seriously, sorry

I don’t know what came over me yesterday.

I think maybe I’d had enough of the bleak, and needed something light and stupid to take my mind off of it.

And so, you get a bad, probably old and tired, fart joke.

It was no Ryan Gosling/Mikey Day as Beavis & Butthead, but we can’t all be geniuses by just sitting there and looking confused.

Although, I’m getting pretty good at being confused. Sitting there takes some work.

Target: 600 words
Written: 314 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales
Comics: American Vampire: Lord Of Nightmares 5, American Vampire 32-34
Music: Oasis Essentials, Oasis

trauma

I’ve been thinking a lot about trauma. I know, in most cases, it’s some dramatic event – a car crash, the loss of the loved one, or something more insidious – sexual abuse, the threat of violence, an addicted partner.

But part of me wonders, what if it’s just the day to day of life? Almost worse. It seems so petty and absurd to suggest that it’s an equivalent trauma to being raped or shot, though no less effective at ruining a life?

How do you even complain about that?

I know, that’s kind of the point, but a million pricks of the needle will surely bleed you to death.

I don’t know.

I was disemboweled as a child, and I still find the ins and outs of daily life more traumatic.

Target: 600 words
Written: 689 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales
Comics: American Vampire 24-27
Music: VU, The Velvet Underground

blank space

And not the good kind, where there’s peace filling the void, but rather the kind where you just kind of stare blankly and the implications of your entire life’s arc stare you in the face and you struggle to see how it was a good thing, or a way out.

It’s definitely not the Taylor Swift kind, no matter how much my niece insists I should love her.

Target: 600 words
Words: 269 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 5, American Vampire 21-23
Music: Vs., Pearl Jam (one of my all time favourites, I cannot believe it's been so long since I listened to it. Indifference is my spirit animal.)

long, fast, weekend

Another whirlwind weekend.

My life is ending so quickly. I have a thousand lifetimes of things I want to do, to make, to experience and find connection with, and it’s going so fast.

I’ve wasted so much time.

It’s all too much. Other people are too much.

One minute, you’re running and laughing; the next, disemboweled on a tree stump caught at too sharp an angle.

Strangely, that doesn’t begin the downfall. That would happen four years later, when preparing for confirmation, I made the mistake of reading the Bible, and the realization that I was being lied to, that the philosophy I’d been presented, that was supposed to represent good and true in the world, was a steaming pile of bullshit.

I’ve been spiraling ever since.

Target: 600 words
Written: 224 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 1-2, American Vampire 17-18
Music: Voodoo Lounge, The Rolling Stones

about yesterday

I’m sorry about that. The world is getting to me these days. Too many assholes, or people who aren’t necessarily assholes, they’re just lost and don’t know that if they dropped all the bullshit, they’d probably get along much better with others.

At least, we wouldn’t roll our eyes when they talk.

Target: 600 words
Written: 675 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Ares IX - The Darkness 1
Music: Volume 1, CKY

pretense

I think I’ve had it with people pretending to be better than other people.

People for whom a book or a band or a type of food is a status symbol, and not something that’s to be enjoyed.

People who enjoy certain things because they feel it makes them look good to their cooler friends, or better than those they consider to be of less value.

People who automatically assume others are lesser people because they don’t engage in whatever trend they do, because they don’t come from a big city, because they aren’t into something that considered cool on social media.

People who know very little about the background and lives or minds of those same “others”, and fill those gaps with assumptions of “hickness” or “redneckocity” or worse – the automatic lumping in with all the hateful bigots of the right wing.

No one wants to be associated with that – we can all look down upon that kind of evil.

Just because someone doesn’t share your exact views of what’s cool, or because they come from a smaller town, or because they have different life experiences, or different interests (or different skin colour, romantic preferences or genitalia), you label them lesser than.

No one wants to be labelled “lesser than”. Ask minorities. They’ve been dealt that garbage hand for centuries, and it’s far past time we put an end to that bullshit.

So, maybe, when you’re out there looking down on others because they didn’t read your snooty books or aren’t into shawarma, ask yourself: do I actually like this? Or am I simply doing the stuck up equivalent of “keeping up with the Joneses”, more interested in looking cool than figuring out what actually makes me happy?

Because from this side, you look lost and insecure, and looking down on the people around you proves it.

Target: 600 words
Written: 291 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite V 2-4, Aphrodite IX: Ares 1
Music: Volta, Bjork (not her finest hour - much prefer Debut and Vespertine)

that’s what they all say

I am depression. Depression owns my ass. All is hopeless. All is lost.

And yet, I persist.

The drive to live is strong, even when nothing else is.

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to relate.

Yeah. Uh-huh.

That’s what they all say.

Target: 600 words
Written: 118 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: IXth Generation 6-8, Aphrodite V 1
Music: Volcano, Jimmy Buffett

sabotage

Listen up, y’all.

There’s not a guy in my generation that doesn’t know every fucking word of this song, and immediately wants to dress up like a Seventies cop with a bad moustache and slide over a car hood.

It’s immediate and visceral. I’m not the biggest Beastie Boys groupie, but hell, who doesn’t love that song?

Of course, followed by Come Alive by Foo Fighters, it’s a poignant, hard moment.

Makes me feel like a fucking teenager again, fucked up and wallowing, twisted about in depression and frustration, longing for something more.

And now, middle-aged and overweight, knowing it’s all a horrid lie.

Target: 600 words
Written: 447 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Artemis IX 1, Apollo IX 1, Poseidon IX 1, IXth Generation 5
Music: Voices Carry, Til Tuesday

flame out or flicker

I thought, when I was young, I was going to join the twenty-seven club. It was a dream.

Explode through the atmosphere, a fucking rocket on its way to etch its name across the sky only to explode spectacularly and leave its legacy falling from the sky.

Instead, I’m a half-broken sedan (well, more minivan based on weight), middle-aged and failing, and the only mark I’ve left on the world is some pets that loved me, and whom I love.

At least I know I made that difference.

(I miss you, little butts – Magnus, Loki, Nyka and Cassie Bear).

Still, is there a forty-seven club?

Could I start one?

How about ninety-seven?

Things never go how you will them to; it’s coincidence, circumstance and bio-mechanics that determine where we end up.

And for most of us, it’s the dirt, not the sky.

Target: 600 words
Written: 108 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX 4, Aphrodite IX v2 1-3
Music: Vitalogy, Pearl Jam (still an all-time favourite - every word floods back like total recall)

office days

Well, every third week, my days get a little tighter, when they can no longer stand to be.

The noose scratches at my neck.

I don’t remember who put it on, but everyone that comes by seems to give it a solid yank.

To nudge the chair under my feet.

How soon we do swing.

Today’s dark musing brought to by L7 and One More Thing.

Target: 600 words
Written: 94 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Carrie, Stephen King
Comics: Tom Judge: End Of Days 1
Music: Virus 100, L7