Admitted truth
That what I want you to know or else, that, given what you already know about me are willing to know from me. Such that what I say is taken in only under the awareness of the source, as in, tempered by your understanding of the source. So many things are assumed or neglected by the teller or a recipient, namely: desire to consume rhetoric, desire to forgo inner revolt against purported dogmatic phrasing, reluctance to yield to a offered wisdom, subservience to a goal other than believing. What I am willing to say in truth is only what I am allowing, what you choose to believe is only in what you have permitted me to say.

Omitted truth
The undercurrent, the unspoken, the read between the lines stuff. A greater part of communication is given over to this. In forever working out the actual goal of supposed bare honesty both takes away from and enhances the original desire of someone to bother either telling or pretending to tell his or her truth. It is often more important to perceive the actual truth through the veneer of supposed truth that makes for a greater human interaction. There are times when only this perception is the reality.

Audited truth
Managing your expectations and delivering outcomes you have predesigned is the goal of any thought architect. The more I know you the more intrinsic this manipulation goes, so far that you cannot know surely whether I am being honest or appealing to what you think honestly looks like. It gets complicated when dealing with people who value honesty, because the auditing needs to encompass this awareness and rise above. How do you rise above awareness? Address the awareness as part of the process, acknowledge this person ability to see though the aforementioned tricks and reward them with that skill whilst building upon this with the various levels of story telling that enables lies to occur. A worthwhile task.

Applied truth
If I can make you feel something, think something, do something based on what you have already told me, that is using subjectivity in its finest form. I can apply any version of the world upon you, tailored to your reactionary existentialism, then the basis of reality for you is broken. You do not know I am creating a version of myself perfectly suited to you, one that succumbs to your ideals, believes in you, agrees (or in some cases is designed by necessity to disagree) with your scheming versions of reality. In this sense, really, you are baseless, unsupported whilst all the time feeling at home. Proper, valid and supported by someone who aggress with you. The complexity here lies with morality (which can be a new debate). Your subjective nature has lead you to assume you are right and supported which was in fact false, unknown to you, ever.

The knowledge of truth (and how you use it)
When you understand how people value truth you can immediately understand the power in offering truths. Religious movements and sects have over the years perfected the art of manipulating humans into accepting an invented truth as truth. Where there is an abyss we fill it, where there is doubt we fill it, wherever there is a gap in Science we fill it. An momentary intellectual exploitation of unanswered questions now takes the place at the throne of a god or a devil. Defining the un-known as divine, and then assuming humans are sublime esoteric meat and spirit beings is selfish, insane and undeserved. That most Scientists redeem humanity as good or with the potential for good is inconsequential.

The application of truth (or versions of)
As a tool, we use it, sparingly. The last bastion of human interaction, the final value of everything comes down to truth, namely; trust. That I am being truthful has so much weight in this world of deceit. That we are already conditioned to distrust all sentiment, that we are equipped to witness all sentences as basically false, that every god damned thing we all say all the time is self serving and opportunistic makes for a human interaction with so many faces, so many escape clauses to render any interaction as purely surface. That we are embarking on an age that acknowledges subtlety in understanding, that we each harbour secretive desires towards personal end goals and are able to manage each and every one makes this type of social interaction less a humane one so more of an intellectual one. Our guile in progression, our planned obsolescence of empathetic reasoning, our calculated implementation of policies designed purely to inhibit humanity, these are all the hallmarks of a highly evolved species who is at once aware of it’s fragility, creates laws that encompass this fragility, then punishes fragility is any from it manifests.

Truth
There is no truth, there is only perception (Gustave Flaubert).
All the ideals, concepts and desires mentioned above are reasoned through observable outcomes from years of relationships, friendships, encounters and office politics. The philosophical truth is distant from what is expected of me as the real truth, the out of my lips form my mind truth: honesty. I have not really touched upon the concept of honesty in this piece, it is way too deep and insane really to talk about that ideal simultaneously to subjective disorder (truth). Let’s leave it here by saying: you are at the mercy of the world, subjectivity leaves you alone, vulnerable and tricked. It is not truth by any means.

Next: honesty

DUTY
Against your self, you act, continue to act, with the reward that you are fulfilling an external purpose that you have been ordained to fulfil, a reason bestowed upon and expected of you. You stand tall with your chest puffed out knowing that those who are relying on you are justified in relying on you. You get badges, bonuses, medals, statues, praise and all these tangible, worldly objects that help you come to terms with the fact that your sense of selfless duty has an actual result. You wake up and prepare your body to be in a mode that is able to perform its duty, a vessel to achieve tasks one after another, tasks that this position decrees. That you have had this position bestowed upon you should speak volumes. That you do not want this position, that you ‘act’ this position to get money is not acknowledged, the subterfuge of compensation is unspoken, that it is all false because it is bought and paid for has been subsumed into a new reality: that this purchased reality is actually real, that titles are real, that what you are paid to be is what you actually are.
Dictum: I am wary that my part in the opera means others can play their part too, in turn.
Reward: resemblant gratitude from your consenting continuance of the wheel.

OBLIGATION
So you give your word. Now you see, don’t you, the months and the years stretching out ahead of you. What seemed like the right thing to do has consequences. The older you get the longer the consequence. But you can go on, you can get through it. You tell yourself “I promised” and “I can do it” and you look at the calendar and see the exact date and time when you imagine that you have completed your promise. You start imagining what it would be like to not have this burden. That is all part of the reason why the word ‘obligation’ carries so much strength, weight and tedium. It is always a projection that continually rears it’s head day in and day out. It says “don’t forget your obligation!”. It is in the forefront of your mind, it tempers all decisions, this obligation of yours, this promise. You navigate it like a sailor, drinking to forget it, but in the middle of a conversation it comes back again, as you sweat and dream of a different future you factor it in. You are a master calculator now, you have a box that must always be ticked.
Dictum: I must remember what I need to do.
Reward: acknowledgement that you are drawing closer to the goal of absolution.

NECESSITY
Only one thing is necessary: nourishment (eating, sleeping, drinking). To achieve those three simple animal precepts we need, respectively; money, money, and money or charity, space and a tap. Nothing else necessarily has to happen. Ever. If, for example, I have a hard-ish growth on a testicle or begin coughing up blood or even have a severe inflation of my lymph gland then I would usually visit a doctor. Our only necessity is to live. That we are formulated from an incongruent bunch of billions of mindless cells seems to have little impact on our overall conscious experience. If we live we love, if we love we get money, if we get money we buy whatever the fuck we like. Necessity is relative, interchangeable person to person. It is incumbent on individuals to become necessary, meaningful, wanted. The ways in which we make our own employed self necessary is to (a) hold critical information in our grasp (b) attain expertise that are unable to be obtained elsewhere or (the worst) (c) become an intrinsic part of a legacy process chain.
Dictum: you are reliant on me; I am the only living employed human who can do this “thing”
Reward: my behaviour is unrelated to the requirement my expertise provides in the pursuit of core company output.

MOTIVE
Your secret agenda, the underlying reason for all of it. The luscious part is the trick, the pretending that you are subservient whilst all the time cultivating your overall plan. How in meetings where you spit corporate objectives, align your workaday goals with the company vision, brush off narky management hurdles by invoking invented reward structures, invent incentives to aspire other humans who perhaps have already succumbed to the transparent machinations of a typical profit focused entity, avoid rigorous assessments from…wait. That’s enough. That rigorous is derived from rigor should tell you enough. That everyone is doing the same thing should make you feel at best communal and at worst empty, as in, none of this is real at all. Farmers grow food and we by and eat it. Everything else bar none is fluff. Your hidden agenda to get more money, to buy a house, to raise a family is all dependent on how willing we all are to forgo actualness, how willing you are to fuck somebody else over in order to protect and enhance you family. Our genetic urges run deep…strong motives.
Dictum: I am here for only one reason.
Reward: your freedom is secured for after hours work, you are able to use this prostituted money in any way you see fit. And your time, that too is yours, after sanctioned hours.

Footnote: I am completely censoring myself and being nice. Once I shake of the shackles that I have hitherto explored in this piece then you will get far more from me. I apologise for this current reservation and I beseech thee (oh please) to be patient whilst I transition from the above mentioned ‘owned and paid for’ human to the more licentious, honest and true human my words ascribe to. Thanks a million.

She told me a story, how she heard another lady crying out for help, just saying “help”, that one word out loud…repeating it until help arrives…scares the shit out of me but makes me listen more intently, to hear that as my own loved one heard these words coming from a stranger in a nearby room she pushed her own emergency button to call attention to this other persons harrowing plight… it was then that it dawned on me the full horror; that the day in day out mode of this place is always on the verge of death, on disaster, or bizarre “other” assisted living complications, leading to more assistance in just living. Can you imagine actually calling out the simple single word “help”, in muted tones, in meek weak frustrated simple tones…”help”. “Help me” is even worse. That you can muster both the word ‘me’ and the spiritual fortitude to add a self reference, it is an even deeper plight, to be able to add it on yet still so in need and cringingly self aware[6]. The story ends with the woman in the next room being attended to, getting a nurse, but the outcome following that is unknown[7].

As far as concepts go, nursing homes are by far the most modern, oblique, torturous, yet tantalising, and curious forms of humane human treatment in existence[8]. Those placing their loved ones in such institutions do so because either they (a) cannot care for them themselves or because (b) they do not want to care for them themselves. Simple, really. All other stories are self-serving lying justifications that often involve arms held by the side of the body, open forearms bent outwards at the elbows with palms either almost horizontal to the ground or fully horizontal to the ground, i.e. a typical “what else could I do” gesture we are all used to seeing from incompetent, ineffectual shallow humans (90% of them FYI). Add a shrug and a stupid face for good measure and we have there the visage of a typical type (b) as above ‘power of attorney[9]‘ type of guardian. You can not argue with type (a) scenarios, really, if you actually can not subsist with this person than sure, help them out as best you can. But I can’t help but think that the majority of cases reside under type (b) conditions. It could be my own morose bias, or it could be the fact that (b) is the most likely default human condition, the one which is the easiest (read: least work) action to enact. Nevertheless the implementation of this type of care in this type of institution is a new model for understanding the outcome of longevity, the reason for advances in technology, medicine, palliative care, scientific awareness, psychiatry, religion (treatment of the less fortunate resonates), meaning of existence, wisdom, the point of life, ergo philosophy, biology et al. The perhaps deeper realisation of the type (b) condition is in the desire that they actually want their loved one to die, painlessly and comfortably, sure, but, that they actually would in some way or another prefer them to be dead (read: dealt with, as per the definite outcome of this interment anyway…they are not going to get better, they are not sick…this is not a hospital). Discounting the fact that our aging loved ones are a monetary burden in the short term, there is the (being nice) emotional burden, the (less nice) physical burden vis-à-vis visits/upkeep, the social reporting aspect (“yes she/he is still with us”, and follow ups), and all kinds of general health related worry as diligent updates pour in (or trickle in either way, depending on health, read: depending on how early you admitted them, urgh). Cynically it would seem that for type (b) administrators, the worse the conditions in a nursing home were the better it is for them. The horrendous dual awareness that the facilities’ features can be measured against a loved ones living potential versus the actual inside feeling of whether or not their comfort at the end of days is worth more to you over their (via superior treatment) prolonged life. Then the complexity of making that type of decision for them. As in, is it better they live a long life in good care for no discernable reason or better to die sooner in worse care for the good of everyone (including the patient/loved one/burden)? That the rate of death can be measured against facility features is astounding (and actually probable). This kind of awareness had better be working on levels that type (b)’s do not have access to…

And then this term: Respite Care. Discuss.

“No problem” he says, turning to leave the office. What an idiot. Trying so hard to be the ambassador of The Solution, going on to pass his many needs on to others, going on to ‘manage’ these things; people, work, actual work, as in, the worker’s who work to do things. Nothing but a person in a suit, not a cheap suit, these pricks, they have learnt from TV and movies to wear proper suits, can’t fault them that anymore. Young up-and-comers wearing two thousand dollar suits. Talking big, using the words they have been taught; encumbered, exposed, sureties, endgame. Their eyes give them away at last, too open, too keen, too wanting, looking for the lead, the open, the chance. It’s funny, we all say, these kids are just gaping (an inside term, meaning, their open stupid mouths) for anything, they’d swallow the load we’d give them, and they do, they take it on; they work weekends; they work nights; they are virgins in two thousand dollar suits and they can afford to buy drinks, we afford them that. They can buy drinks but they are all little cunts in expensive suits looking at one another like pathetic scraggy mongrels. They have their early twenties girlfriends who like that they get off late, ten pee em, and meet them in the city to buy them and their friends a bottle of fifty dollar wine, they like that. They like wearing the clothes, buying the things, kissing asses and being little butler bitches day in day out to get that pay off. There is no pay off. There is more and more money and more and more bars and more and more women who sit there and smile and like it. There is me sitting in my office in a suit that is getting softer and softer and cufflinks I want to throw in the bin (they have a chess motif) and a pen that cost someone four hundred dollars sitting on my desk, unused. They do not know what it’s like to die inside and have to do this for years, they have not learnt yet that this goal is repetitive, mundane and that whole parts of our life are given over to duty, repetition and safety in the same way our investors trust us to deliver on similar perfunctory promises. Sleep four hours at night, shut the fuck up, soundly. Hungry idiots, smiling at an alcohol bar at 1 or 2 ay em. They don’t make it hard: “Fuck that guy, man, you know, he ain’t even half as fucking on to it as you…and I know, man, I know…you have this shit in the BAG man…IN…THE …BAG, I’m telling you…”

There’s nothing. He’s sitting there, touching the TV screen, putting his little hands on the screen for fuck’s sake. There’s nothing there. I am not his father, I am a person in the god damned room. I go over there and sit next to him but, nothing, he is laughing and clapping to the yellow blue screen so I block it with my body and he freaks out, crying, clawing at me to move. I get back up and go outside, smoke a cigarette and watch him watching the TV. He is dead, he doesn’t want me, his mother will be here soon and tell me not to speak or move him on to another TV show or else clean his arse and change his clothes, or wade into the deep first through the shallows. We are letting them decide from a few paths as soon as they are born, we are giving them a future, implanting a future, telling them the future. I keep smoking and watch her take him up in her arms and out of view, like I am a pervert, like my little son should be ashamed and should go to private rooms to undress. His face is blank, his gestures are meek, and maybe sometimes mute. His mother, my wife, reads the books, gives me the chills. I can’t argue, I am not there, but still, I can see he is not alive, my son, my son who has been taken over, who has been extradited into a new world, who now is sick and is being taken away while I sit on the lounge and am supposed to care and by caring drink beer, watch the game, drink beer, fall asleep, forget anything, trust my wife, drink a beer, forget everything.

Shirts, I sit there judging shirts, it’s all about the quality of the shirt. I took a car in today, air conditioned all the way, from my home into a car into the office, thick ironed shirt, starched collar, cuff links, the rest, tired, haggard, used, worn all the way on from out of town or even fifteen minutes into town, had a coffee, wandered around, open to one another, got their stories straight, these ill-equipped teenagers, faces starved for me, but they don’t have teeth, they don’t know what teeth are. The best is when they tell me their real true life and I look like I care, you know, human style. The devil told me to use that, to use their openness, the fact that they think by telling me I will be softer, that they tell the females the same story is insulting, like they imagine these hard working women have a maternity streak that extends being their own cubs, a caring for all humans. We talk, we laugh, we see them as they are, in ways they are unaware, because, sure, their lecturers told them they were great, ready.

In the yard (“The Yard”) it’s true, they name it, my child is drawn towards the corner, as in the chained in fenced corner filled with chip-bark and, dirt, really and he plays with a doll and he’s using it to plow into the dirt but then rubs the durst on its legs, rough, like he is painting her legs with dirt. “That yours?” a young mother says, seen them before; blonde, still compose outfits, have a large bag on their hip filled with all the things to attend to a child, drinks, toys, books, just anything they may want or in their head need and to deprive them of anything they need educationally or developmentally is such a travesty or more so in their head child abuse and in this world a worse thing that is: disadvantage. “Yeah, and can I tell you, he is a weird child” and of course she looks at me like I have raped him in private so I have to follow up with “the best kind, you know. A real original, it’s what you ” and I do go on and say it “pray for, in some ways”. I am right, she smiles too widely, tells me she won’t like me taking out my cigarettes and smoking them, tells me everything really: she has taken part time job (related to her previous career path) or is still on maternity leave and believes in tradition and having her mother near to help her out, takes this advice, likes this advice but tempers it with her own modern rationale, things like psychoanalysing your child based on their playing techniques, encouraging their skills, subtly guiding them to correct more deficient areas of their development…simple stuff that I could easily employ for the mother’s own benefit, nevertheless…”he’s gorgeous” “Yeah he is, such a bright little boy, that’s why, you know, he just does his own thing…he can’t, you know, get into the whole communal thing, it takes a toll on his individuality, to give something away to the group…you understand?” “Oh yeah I do, but Emily is just so, I mean look at her, she’s already made a new friend” “Well that’s good…hey you want a coffee?” “Yeah, yeah why not” “Ok, wait here…oh wait, what do you want?” “Skim latte” “No problem”. There is noting there, she is an idiot, she is a mother, she loves her little girl who is just another one of them. I feel proud of my son for a second, even if it’s only because he is not one of them. I can’t remember what I was as a child. I think about my Monday meeting and the three things I need to fuck the others over with, makes me feel better to have that ready to go early on a Saturday. Cunts. “Flat white and skim latte please” “Sugar?” “No way”.

“Fucking hell, why are we such morons?” “Tell me about it” “No seriously, why the fuck do I have to deal with this shit after, what, six months of arrogant, idiotic, basically poor business, from these coked up fuck head sales people, really?” “You don’t have to” “That’s right, and, I won’t, how’s that. How about fuck them, they can go and get fucked. Heh. Good fucking thing none of them get their comp checks this quarter. Fucking hell. Good luck telling your wife you fucked your kids’ education for three months. God damn I hate those cunts” “Because no one gets pay rises now” “Yeah…yeah. Because NO ONE get pay rises now.” “So what now then” “Quit” “Quit! Yeah of course” “Nah fuck ‘em. They put so much respect and ‘resources’ into these, these morons, really. These drunken fucking douchebags. Jesus, you tell me. Sales reps, fuck. It’s the same everywhere though really, they bring in the money, they are gods. For fuck’s sake…what year is it? I feel like I’m in nineteen eighty nine!” “Fuck working in sales though” “That’s not the point” “But those bonuses…” “Oh fuck don’t get me started…fuck!” “Yeah. Last year…” “Shut the fuck up man…shit” “Fuckers”.

He hits his truck into my outstretched foot again, looks at me for a reaction, I stare at the ceiling. He hits me again, looks at me, I stare at the ceiling. He hits me harder and harder, the same ritual. He tries to hurt me, he tries for a reaction. I try to get him to take his rage to the limit…will he draw my blood, his father’s blood? That will be the next level, when he wants and is able to make his beloved father bleed, without fear, without remorse. The poor boy, bashing his truck into his father’s foot with such ferocity and eagerness, just to get a pat on the head or at least a gaze. He gives up, ashamed, scared, not wanting to bash a corpse. Morals from somewhere, instinct I’d say, youthful instinct to not hurt for no reason. Religious people tell you that it comes from a deity, this child knows to not hurt excessively from shame, from knowing his own power and curbing it, compassionately. That I am his god is unimportant, that he will no longer test his own god is magnificent. Cherish it while it lasts, son, because soon you will gladly put someone you know in the pit of hell to get a ten percent pay rise. I take him up and hold him towards the ceiling, look at his vacant eyes as they avoid mine. “Son” I say and he doesn’t care, “My Son” I say again, like an actor from a grandiose film (Ben-Hur or similar), “My Son, Be Great” I make a wish on his small, bored, complacent face…”Be Great” but he won’t, no one will. There is no such thing anymore. Be a banker, buy money, control money, be in charge of lots of money, own the government, tell the lawyers and judges what to do. Am I supposed to tell this child that?

Everyone is dressed and sitting at their desks. They get up and move about in their social groups: coffee drinkers, tea drinkers, those who like certain shows that are on television, those that read books and despise the TV watchers, those who drink together some nights of the week and sometimes on the weekends, those who are single and want to get together, the athletes, the after work gym junkies with ideas on nutrition and up-early healthy living, the dead tired late night artist types droning through the day regretting every single step of the day, the parents, the soon to be parents, the middle aged singles looking for marriage, the bosses acting in every interaction, the disconnected accountants looking at everyone as cost-benefit drones, the new employees trying to talk to anyone, the well-interned casually walking around not after anything other than a survey of every other god damn poor miserable soul that is still lucky enough to have any hope that their role or future is in any way important or valued or has any meaning in the grand scheme or inter-cultural complexity of this particular place of business. There are no priests/evangelists/soul-savers, those faces you met in orientation are gone, they have subsumed into the body corporate, they are again faceless, the enthusiasm wanes fast.

I hate you.
I hate how you do not know
Anything
About people
About emotion
About trickery.
How you pretend
And mock
And build yourself up
To be something
When you are nothing
With no substance
No meat
Nothing
At all.
I hate
How
I don’t do anything
To stop you.
This is life
Beautiful children.