Category: depression

sledgehammer

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I don’t know why, but every time Sledgehammer comes on, I want to get angry. It’s not that the song inspires that in me, it’s that, no matter what I do on my shuffle, it somehow manages to come up.

Like, every time.

I’m not that big of a Peter Gabriel fan; in fact, I think that’s the only song in my repertoire, and I think it came as part of a new wave playlist or something.

But the sledgehammer keeps returning, and it’s not cool, like the 80s TV show.

It’s just a bludgeon, one more little way for the universe to throw tomatoes at my face.

I am a Shakespearian actor playing poorly on an off-off-Globe stage.

And I’m not even in one of the good ones, or playing the juicy part.

I am the walk-on; the Sir Andrew Aguecheek of middle-class Canada.

Forever pursuing; forever the joke.

Target: 800 words
Written: 262 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Postal: Deliverance 5-8
Music: Underground 6, Linkin Park

dumb ass moves

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Well, we’re fucked. Biden dropped out, which means lawsuits by Republicans against whoever replaces him, endlessly lost and appealed until it gets to the incredibly corrupt Supreme Court, where they’ll rule against the Democrats and hand the election to Trump.

I know guys like Marc Elias and Seth Abramson seem to think there’s no legal basis for the challenges and it won’t be an issue, but when has that stopped them before? Hello? Immunity? Aileen Cannon throwing out the documents case?

These guys still think this system isn’t wholly corrupt, which they, of all people, being lawyers watching this shit happen in real time, they’d fucking KNOW. But, hey, as good a president as Harris would probably be, and I would love to be wrong about this, these lawsuits alone are going to fuck us all.

Big mistake, in my opinion.

Unless they’ve got a plan to remove Thomas and Scalia (and the other corrupt Supreme Court Justices like Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett), then they’ve got nothing, and they’ve just completely fucked themselves (and the rest of us) into a worldwide nightmare.

So, good one, guys. Good choices, idiots.

Target: 800 words
Written: 232 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Think Tank: Animal 3, Romulus 4, Samaritan: Veritas 2, Postal 21
Music: Under The Bridge, Red Hot Chili Peppers

impromptu grandkid

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So, we’ve been invited up to the see the grandbaby, which is always a riot. Unfortunately, she cracked her head on a dresser and had to get a couple of stitches, so things may be more subdued than usual.

Poor baby. She’s such a sweetheart. There’s a purity in children that’s enviable, a pure connection to joy and other big feelings, a present ability to immerse oneself completely, that contrasts so nicely with those of us who have had all the joy so scraped from us that we’re little more than hollowed-out shells.

I pray for that kind of easy innocence, that easy joy.

I will never feel it again.

Target: 800 words
Written: 303 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Postal 19-20, Think Tank: Animal 2, Samaritan: Veritas 1
Music: Order In Decline, Sum 41

exhaustion hunting

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I made a note while thinking about the next revision this morning that referred to the book (and ultimately, life) as exhaustion hunting.

It runs us ragged, from one crisis to the next, shortcircuiting our brains with constant fight-or-flight responses, until we’re too weary to fight back.

Our entire system seems designed for that. Corporatism, the constant pushing of the incomplete narrative (in itself a truth, that we are all works in progress, for entirely different reasons, none of which can be solved with externals), the fear that you aren’t enough, and you need to push harder, harder, harder…

Is there any question that our current setup is more akin to exhaustion hunting than the acts of creation and production, with corporations and billionaires as the ones feeding off our carcasses when we finally drop dead?

We are grist for the mill. Worse, we’re effluent.

This world. With climate change and/or fascism about to kill us all, I think the notion of legacy is rapidly running down the drain. What impact when the world is gone? How can a body heal itself, when it’s already got stage 4 cancer, and thinks chemo and surgery are conspiracies?

How do we survive this?

I don’t think we do.

Target: 800 words
Written: 370 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Romulus 3, Postal 17-18, Think Tank: Animal 1
Music: King James Version, Harvey Danger (I was all "a Harvey Danger album I've never heard?  What?  Then I listened to it and knew every lyrics, and started having flashbacks of listening to it after the bar, in headphones, full blast.  The words were the same, but the music was not what I remember.  It's amazing what the mind edits and what it retains.)

sublime lyrics

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I just want to write Sublime lyrics, as I listen to Saw Red while I try and figure out what I want to say today.

Unfortunately, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have nothing to say.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

Target: 700 words
Written: 339 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Symmetry 8, Postal 16, Eden's Fall 3, Romulus 2
Music: John Coltrane Essentials, John Coltrane (I still don't really get jazz, but man, Equinox and Wise Man sucked me in.  You have to appreciate the man's skill.)

kingsville

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I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Saturday was my birthday, spent touring the local wine country with my family, and thoroughly enjoying it. It was a very nice day, and I would have no problem spending every weekend like that.

I’m not even particularly worried about my age.

I just look back at the length of my life and think… what have I done?

What have I contributed?

All the shitty things I did because I wanted to be somewhere, something else? The courageless bluster?

It all means nothing if I haven’t actually backed up what I said I wanted with action.

That’s the thing these days; it’s so easy to fucking talk. To be outraged, to troll, to assert your betterness.

I don’t want to assert I’m anything better; I know I’m not.

The older I get, the more I find myself drawn to realness, to the radical acceptance of the situation, of not wanting to have anything to with the pretense of others, the falsity of their projections, and most certainly, the epic spewing stream of diarrhea that is my own current state.

All talk, no action. No action, and barely even talk at times.

Wanting everything; doing nothing to get it.

Waiting for the dragon inside to finally take over and take flight, and praying it’s not actually a fucking dung beetle.

Anyway, there is desire to change; it hasn’t yet reached the tipping point to actual change. It doesn’t, as Amanda Palmer would say, hurt enough.

Still, it hurts pretty bad and a change is coming; there is an ultimate collapse, an upheaval, I can sense it.

A bottoming out, and endless fall, an impact, waited for and dreaded.

A final end – is it all worth it? Does it turn out all right in the end?

Or is all just shit, to be forgotten only a few steps into the future?

Target: 700 words
Written: 595 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Think Tank: Creative Destruction 2-4, Symmetry 5
Music: Unchained, Johnny Cash

forty-seven

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Man, what a fucking waste.

Target: 700 words
Written: 336 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Symmetry 2-3, The Tithe 8, Postal 10
Music: Ultramega OK, Soundgarden (that's me.  Ultra-Mega-OK.)

the night before

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Tomorrow, I’m turning another year older. Almost half a century on this planet, and I don’t know a goddamn thing.

The Mungk got me when I was a child, and has scraped me clean.

I am a shadow, visible, but without substance.

Target: 700 words
Written: 470 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Postal 8-9, The Tithe 7, Symmetry 1
Music: Ultra Rare Trax, Volumes 2 and 4, Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground

how do i sell myself to you

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It’s a question I’ve wrestled with since the day I decided I wanted to be a writer.

I want to be authentic. Open. There should be nothing between you and my thoughts but the desire to keep other people’s secrets secret, because they’re not mine to expose.

Of course, we all present ourselves through a filter, either by intentional omission or unconscious deceit (or vice versa – intentional deceit and unconscious omission.)

I don’t like to do either, but at the same time, I don’t want to be a martyr anymore than I want to be a charlatan. I’d like to write for a living, but there are two non-negotiables:

First, what I write is what I want to write. I hate the idea of being tied to a particular genre, and I don’t want anyone else to dictate the content of my stories. No Hollywood motherfuckers who think they know better or need to “sex it up” (although I am heavily fixated on sex, so that seems like it might not be an issue), or publishers/editors who want a happier ending or something more “clever”.

Save me from clever art, as Palahniuk would say, while being weirdly over clever, yet somehow, managing to hold that instinctual, emotional raw nerve. (It is a brazen and wondrous talent, those who can do this, and I am in awe of it.)

Secondly, I don’t want to be someone I’m not. I’m not perfect; if anything, I’m terribly broken, complex and boring, typical and atypical simultaneously; unique, in the worst and most generic way.

I am a work in progress. I’m an ugly piece of granite, in the process of seeing what’s underneath.

It might be a toad.

It might be Psyche.

I don’t know, but I know what I’m trying for.

How on track I remain will determine whether I’ve the smooth and incredible detail of a Cellini or the clumsy stack of a inukchuk (although, given the spiritual connection to the land and to honouring what is, in nature and spirit, that is totally cool). Maybe shattered gravel would be a better metaphor.

Or a pile of crumbling mud.

Anyway, how to tell the world of what I’ve written, while not compromising my self into something I don’t want to be?

I want to be honest, in work and in life.

Anything else isn’t worth it, and bullshit.

Target: 700 words
Written: 98 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: Saga 49-52
Music: Outcesticide, Nirvana

slight improvements

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Well, I mean, it’s eight more words, so good, right?

How many hours is it to mastery?

Ten thousand?

So, roughly, at the rate I’m writing, about 1.5 million words.

I’ve written just under a hundred thousand this year thus far.

I may need to speed up, if I want to be a master before I’m dead.

Then again, I could die any second, so what’s the use?

Life is a series of bludgeons, slowly reducing us to mush.

Target: 700 words
Written: 26 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Just A Geek, Wil Wheaton
Comics: Saga 41-44
Music: Out Of Time, Blur