Oh, yeah.
My fucking head.
Can one just be temporarily dead for a while? Like, skip me a few years until this neo-fascist bullshit is over?
Thanks.
Target: 900 words
Written: 749 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Comics: 100 Bullets: Lono 1-4
Music: Upstairs At Eric's, YazLike, let the world burn.
I’m just going to write and read and figure out how to be happy.
Maybe I’ll get it by the time I die of old age.
Maybe I’ll die before then and never know, but then, at least it will be over.
Target: 900 words
Written: 832 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories, NOFX
Comics: 100 Bullets 89-92
Music: Up To Here, The Tragically Hip (fucking seminal, man - if Gord Downie is ever outed as a rapist or racist or whatever, I will lose all faith in humanity.)The knowledge that we’re about to plunged into a hellscape has made me withdraw a little.
I was hoping we were finally done with these assholes, but nope. At least another four years (and who knows how much longer because the fuck wants to do away with elections) of them.
So, I’m taking a break. I’ve got probably a month or less before I’ve got a presentable version of The Mungk (at least, that’s the target). I’m going to focus on that for now before rejoining the fight in the only way I know how.
Writing, and not being a complete piece of shit.
I mean, I’m a little turd, but maybe there’s some leftover corn in me?
Anyway, not a total piece of shit, like those guys.
Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em forever.
Target: 900 words
Written: 331 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories, NOFX
Comics: 100 Bullets 85-88
Music: Up On The Sun, Meat PuppetsI’ve mostly felt ill and drunk, like I’m outside reality.
All kinds of thoughts have screamed through my head, up to and including saying fuck it and snuffing it.
Who wants to live through that shit?
And I’d rather die than become one of them.
I won’t though, because that doesn’t let me protect my family and whoever else I can, even though that may not be something I’m able to do.
Focus on survival; focus on forward.
Focus on transcending.
Even if that means this life.
Target: 900 words
Written: 651 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Shining, Stephen King
Comics: 100 Bullets 81-84
Music: Up From The Catacombs, Jane's AddictionI almost misspelled that as talk. Freudian slip, anyone?
But I do mean walk. I’d like to throw some shit on, grab the only things important to me, and just start walking.
Just. Gone. Tramping down foreign roads with a backpack and a laptop, a Kindle full of books.
In peace. Listening to the birds sing.
Praying for nature to remain unsavage.
It’s savage enough out here.
Target: 900 words
Written: 466 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Shining, Stephen King
Comics: 100 Bullets 65-68
Music: Unreleased: From A Basement On A Hill II, Elliott SmithI don’t know why, but I’m watching this guy talking about fashion on TV and all I can think is…
Someday, he’s going to die. So is the interviewer (which is a shame, she seems nice – they both do).
But so will I, so will my wife. So will my daughter, my dogs, my cats, my extended family, and every single animal, plant and person that’s ever existed.
Bummer, dude. I get that growth cannot be endless or it becomes cancer, but damn.
If there’s a higher power, garbage build, bro. Change is the only thing that does not die.
Target: 900 words
Written: 454 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Shining, Stephen King
Comics: 100 Bullets 61-64
Music: Unreleased Decca Live Album, The Rolling StonesKnock me down.
Or least, that seems to the motto of the universe around me.
Are there actually happy people against whom the universe doesn’t conspire? I should think not.
Target: 900 words
Written: 1610 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Lost In The Barrens, Farley Mowat
Comics: 100 Bullets 1-4
Music: Random Pranks, GnarkillI’m not talking about the Bible (which, by the way, is bullshit, and anyone who’d actually read it would tell you right away it’s not something to be followed), but about personal revelations.
It occurred to me in the midst of making notes about editing for this ninth draft that I could be one of those people that has a repressed memory that they refuse to acknowledge, but which has subconsciously destroyed their entire life, and sent them so far off track from normal that there’s no real return.
It would explain a lot.
The problem is, I can’t think of any instance of that. I know my downward spiral began at twelve, when I was going through confirmation classes and I decided, because I am a completist weirdo, that I would read the Bible (so I guess I am talking about it).
Keep in mind that I’d really committed myself to being a holy little roller at the time, and I will say it again and again: nothing will turn you atheist more than actually reading the Bible cover to cover. If you’re not out by the end of Leviticus and its pro-slavery, anti-woman stance, then certainly, by the time Saul and David have committed their eighteenth genocide, you’ve got to be asking questions.
Anyway, that threw me sideways, because this was the dominant philosophical framework of the world around me, and if it was not only faulty, but downright evil, well, then, what to believe?
(The burgeoning alternative scene that came along around the same time didn’t help – thanks, Matt, for introducing me to INXS, Dead Kennedys and R.E.M, which led directly to grunge, punk and any manner of anti-social glory. I’m sorry I never got into Cannibal Corpse. Rest in peace, friend. I’m sorry it fucked you up worse than me.)
Anyway, this repressed memory. What if I’m walking around with one of these things dictating how I interface with the world through a lens of trauma I wasn’t even aware I had?
The world is spinning. Please don’t be a revelation. I don’t want it to be.
Target: 900 words
Written: 904 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 23-26
Music: Unknown Pleasures, InterpolI feel like my body is about to burst from my skin, and yet, the only thing I want to do is sit and stare blankly.
Being a vegetable seems cool to me, somehow.
I worry I might be a bad person; on the other hand, maybe I don’t give a shit.
Target: 900 words
Written: 328 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 40-41, Die 1-2
Music: Live Shit, Green DayI’m tired of them.
I can’t take the pushing on my belly anymore. I had lost about a dozen pounds, but then, of course, we went away so I regained seven or eight, and now my belts, my shorts and even those that are just stretchy push in on my stomach and leave me feeling nauseous.
(Not to mention the blood pressure raise.)
Anyway, I hate going to the office; where are my comfy pants? My PJs? My board shorts with the elastics so old that they’ve lost most of their elasticity?
An elastic with no stretch; if that ain’t a metaphor for getting old, then I don’t know what is.
Target: 900 words
Written: 764 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 38-39, The Wicked + The Divine: 1373 AD 1, The Wicked + The Divine: The Funnies 1
Music: More Live Random, Guns 'n' Roses (you wanted the best, but they didn't make it... so here's what you get.)