Face Off

"Face Off"

When you wake up dead.
And find yourself.
Facing an off day.
‘Tis always good,
And,
I always say,
And I will say it again.
Hear this and hear it loud.
Right here, right now.
For you.
Wither and hither and hence shall you go,
See to it you have all your don’t give a fucks in a row.

Face Off is what happens when a proverb gets tired of being polite.

It starts with a sentence that should not exist: “When you wake up dead.” That’s the first move—break the world. Not for chaos, but for access. When you break the world with a paradox, you slip past the usual guards: the part of the mind that insists everything must be reasonable before it can be true. The paradox says: we are not negotiating with your inner bureaucrat tonight.

And then it does something even sharper: it makes the absurd condition ordinary. “And find yourself / facing an off day—” That’s the comedy, but it’s also the accusation. Because most of what wrecks us isn’t catastrophe. It’s the slow drip of the slightly-wrong day. The day that isn’t a crisis but feels like one. The day you can’t quite explain. The day you feel vaguely judged by the air. The day your body is heavy. The day your mind keeps asking for an answer it can’t use.

An off day is the mind’s favorite raw material for story-making. It takes a mood and upgrades it into prophecy. It takes discomfort and calls it destiny. It takes fatigue and calls it failure. That’s the real enemy this fragment is fighting: the interpretive panic that turns weather into verdict.

So when the fragment says “‘Tis always good,” it isn’t claiming the day is pleasant. It’s claiming something more irritating and more useful: the day is workable. The condition is workable. Even the impossible morning is workable. Even the grotesque joke—waking up dead—still comes with a next step. And if there is a next step, you are not done. If there is a next step, you are still under orders.

That’s why the voice then “puffs itself up." “And I always say, / and I will say it again,” isn’t just comic pomp. It’s the anatomy of real instruction. Real instruction repeats itself. Real instruction has refrain. The human animal doesn’t learn by being told once. It learns by being told until the body recognizes the phrase before the mind argues with it.

Then comes the hinge: “Hear this and hear it loud—” That line is not decoration. It is the moment the speaker stops chatting and starts pronouncing. The fragment becomes a little ritual. Not a sacred ritual—more like the blunt ritual you perform before you walk back into a room where you know you might lose your composure.

“Right here, right now, for you:” makes it personal without becoming tender. It’s the difference between advice and address. Advice is thrown over a fence. Address steps into your space and looks you in the eye. Address is why rooms feel full when the right person arrives. It’s not charisma. It’s presence.

“Whither and hither and hence shall you go;” is mock-prophetic on purpose. It’s old-English costume, yes—but it’s also a jab at the way we dress our anxiety up in grand language. “Where is my life going?” “What does it all mean?” “What is my purpose?” Fine. Whither. Hither. Hence. You’ll go everywhere and call it significance. The line is saying: your life will move. Directions will happen. Outcomes will happen. That part is not special. That part is guaranteed.

Now—here comes the only part that matters.

“See to it you have all your don’t give a fucks in a row.”

That line is crude, but it’s not crude for shock. It’s crude because it refuses to be misunderstood. “Ducks in a row” is the classic idiom of preparation: get organized. “Don’t give a fuck” is the classic idiom of indifference: I refuse to care. Fuse them and you get something that sounds like a joke but functions like a method:

Organize your indifference.

That’s the actual doctrine here. It’s not telling you to become numb. It’s telling you to stop hemorrhaging attention. Most people don’t suffer because they care too much in general. They suffer because they care indiscriminately. Their care is untrained. Their urgency is unranked. Their nervous system is constantly firing over problems that do not deserve the cost.

So “don’t give a fucks in a row” is basically triage. It’s deciding what deserves zero. And it’s deciding it in an ordered way, so you don’t keep renegotiating it every five minutes. This is how you stop giving a committee meeting to every intrusive thought. This is how you stop treating every social tremor as evidence of exile. This is how you stop letting an off day become a theology.

And that’s why the fragment is funny. Humor is one of the few tools sharp enough to cut through self-seriousness without starting a war. If you told a person plainly, “you need to stop caring about so much nonsense,” they’d defend their nonsense like it was their child. But if you hand them a line that makes them laugh—especially a line with teeth—they accept the medicine before they notice it’s medicine.

The title Face Off is also doing work. Because this isn’t about floating through the day. It’s about meeting it. Facing it. Even if the day is mediocre. Even if your body hurts. Even if your mind is foggy. Even if the whole thing feels unfair. “Face off” is what you do when there’s no elegance available—only stance.

That’s why the opening paradox matters. “When you wake up dead” is the maximum insult to your desire for control. It says: imagine the worst category error possible. Imagine the world doesn’t even obey its own rules. And then—still—face the off day. Still—carry on. Still—order your indifferences.

It’s a fragment about endurance, but not the heroic kind. The domestic kind. The kind you need on Tuesday. The kind that doesn’t get applause. The kind that keeps you alive long enough for better weather.

So if I had to name what Face Off does, I’d call it this:

It teaches you that the day does not get to define you, and it gives you a vulgar little checklist so you can prove it.

And in that sense, yes—“’Tis always good.” Not because the day is good. But because the day is still yours to meet.