Her father tells her she is the best in her row.

It’s been a long time since she believed him.

But she smiles…
because he is her father…
and she knows he would not misspeak with intent.

I am three years younger than my brother. It was a small enough gap for us to be relevant to one another, but too large for us to share much in common. Even if we’d been born closer together, I doubt we’d have had much in common. I am thoughtful. I suppose he is, as well, but in a different way. It’s hard for me to imagine what he thought of when we were young. My memories of childhood are so different from his. We’ve talked about it some, but memories of childhood are vague impressions interspersed with snapshot recollections of questionable veracity.

My brother hardly knows me. I’m good with that. I hardly know him. What I do know isn’t enough to really want to know more. I suppose this feeling is colored by those impressions and snapshots of our childhood. He wasn’t very nice. Older siblings often aren’t, but I think he really resented me. I feel like he really felt I’d come and taken something that was his. It’s hard to have warm feelings for someone who’s felt that way about you.

Sometimes I think maybe I ought to get to know him more. Our parents just had their 47th anniversary. We don’t have any other siblings. Someday it will be just he and I. We have a couple of cousins, but they grew up in another state, and we only saw them on holidays. At least my brother feels familiar.

He’s a know it all. He has opinions on nearly everything. Even things he knows very little about. And he voices his opinions at every opportunity. That characteristic can be incredibly irritating. Then again, it prevents him from trying to know me. Maybe he knows I prefer he not pry and offers all his opinions just to fill the space between us. That’s giving him an awful lot of credit.

We rarely speak on the phone. We say “love you” before hanging up. I’m not sure what that means. We live far from one another. We only see one another occasionally. Knowing he is somewhere though. Living his life. Having his opinions. It’s a comfort. Knowing that somewhere there is family.

Pleasure is the universal vice, and, like a vice, it grips us all. There are other tools that shape who we are, but they all act in the context of pleasure.

Dopamine acting in the brain – that’s what the books, web pages, experts say pleasure is. Worms have it and know that dirt tastes good. How much dopamine would it take for me to eat dirt. Less than I think – I imagine.

My pleasure lives in a different apartment than my cognition. Perhaps the apartment below. So that my cognition can hear pleasure rudely fucking and playing music too loudly.

But if I follow the signs placed to a mine of pleasure, in a place, that my compatriots find desirable, they’ll hand me a pick and shovel, and praise my effort. To a social animal pleasure is currency.

To a solitary creature, dopamine is life’s guide. Only fear and sloth mitigate it’s influence. And what are fear and sloth, but a means to preserve the self long enough to gain more pleasure?

To a social animal, the pleasure of closeness; the fear of aloneness; the need to care for the self balanced against the need to care for the group – which in-round cares for the self; are the drivers of action and choice.

If I find my pleasure in a place that splits me from the agenda of my society, I am shunned. It is for me. It is for them. We humans are pleased when we have consensus in thought and deed – even truer when the shunned find others like themselves.

Pleasure splits and binds in infinite ways – searching for the most successful way to preserve life.

Pleasure lends itself to mixed metaphor. It is everything that has ever felt good.

Her father tells her she is the best in her row.

She does not believe him.

But she smiles…
because he is her father…
and she knows he would not misspeak with intent.

I’m not of the abject. Or at least my connections is generations removed. Funny how we trace our lineages by their distance from the common. “Old Family.” “New Money”. “Jr.” “I,II,III,IV, etc.”

What makes them so? Poverty, violence, compulsion, insecurity, illness. For some, these characteristics define life. For others, they are elements of a larger life. Perhaps I am a bit abject.

The binary code, of alpha and omega, paints existence in shades of gray.

I’m only a thought. I live as long as I capture the imagination.

This is it. Hell. We are all here right now. All the levels. Right here. Separated by gates, oceans, castes, prejudices.

There are roughly two ends to the suffering – the abjectly suffering and the vicariously suffering. People slide between the two through their lives, but always the suffering is there.

Redemption can be found here – amid the horror of life. Redemption demands that we buoy our spirits while wading into the despair of the abjectly suffering.

Hell is subtle. It gives salience to pain by providing pleasure. The contrast keeps our souls alert so that they may experience each excruciating moment.

I fear the suffering of others. It reminds me of my own inevitable pain. So I ignore. I revel. I live. I love. I avoid my pain and others’.

The cruel trick of Hell is that avoiding the pain of others lays the way to my own pain. The more I ignore the more I am aware. I begin to fear the abject suffering around me. I fear that they will take the bit of comfort I have secured. Drag me down to them like one drowning man to another.

Like going to the water, only by wading in may I swim.

The woman is a clever husband. In hard times she stands stout men. Difficult to manage but reliable to survive. In easier times a more domesticated strain is preferred.