This Blog Is Pointless

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• April 20, 2019

This blog is utterly pointless.  

You should close it all together and do something else.

Unless that something else is mindlessly scrolling through your Facebook feed.  In that case, you might as well stay here with me.  It’s probably better than your Facebook feed and I don’t say that with the confidence that this blog will bring you any sort of of insight or joy, I already told you this is pointless, but I can almost guarantee it will be at least more entertaining than your friends Facebook posts which are probably pretty lame.

That being said, this blog is a complete waste of your time.  But if time is what you’re looking to waste, then I welcome you.  Not with open arms… I’m not exactly a hugger, it could take years for me to get comfortable enough for a hug… but I welcome you in the way a librarian might welcome an earnest learner… you’re always welcome as long as you keep your talking to a minimum and don’t raise your voice as I am especially opposed to loud noises unless it is music.

You might be thinking, “but, Lori— as a nihilist, aren’t all your blogs pointless, just as life is?”  And I’d say, “yes, fictional student of mine, you learn well.  I would give a star sticker or something like that if you existed.  Glad someone is paying attention.”  That is true.  All of my blogs are pointless, even the ones where I am making a point.  Perhaps those are the most pointless, actually.  At this point, I hope to have written so many blog posts that, like the bible, people haven’t read most of them, they just assume that it’s good.

If the mind is a working engine, then it too can get overheated and stalled.  Or maybe, even, the opposite is true… that whatever is in your core that makes you really excited about something stops feeding the engine energy.  Stalled.  Do you ever think how strange it is that your rock bottom is yet to come?  There’s safety equipment on me now, a harness and some ropes tied to both ideas and people.  However, I couldn’t honestly tell you which are more likely to drop me.  Or just as well, I’m more likely to cut the rope connecting us.  Knowing the result is a fall.

It’s not that I stop writing completely when I’m spiritually leveled.  It certainly chokes my creativity when I’m this way.  Writing is always better than not writing, but then I have clear evidence on paper how much I suck.  Fantastic.  Paranoid suspicions confirmed.

What’s the point of doing this again?  Because you like it.  I’m pretty sure that was the point.  The notion can escape so easily.  And then the only time I feel anything at all is when I’m on stage.  Perpetuating a pointless cycle.

It’s just a slump, I tell myself.  It’s just a down phase.  Be mindful of your moods but don’t let them redefine your reality.  For weeks, the waking hours are spent laying there in doubt and dread, “what’s the point?”  There is a no goddamn point.  The only reality is this: that this is your actual life, your one and only life and shot at anything at all.

Days turned into weeks and my writings waned.  I got nothing.  Nothing at all.  It’s not good.  I don’t like it.  At some point, I was convinced it was over all together.  That I completely forgot how to write a joke.  Wasn’t I good at this?  Did I not have the talent and drive and sheer enthusiasm to continue to do this?

Start the day.  Bleak.  Go to work.  Bleak.  Walk the streets.  Bleak.  Do a show.  A sign of something— a little rush of adrenaline.  Back home.  Bleak.  Wake up.  Bleak.  Try to write.  Shit.  Go to work.  Under-appreciated.  Shit.  Work on a script.  It won’t sell.  What’s the point.  

It was so fleeting, I almost missed it.  But I was driving along the Northern Parkway on Long Island when I noticed it.  The trees.  They had green.  Yellow flowers crawled over the divider.  Even pinks and reds painted in the brush.  It’s so beautiful, I thought.  What a fucking delight.  How perfectly divine, the plants reborn, never asking about the point, just being there and being a thing of beauty.  There was a certainty in this moment I longed for and then it vanished.  As sure as the moon waxes and wanes, it will return.

Frustration brewed fury and I could feel that rage bubbling.  By the end of the days, my jaw was sore from clenching it.  No point of being angry.  Anger is weak.  Sure, there are people I want to scream at but mostly I’m just mad at my performance.  Pathetic.

It doesn’t go anywhere.  It’s pointless.  All roads are.  They’re all dead ends.  But that’s not the point.  There’s no real sense of arrival.  Departures only.

Depressed and going through the day.

Pointless.

Pointless.

Pointless.

I don’t even care.  I don’t even care how pointless it is I just want to be able to write jokes again.  Just give me my sword back and I’ll keep swinging, I promise.  This is part of my identity now and if it’s lost and gone forever then I have to find a reason to not be so fucking pointless.

How are you.

Fine.

How are you.

Fine.

How are you.

Pointless.

And then I was on the subway.  And there was an Asian mother with her three little kids.  Her daughter, who couldn’t be more than three years old, was holding this giant fried chicken wing.  The thing was the size of the kids head.  The child was so precious she looked like a doll.  And this adorable little girl was just loving the shit out of eating that fried chicken, in the way that you’d see a kid love an ice cream cone or cotton candy.  Biting into it, pulling shreds off and licking her fingers, completely unaware of her surroundings.  It was just her and that chicken wing.  In that moment, I was convinced I’d never seen anyone love anything as much as this toddler loving this giant chicken wing.

They were to get off at the next stop, and her mother tried taking the chicken wing.  The little girls face turned into terror followed by tears and the mother caved and gave her the chicken wing back, and she just dove right back in.  So in love.  They exited the train and suddenly I burst into a laughter.  Other people in the train car started laughing too.  It was just one of those pure New York moments.  Oh my goodness.  It was such a funny fucking thing to see.  And it cracked everything open.  The day seemed better.  The weather felt warmer.  The gig I was heading to gave me butterflies at the excitement of doing something I loved.  I pulled out my notebook and wrote a joke I think might actually be good.

This blog is pointless.