

Today. I went through my old blog posts on poetwithoutapen.com, and I am saving them as word documents, because maybe all of my writings should be on one website (or in one place). Once this website’s time comes, I’ll probably have to do it all over again, so I might as well start saving everything as a word document, uploaded to the cloud – God forbid that everything gets wiped from my computer (or this earth).
Reading some of those original posts is a throwback (March-May, 2018) …So six years ago. They are all fragmented sentences, and I obviously really lived in a made-up make-believe world, that must’ve not made a whole lot of sense to the outside reader. Here is one:
confidence
April 1st 2018
it dawned on me that if the goal is to achieve a state of home, which roots from a place of youth, then it may be best to stop looking any further. Memories of childhood aren’t particularly celebritorial and home wasn’t exactly comfortable. 30 minutes broke a four day depression, but that’s old news. Meat is back on the menu and my soul is hungry but I’m not.
hahaha…yeah
I know most (very little) of what I’m implying to say, but maybe not everyone would. Although I did write a relatively coherent novel around this time titled Spoon in the Road. And funny enough, I just picked a random posting, and here I am six years later to let you know, meat is back off the menu.
A word that comes to mind with my writing is sincerity. Some call it oblivious honesty, or incriminating lecturing. I just call it sincere. I do not hide who I am online. And the purpose of these writings are to get me through the hardships I hold onto, and figure out new perspectives which can be shared, deepened, and explored with others.
But to continue…It’s not that I “can’t control myself” with meat, it is more that I think meats (especially reds) create a sort of aggression in my system, or psyche that don’t exactly inhabitant my inner sanctum when I’m abstaining from it. I don’t think I am going full veg, because I plan to eat it at certain junctures and restaurants, along with salmon on a weekly basis. But on a day to day basis, I am becoming a vegetarian again. And here I will be, six years from now, writing about how meat is good for the soul. But
Surprise surprise, many of my compulsive behaviors that have been plaguing me for about few months now (closer to a year), as of yesterday and today, are much more, even keeled. But
I did get in a fight on Sunday. Stupid pride and immaturity. Doesn’t matter. It does, but I’ll deal with it in my own way. I have to eventually. Maybe it was enough of a wake up call to just grow up a little bit, as we all have to do. But
Sure I want a soda, or something else just as sweetly indulgent, but I rationally might as well have a la croix and not a whole bar of choclate while i’m at it. I don’t know. I’m no sage guru, but it doesn’t take long for to remember something that took you so long to learn how to do, that you only been undoing for a relatively short while.
This is my last little note before I head off. It ties in with the meat thing. You can do whatever you want. It is your own personal constitution. But at some point you have to ask yourself if your happiness is worth the betrayal of yourself. Something we know. And sometimes, we wish we don’t. Apart from eating meat, drinking soda, not going to church, smoking, staying up late, and wearing socks, I have been shaving.
As someone who’s blog posts used to soley consist of arcane inuuedos, my facial hair is no exception to symbolism. However,
for a long, long time, I would size up or down everyone I used to walk by on the street, by their height. It was always the first thing that mattered in every interaction. And well…I grew out of it. I haven’t cared about how tall someone is in a genuine sense in a long, long time. I can acknowledge it, but it isn’t important. It’s a sad narrow minded perspective on people, including myself. So I hope I don’t judge everyone by their facial features either.

My biggest fear, from long ago, was the idea of not being the only one in a closed loving relationship. Fears change. I’ve learned that not all relationships are only a one (two) way highway that goes only into the sunset. People need other people than just one person to define their whole life’s purpose. That all being said, don’t be that asshole who is imposing on someone else’s love story.
Other than the first sentence, or part of a sentence – known as its morphology – when I sit down and burst my words onto the page for the evening, there is no preparation, save for a morning run and a nap. Maybe some chips and salsa if I am lucky, but today I had to rely on chocolate. I always say that the indication of if I am doing well in life is if there is giardiniera in my fridge. You can determine this state of my affairs from either this here blog post, or feel free to explore everything from January 13th to today.
Someone I know once renounced their graduate program, storming out, screaming, “you are either the smartest people I know, or the stupidest people I know.” I have a lot of conflicting beliefs when it comes to intelligence, and what it entails for a person to be “intelligent.” For me, for whatever twisted traumatic high school reason – I really just think it boils down to what college you attended/finished at. However, by my age, it really should come down to how much money you have and what car you drive – right? I don’t know what being smart is if it ain’t just being happy. But, well, first off, I intended this paragraph to inform you that I am probably the smartest stupid person I know. The problem, is I just ain’t know that many smart folk. Maybe you do. However, what has just come up, or has been discovered through the act of writing is that – in a deep sleep while I was time traveling out of bounds and had to be returned back to my own time zone, I was talking with the man who came to my rescue. He told me all that is important is the woman you marry. That’s all intelligence should ever amount to for a man. A good woman. Or man.
Now, maybe women can never be happy, but I don’t think so. I just think it’s a lot harder to be happy these days – not sure why. I think it’s the internet warping everyone’s perspective and hijacking everyone’s reward systems, and showing us the whole world without us ever seeing it. I think happiness depends on each individual, but you can never be happy alone – not in the end. Maybe I’m wrong. And with my fears, sometimes I’m wrong about what I’m afraid is true, my faults.

Ben Bonkoske is the author of two novels, Spoon in the Road, and Carolina, Colorado, California. He is also the author of two collections of short stories, Ten Zen by Ben, and Eleven Stories for 11:11. He lives in Chicago, where he likes to take walks.
B. A, M.A.T.