By Nous

                      September 15, 2003

My house, like most others I would assume, is filled with incessant,
unnecessary, obnoxious voices piercing the air with banal point-
counter-point conversations.  A reason, I tell myself, that I dislike
not only children, but people in general.  I try not to dislike people
if I can help it, but when you live in the same environment for years,
always the same screams, always the same laughs, always the same, lame
personalities, then you're bound to be critical of the never-changing
noise.
One big problem is that my youngest brother has the constant desire to
complain about meaningless shit while my other brother - the middle
child, with me being the oldest - has the impossible desire to placate
the rising tensions in a room (something, it seems, that was passed on
to him by my mother). So as one whines tirelessly, the other is all the
time wondering how he can soothe the uneasiness that falls on everyone
who sits continuously through the fucking predictable complaining of
one they know (ridiculous things no rational person would ever deem
worthy enough to even complain about).
When someone is crying over some surely-atrocious act of God - like a
missing sock, for example - as they are often wont to do over things of
that trivial nature, one gradually develops a mechanism for ignoring
such stupidity; but, as I mentioned, my other brother has the urge to
pacify situations, and so what results is a barrage of back-and-forth
squabbling, voices rising as the tension prepares to break, all the
while defeating the purpose of the latter brother's attempt to ease
the former brother's anger, or whatever it is said brother is feeling
when that illustrious sock goes missing.
One, I suppose, is a "romantic" that is looking for realism, while the
other is a realist who indulges in romanticism.  The romantic would be
the complaining brother, caught up in his emotions, while the realist
would be the placating brother, hoping to smoothe things over with
reason.  Or perhaps they are both muddled and don't understand what
they're trying to say.  This would be probable, otherwise squabbling
over a sock would be unthinkable (trying to ease an emotional eruption
with reason is unreasonable to begin with, as trying to sound reason-
able when you are an emotional torrent of noise is stupid).
It is easier to hear complaining than to hear someone trying to ease
the complaining and so my youngest brother is the most annoying person
in this house (even more annoying than me, the arrogant fuck), and my
mother feels the full brunt of his ridiculousness.  Like I said, she
is the one who passed on that silly urge to soothe a raging moron, and
yet, she often does nothing when he complains which means that she has
learned to give up on a son, which must be terrible on some level for
her.  Though, she being a rather narrow person would not understand
much less comprehend this.
Then again, that view is just my opinion, and of course, a child should
not judge a parent when it comes to these things, as the child would
only be fooling themselves to imagine that they really knew anything
about their mother and/or father.  But the opinion stands, as I have
seen little to suggest an alternative view.
My house is a brothel.