was not perpetually sauced.

Sure, its a tragic life, but didn't the Buddha

say "Life is Suffering."

Whoa-boy, Hermann Hesse, that guy was a drinker.

Am I a writer? I don't know,

maybe you could call me an aspiring writer.

I'm working on a story, who knows, it might

be a novella by the time I get through with it.

Hmm? What's it about?

Well, it's about a couple of guys, real creative types.

They meet and drink and sort of express their opinions

to each other because they have no creative release

in the oppressive and boring environment they live within.

What happens in the story?

Well, it's still in the planning stages. I have some

kinks that I have to work out, you know?

What are you trying to accomplish with this?

See, that's what you have to do as an artist,

run with an idea and look back at these vignettes

of small ideas and, you know, develop one

big idea that sort of connects them all.

So, can you buy me a drink?

I've been a little strapped for cash lately.

IX.

Let me give you some advice,

Never get married.

I'm Joking! But only half joking.

When I met her she was wild.

She was wild in the best way,

like a lioness.

Lioness's are wild, right?

Anyways, she was always getting into trouble,

mischief, mayhem, damn, it was so sexy.

I had nothing like her ever, and here's the kicker,

in the bedroom, at home...

She was just the most giving, most loving,

most nurturing creature you could ever imagine.

Totally wild, totally loving, totally total.

Seriously, I loved her.

Sorry, sorry, I love her is what I mean.

I do love her, I don't know what I would do without her.

But...well...she changed.

She still gives, she still cares, but, I don't know.

She doesn't really care about me.

She cares about us, our home, 

how happy we seem to our friends.

She cares about us being the perfect married couple.

Jesus, I can't believe how selfish I sound right now.

I just wish she cared about just me, sometimes.

I wish she cared about me like she use to.

There's nothing wild about her anymore.

She's refined... and with a vengeance!

Christ, it's good to get drunk and let this out.

X.

I guess if I am trying to say anything

it's that there is only one true criminal act.

Of course there are crimes that are not be tolerated,

but many of the crimes in which society finds deplorable

are, in nature, not only acceptable, but necessary.

Rape, killing, feeding off of the young and weak,

all these things are natural. So when you

consider both civilization and the natural world

you have to really consider this obvious

contradiction between them.

Look, I am educated and critical, 

but I am still pretty young especially when it comes to my mind.

Being smart and being wise are two different things,

and that makes more and more sense the older I get.

So with all my thinking and considering and reconsidering

it still seems that there is only one true criminal act,

and that is an act of the mind.

It is when a person's mind sees that a specific act

will benefit them and them alone at the cost of one

or many others. And despite the fact that they know,

I mean, really know it is a completely selfish act, 

they still do it. 

But here's the kicker, at least in my thoughts.

Even if this crime is not punished in the world,

it is most certainly punished in the criminal's mind.

Even if the criminal can ignore that truth 

with worldly distraction, it is still waiting to pop up

some day when the distractions run out.

I know it seems so benign, but is it really?

I don't think that it is, do you know why?

Because I have felt it, and anyone who has ever done 

something they know they should not has felt it too.

It is not a good feeling, but it must be dealt with.

The bible says that "sin is sin" no matter what it is.

So I think what I'm saying is "guilt is guilt."

Despite society, despite some doctrine or dogma,

Feeling like shit because of the things that

we have done is a reality of life, and we are the

only species of animal that feels it.
At least as far as we know now.

What exactly are we suppose to do with this reality?

Well, I don't know, and because I am trying to explain this

is the very same reason why I am drunk right now.

Understand? 

Epilogue.

Billy. Billy?

Wh...where the hell am I?

You...you seen Billy?

man I...am...Fucked up right now...

To Beauty

Winter:

Most of this winter has been gray.
Everything is gray and I remain fascinated.
I am fascinated, but I do not find it beautiful.
I know what is beautiful because I have seen many paintings.

I have seen many paintings of landscapes.
I have not liked very many landscape paintings.
It is not the same as seeing that landscape
with your own eyes.

This is true to me and I believe many people would disagree.
They have every right to disagree with me,
but I know that they are still wrong.
It is not the same as seeing that landscape
with one's own eyes.

This is why I do not draw landscapes.
I know they are beautiful because I have been there.
I know that anything I would draw
would not be the same as seeing it
with one's own eyes.

I know that I dwell on ugly things.
I look around at everything I have painted,
drawn, glued, smeared on cardboard,
and admit that I dwell on ugly things.
I dwell on them because where some express disgust,
I only feel and occasionally express indifference.
Apathy.

A confession: I am proud of myself for my empathy.
I do not know why, but I have thought about it.
A lot. Jesus. A lot.

When I see something ugly and feel nothing,
I soon ask myself why? Why not empathy?
Then I start to draw.
I become intellectually fascinated.

Everything is gray and I am still fascinated.
I am fascinated but I do not find it beautiful.
I do not want to fall into darkness again.
I need something beautiful to dwell on.


Spring:

    Do you remember how you felt when you looked upon that calm and reflecting silver blue mountain lake for the first time?
    I hiked two hours through delightful mountain landscapes while sunshine and rain engaged in a tug of war battle above me. I had a goofy smile upon my face the whole time. A big goofy simpleton drenched in mountain rain wearing a silly smile and inappropriate shoes. When I saw that calm and reflecting silver blue mountain lake, I instantly knew it had all been worth it.

I had the feeling that I am assuming you have also felt.
I have not felt that way for a very long time.
When I saw you, I felt that feeling.
Every time I see you I feel that feeling.
I feel the same way I felt sitting at the edge
of that silver blue mountain lake.

I feel that in a person instead of a landscape.
I have always enjoyed drawing people.
Drawing limbs. Drawing hands. Drawing eyes.
Necks are difficult.
Feet are troublesome because I am always assuming
they are actually hands.
I keep telling myself I am drawing toes, not fingers,
but some dumb thing in my head and hand
keeps telling me that no, I am wrong,
those really are hands. It is frankly, obnoxious.


Now:

This was suppose to be much shorter than it is now.
Things keep coming up.
My mind processes things in an odd way.
I have to purge a lot of nonsense
before I can get to the point.
The point is...

Ah! I think I forgot what the point is.
I can not think of what the point is,
but I feel it every time I see your face.
That feeling can be startling
when one is not expecting it.

Sincerely,
Aaron C. Molden

A Meditation on Suicide

Introduction.

    This is a very serious subject in my mind so I simply want to explain that I do not at all take the subject of suicide lightly, though I do in certain sections of this piece write with gallows humor. The first part of this piece is stream of conscience, which is a tradition by now with literally everything a write. I have to spew all this stuff out before I can become more lucid. I would leave it out completely, but holds within its jagged lines some important information to the rest of the writing. Thank you for reading.

Statements.

    Kurt Cobain should not have killed himself. It is 2013. Cobain put a shotgun in his mouth 19 years ago and ended his life. He committed suicide 25 years after Woodstock. He committed suicide 26 years after Altamount. He committed suicide 9 years after I was born. It is 2013 and I am 27 years old until July. There is no forever 27, I think. You are your age or you are dead
    19 years ago, Kurt Cobain propped a shotgun in his drooling smack gaped mouth and committed suicide in his garage apartment that resided within the brisk and moist Pacific Northwest. I believe it was his right not to live those additional 19 years if he truly believed that he could not handle that time. I really wish he had not  done it, though.

One Man's Opinion.

    Personifications of Jesus keep coming around at younger and younger ages. I don't want to dispute this because it would require me to write a lot of things that would no doubt become tedious and tiresome.
    John Lennon: dead at 44. That is at least an 11 year addition instead of a 6 year subtraction.
33. Jesus, in the garden accepted his gloomy fate.
44. If you take the time to study his work and are a bit unhinged, you might come to the conclusion  that John was actually asking for his fate.
27. Kurt, you died at age 27, just past the peak of your fame.
25. Bowie. No time to explain because it was simply a play or a musical and not real life. Smart move, Davey.
24. Joy Division. Ian Curtis could be his own meditation on the same subject. I am simply less familiar.
18. Go for it capitalists, warlords, tricksters, Alice Cooper.
17. L. Teenage Suicide.

A Short Confession to L.

    I hated you when I knew you, L, and I am now sorry for that.
    When you hanged yourself from a basketball goal in the predawn darkness, I understood where you must have been coming from when you did what you did. Art/Narcissus/Sociopath. I am not angry that you chose as you did. I am sad that there was nothing you could find that you would keep you from doing what you did.
    You had everything, L, but you still, somehow, really had nothing.

A Fan Letter.

Dear Kurt Cobain,
    You had everything, yet even everything -more than everything you had once imagined I would guess considering at one point you would have been happy just to be a member of the Melvins- was still nothing in your mind.
    I was 9 years old and listened to Garth Brooks and Harry Chapin when a shotgun shell tore through your skull and brain. Your death meant nothing to me at the time. The ripples it caused in the years since and the allusions it hinted at from years prior have now made your death mean something to me. I wish this were not true, 19 years later, in the final stretch of my 27th year of life.
    Yes, I am a fan. I like all of your music and I didn't even get a chance to enjoy it when it was the "it" thing. Whether it's cool or not is not the point. Those sounds and those words brought me comfort when I needed it so I am eternally a fan. So be it. That being said, I do not believe your music would have all been good if you had decided not to spray your viscera across the floor and walls of your guest apartment and instead decided to continue making music. I think some of it would have been good, but not all of it. My guess is that the recognition of its genius would have been slower to register with the masses. I really hope that this wasn't the sole reasoning for your 1994 reality. I really doubt that it was.
     In this solemn mood, writing these solemn words, I still believe you had every right to do what you have done, but I wish you had not.

Sincerely,
Aaron C. Molden

Side Note.

    I'm dropping the Jesus theory from here on out. Fare thee well, Mr. Lennon and thank everything for side two of Abbey Road. Oh, and Yoko, your wife, I believe she is a difficult but brilliant artist. Your personal lives were your own and I will leave it at that.

Remembering.

    I have to return to L. I remember L. I sincerely hated him when I was required to be in close proximity with him. I was in close proximity with him as well as every other student in my grade from kindergarten to 8th grade. Thinking about it now, I believe he was a bully. I don't think that he was just my bully, but I may have been so oblivious at the time that I simply assumed he treated everyone the same way he treated me. He had friends and maybe he treated them differently. I always wondered why someone would want to hang out with him. Not that he and his friends would have wanted to hang out with me. Let me put it another way because I might have been completely naive at the time. Every moment with L absent was a better moment for me. In elementary and middle school, these sans-L moments were rare.
 
 High school changed all of that. I found my niche and only had to see L while drifting through the river of students flowing towards their next classroom during each passing period. He very quickly faded from my mind.
    Junior year. Mr. T's history class. There was a lot of "work amongst yourselves" days in Mr. T's class. L and I were in the same class that semester. Some students worked independently and diligently on their history work packets during class. Many students socialized and played Euchre. I was half and half most of the time. I worked on the work packets when they were due the next day. I always put them off until the last minute.
    L still seemed like a bully, but he was definitely not my bully. He was everybody's bully. He still had friends in class, but it was not because he treated them differently than others. He was an asshole through and through to anyone who crossed his path. I wasn't mad about this truth when in class with him. I simply ignored him as most people did.

    On the first day of senior year, it was announced that L had died the night prior. I was in the administrators office waiting for my schedule. Due to procrastination in setting up my schedule I had managed to not have a first period at all. Through the open windows in the office door I saw students and teachers exit their classrooms. In the halls they began hugging, crying and consoling each other. I felt nothing. I did not care. My first thought about the situation could have been any of these: no big deal, whatever, oh well, or no use crying over spilled milk.
    Through out the day I learned that his death was self inflicted. A girl who would have never spoken to me on a voluntary basis at any other time told me that she was with him and his friends the night before. She told me that he said he was going to do it, but none of them believed him. She told me all this while bawling on my shirt sleeve. I wonder now if some of his friends really did believe him and simply did nothing about it. I have no way of knowing.
    At lunch, through snickers and haphazardly constructed jokes, I learned that he hanged himself from the basketball goal in his parents front yard early in the morning. At the time my first thought was "what an asshole." Now I think that he simply wanted to be found. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be found.

    There was another student that had killed himself earlier that summer. I knew him because he was good friends with the girl I was helplessly in love with at the time. I knew him by name at the time and he always went in for the hug whenever he saw me and really anyone he knew. He was gay. His parents did not know that he was gay and he was terrified to tell them. He was dating a man that was old enough to be his dad that only a couple of his friends from high school knew about. The girl I was hopelessly in love with was one of these friends. She told me all of these things when we learned that he had hanged himself in his closet. She told me as she bawled on my shirt sleeve.
    I remember bringing up his name when students spoke of the tragedy of L. I remember implying that this other teenage suicide was the real tragedy. For the life of me, I cannot remember that other tragic souls name. Why have I lost this name? Why have I not lost L?

An Idea.

    I do not think that I ever saw L as a human being. I do not blame myself for that at all. He was nothing but malicious to me as far as I can remember. He was a human being. I do not actually know it, but he must have felt the same feelings I have felt at certain times and situations. I have to believe this because I have felt all these different ways throughout my life. L simply reacted differently. He hanged himself from a basketball goal. It took me a long time for this truth to finally click in my brain. Procrastination.

A Poem and an Explanation.

    I know I believed that L's suicide was cowardly for a long time because I have personal written proof. I wrote a very mean poem about his death that I have kept to this day:

Everyone you hated for being better off than you is still better off than you,
and you're dead.
A piss drunk mob hovers around your funeral, they hated you enough to show up,
and you're dead.
Everything you hoped to accomplished are left for those more ambitious to you,
and you're dead.
They hate you now, but look on the bright side, in a week or so, no one will care anymore,
and you will still be dead.

    I held onto this as a reminder. I had not hanged myself from a basketball goal. I see tragedy in L's death now, where I did not before. Maybe L felt that everyone he knew thought about him the same way I did at the time. Maybe he thought that no one actually believed that he was a human being. I see tragedy now because if these were possibly L's thoughts, maybe he was right. Not right that he wasn't a human being, he was a human being. Right that no one he knew believed that. Maybe this thought is what has me writing about this dismal subject so many years later.
    It was a tragedy. He needed to prove that he was human. He had his reasons. Otherwise he wouldn't have acted so completely unnaturally. It was his right being the only true sovereign of his body and mind. I must have cared at least little at the time because I now wish he had not done what he chose to do. But that was not my decision to make. It was indeed a tragedy, but it was not my tragedy and I would never claim it to be.

Hypothetical.

    I do not think Kurt Cobain and L would have been friends. I'm fairly certain that L would have tormented Kurt if they had gone to school together. I think Kurt would have lashed out at L's bullying in a way that would have given L enough joy to keep coming back for more. I think that Kurt would have used that destructive behavior in a constructive way.
    I do not know why I have written "would have." Kurt did. Of course it wasn't L he was lashing out at, but that does not matter.
    Kurt Cobain felt everything anyone has ever felt at certain times and situations. His times and situations were no doubt more surreal than most peoples, but he felt them just the same. He was a human being. He simply acted differently than most. The ends were just as destructive as L's, but the means still seem more constructive and important. I have mentioned that I am indeed a fan. This is why L is not my tragedy. L is no longer my tragedy.
    Kurt Cobain had every right to do as he did, but I still wish that he hadn't.

The End.

    I hope these gloomy words hold a light at the end of the tunnel. At 9 years old it did not make sense to me. At 17 years it did not make sense to me. Now, at 27, when I really think about, it still does not make sense to me. Thank you.

Aaron C. Molden