Category: depression

and immediately, fallen on my face

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Metaphorically speaking.

It’s a Sunday. I don’t know how it got so far away from me. Being completely caught up yesterday, doing all the things I’ve wanted to, in order to get where I need to be and now, here I am; back behind again.

My face is bruised, blood spews from a cut over my eyebrow; I think my orbital bone is broken.

Metaphorically speaking.

My face swells, my brain too, inside my skull. I swirl, lurch and stagger.

The tasks are piling up.

This is the thing I didn’t want.

This is the pressure I was trying to avoid.

I don’t want to reevaluate.

I want to push through.

I want to make it all mean something.

But it means nothing, like a Wes Anderson film, without the whimsy and quirk, and Scarlett Johansson flashing her naked body.

Yeah, we watched Asteroid City, so I guess, technically, it does include that last thing.

Literally speaking.

So, it’s not all bad, I guess.

Target: 600 words
Written: 498 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 9-12
Music: The Very Best Of Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead

catching up

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Not that I don’t love my niece’s dance recitals but they are all day affairs, so I’m somewhat happy that I didn’t end up having to go.

It’s given me time to catch up on all the things I fell behind on as this week spiraled out of control.

It seems like a great deal is spiraling these days.

Drains and lives, swirling, sinking, disappearing into the void.

Target: 600 words
Written: 1383 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks (the man can be tedious and expositional, but he knows how to write an ending and a battle)
Comics: Monstress 5-8
Music: The Very Best Of Echo & The Bunnymen: More Songs To Learn & Sing, by (holy shit) Echo & The Bunnymen

nauseous

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Don’t know where it came from, don’t know where it went, but for a good two hours there after lunch (my standard lunch, nothing special or funky about it), I felt like spewing all over my desk.

Of course, everything thought runs through your head: food poisoning, the flu, an ulcer, stomach cancer, that canker sore behind my molar that swelled up and pushed my teeth far enough out of line they throbbed for two days’ straight was actually trenchmouth.

Then, it fades, and I enjoy a nice Tom Collins and pray for sweet release.

It seems like that last thing is coming up a lot these days; I suspect I’m in desperate need of a proper’s night’s rest.

Then again, who isn’t?

Target: 600 words
Written: 666 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Monstress 1-4
Music: The Very Best Of Chicago: Only The Beginning, Chicago (narrator: it was, in fact, not just a beginning, but rather, the sum total of everything they ever did before becoming little more than nostalgia.)

you searched for… asparagus

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Sometimes, I wonder, why is this my life?

Why am I sitting on a couch, searching French asparagus recipes in a pair of swim trunks and an old St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt?

I should be sunning on the beaches of Ibiza or sauntering around Vienna or Santorini, or sharing drinks with Jimmy Buffett on St. Lucia. I should be enjoying the isolation of Lapland or the bustling, noisy markets of Marrakesh or the flowing drift of the Yangtze.

I should be surrounded by people I love, not people I haven’t let get close enough to really truly be myself with.

But, then… asparagus is pretty good. I’m a big foodie, I have a nice family, I’ve done plenty of travelling, to beaches and rivers and cities and tundra and so forth.

And Jimmy Buffett is dead.

Today is about wanting what you don’t have. Today is about appreciating what you do.

And thinking the world is a worse place without the margarita man. Rest well, Mr. Buffett. I too don’t know where I’m’a gonna go when the volcano blows.

Target: 500 words
Written: 400 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 41-44
Music: Verities & Balderdash, Harry Chapin (the most pretentious album name ever?)

party people

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I used to be a party person. I could go until all hours, consume copious amounts of drugs and alcohol and make an unbearably obnoxious fool of myself.

It’s a wonder I ever had any friends at all.

Pity, I assume. I’m not blind. The cool kids all had deep connections; I was just kind of there, filling space and being an idiot.

That said, last night, I made it to midnight and today, I’m a wreck.

Getting old is the shits, which is different than being the shit.

Much, much different.

Target: 500 words
Written: 873 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 37-40
Music: Venue Songs, They Might Be Giant (an entire album of hastily composed songs about the stages upon which they played on a particular tour? Well, then. Kind of brilliant, in a way.)

alone in a room

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I’d like to spend most of my days that way. An empty room with nothing but me and a good book, a laptop for writing, maybe a corkboard for plotting and visualization. Access to a beautiful woman for companionship. The ability to leave whenever, but the ability to get lost entirely in whatever I’m doing, without interruption.

The ability to be fully and completely present within my little empty box, with the option to go outside on occasion and visit the good parts of the world, and leave the shitbags behind.

Target: 500 words
Written: 127 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 33-36
Music: Veni Vidi Vicious, The Hives (as wake-up music goes, none better. I think Hate To Say I Told You So would be my entrance them if I were a professional wrestler)

cigarillo #1

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I think I’ve earned it – a first draft complete, writing up my notes for the second run? That’s not a small thing; completion is an elusive, moving target in art, particularly when you’re one of those nervous, depressed artists like myself. It’s very easy to scrap the lot and go back to scratch.

I’m saving the Gran Corona for the publication date, but I believe in the art of the small reward. Plus, The Mungk is a novella, a tiny project, and therefore, its rewards should be appropriately sized.

I don’t smoke as a matter of course – I quit cigarettes years ago, but I love the smell of a good cigar, so a cigarillo every couple of months probably isn’t going to hurt me.

My liver or my heart will give out far before my lungs, after all.

Clean livin’, y’all.

To the next one.

Target: 500 words
Written: 256 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 29-32
Music: The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground (& Nico)

one hundred

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A hundred days into this year and we’ve already had multiple collapses, blood issues and a totality.

Sometimes, I’d like there to be a totality inside me, either to end it all or to burn away all the shit. Blind it with a shining aura, a brilliance unendurable except with the darkest glasses.

But the world keeps turning, a disturbing number of people think a man who thought it was intelligent to stare directly at an eclipse is a genius and hate seems to creep further into our lives each and every day.

We need another revolution. Another love-in.

Where’s our John and Yoko? Our sexual revolution appears to revolve around people making sex tapes, where wearing bikinis on your social media is a viable career path.

Where’s our screaming punk? Where’s our Kurt Cobain, hitting the nerves of a generation so raw that it changes entire cultures?

Where’s logic? Where’s freedom? Where are hearts and connection and compassion and a basic understanding of kindness?

Where’s the less ineffectual left? Where’s the sober right?

Where the fuck is everybody?

Social media is madness. Our world is mad.

This has been your daily agonized howl into the void, unable to stand anymore.

Target: 500 words
Written: 191 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 21-24
Music: The Vegas Years, Everclear

eclipsed

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There’s a phenomenon I haven’t seen since I was a child, and never in the full totality as we’re getting today. I hope it remains unclouded as it has been the last couple of days.

Unfortunately, as with most things in my life, circumstance and poor planning and dedication on my part will likely render it a disappointment, and I, like so many others, will find myself holding the bag of my own responsibility.

Depression in full swing; universe, grant me superpowers.

I’d rather be a hero.

Target: 500 words
Written: 309 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 17-20
Music: Popcorn, Muse

focusin’

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I seem to slipping into the zone more easily this morning. Maybe it’s an illusion, but I killed my workout this morning, and focus seems to be top of the pops when I’m doing my morning work, my morning commute, as I would say.

Writing’s going well, I’m tuned in, tuned on, and the music flows through me without being a distraction, but a driver.

It’s nice. This doesn’t happen that often.

Maybe the funk is breaking. Hold on long enough and it will; all things pass, as they say, including the bad stuff.

Target: 500 words
Written: 365 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Art Of Non-Conformity, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: Rat Queens 15-16, Rat Queens v2 1-2
Music: Know-It-All, Alessia Cara (what can I say? I dig introvert anthems.)