You Should Be Ashamed Of Yourself

He watched himself watch himself watch a movie. He became annoyed at himself for getting annoyed at himself for getting annoyed at the person sitting next to him, a woman who would not stop touching her hair. He told himself to tell himself to calm down. He told himself to tell himself to move seats if necessary. He watched himself watch himself shift around in his seat, look over at the woman constantly touching her hair, and wondered if he was wondering whether he was wondering why the woman wouldn't stop touching her hair. He told himself to stop watching himself and focus on the movie. He could not stop watching himself watch himself, though. He could not stop wondering why he could not stop wondering why he couldn't stop wondering why the woman sitting next to him wouldn't stop touching her hair. The woman was touching her hair as if it mattered what her hair looked like even though she was sitting in a darkened movie theater and no one was looking at her. Unless she was looking at herself. Maybe, he wondered, she was watching herself watch herself and that's why she was touching her hair so much, because she was the one for whom her hair mattered most. He wanted to tell himself to tell himself to stop fidgeting so much, to remain still, because by remaining still he was able to watch himself watch himself in as objective a manner as possible. The less he did the more he could watch himself watch himself in as objective a manner as possible. He wanted to remain open to any emotions that came flooding up from below, but it was difficult to feel much of anything but consternation while watching himself watch himself act as if the woman sitting next to him was doing something beyond the pale by constantly touching her hair. He was watching himself watch himself, and then, all of a sudden, he was watching himself watch himself watch himself, and that's when he knew he was the one who had to stop doing what he was doing.  He was annoyed at himself for being annoyed at himself. He was watching himself watch himself making a spectacle of himself and it was not entertaining in the least.

The answer to this question is yes, they can. Not only can dialectics break bricks, they can topple skyscrapers, destroy entire cities, and make whole civilizations vanish into rumor. Just remember: every question posed by the Situationists was rhetorical. They already knew the answer. That's why they were so depressed.

He got sober when he was twenty-two. Yeah. It was drugs and alcohol. It was all that stuff. Anything he could get his hands on. He liked it all. He decided to stop because he got panicked. He was panicked for his life. He didn't want to sound too dramatic and he didn't want to make more out of it than it was, but whatever her was doing was making him worried if he was going to be able to do the things he wanted to do with his life. He was putting himself in situations and predicaments that were dangerous. He was so young, he was twenty-two at the time, and he remembered thinking, "there are things I want to do, and I'm not going to do them if I keep doing this, it's not going to happen." And so he did the things he wanted to do and then he died of a drug overdose at the age of 46. He died from taking a combination of drugs, including heroin and cocaine. In addition to heroin and cocaine, he had taken amphetamines and benzodiazepines. He was found with a needle in his arm. The addiction treatment medication buprenorphine was found in his apartment, along with 50 bags of heroin and a variety of prescription drugs. The authorities also found unused syringes and a charred spoon. His death was ruled accidental. He was found slumped on his knees in the corner of the room, facing the wall, his hands behind his back. "He looked like a naughty schoolboy," said a representative for the authorities. "He had a look on his face like he knew he had done something wrong and was happy he had done it." 

She told the story slowly, focusing mainly on her mother. She relegated herself to the margins of the story, occasionally bringing herself to the forefront, but only for a moment, as a way of highlighting how little she occupied the center of her own life. Her mother dominated the frame. Her mother was the story. Her mother was always the story. In fact, that was the story, that her mother was the story. She distanced herself from the telling, kept herself on the fringes, always in orbit around the larger body. Her mother had an obsession with connection, so, as a result, she was obsessed with the opposite, with remaining on her own, doing what she could to make sure no one tried to dock onto her being and enter without permission. It was important for people to know that this story took place long ago, back when there was still a context for her life, a framework that explained who she was. It was simple. She was her mother's daughter. She would always be her mother's daughter. She would always be telling stories about her mother and telling the stories in a way that let the listener know that her mother was the point of the story. Everything in her life funneled into this one idea, into this one person, who dominated all, who brought people into her gravitational field and then ejected them out into space. To tell a story like this one she had to speak as quietly as possible, in language as plain as her face.