Coughing should not involve chewing.
Yeah, we’re going full manbaby.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 320 words, comic: Western Cradle #3
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X/Alex Haley
Comics: Preacher 28-30, Preacher: The Good Old Boys 1
Music: The Next Day, David BowieThis cold is something else.
It’s got my blood pressure up so high I can feel it. It’s a terrifying prospect to know that something as simple blowing your nose could cause an embolism.
I’m coughing so hard that it’s giving me a chronic migraine and each cough comes with a growing terror that I might stroke out or have an aneurysm.
Fuck me.
I’m starting to think this might not be a cold.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 226 words, comic: Western Cradle 3
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Haley/X
Comics: Preacher 24-27
Music: New York State Of Mind (Mixed by DJ Green Lantern), Beastie BoysLiterally. I’ve coughed so deep today that it just about gave me a migraine, or what I thought was the start of a migraine, but after checking my blood pressure, it might be a stroke or an aneurysm.
Fuck.
Can’t catch a break.
Fuckin’ cold.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 464 words, comic: Western Cradle #2
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, X/Haley
Comics: Preacher: The Story Of You-Know-Who (Arseface!) #1, Preacher 21-23
Music: New York Dolls, New York Dolls (FUCKING NEW YORK DOLLS)That’s what I’m coughing up now.
(Thanks, Phil Hartman)
Coughing non-stop; I’m hoping it’s the last gasps of this cold trying to cough itself out of my system; I fear it’s mutating into a chest infection.
Would that I had a doctor I could see; that our current health care situation is so fucked can only be the result of the typical Conservative “break everything, then use that as a sign everything is broken” policy of social services.
Assholes.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 746 words, comic: Western Cradle #2
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X
Comics: Preacher: Saint Of Killers 3-4, Preacher 19-20
Music: New York City Groove, Various Artists (but mostly for the Tom Waits)Until EIGHT. In the AM!
Crazy, right?
I haven’t had more than about six or seven hours of sleep in months, without being ill.
Of course, I’m ill today, but fuck it. I am using this downtime to push forward hard on the things that I love – writing, reading, comics, with a side of meditation, exercise, cooking and music.
That’s pretty much the sum total, although I think travel, sex, video games, and various other sundry storytelling mediums also play a part.
What else could you possibly need? A greater purpose? People who love you? Righteous vengeance?
I don’t know, but I’m feeling better, anyway.
Still sick, but hell if I couldn’t use eight to ten hours every night.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 2575 words, comic: Western Cradle #2
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X/Alex Haley
Comics: Preacher: Saint Of Killers 1-2, Preacher 17-18
Music: New York, Lou ReedNot physically.
The mucus kind.
It hasn’t been great. I’m trying not be a manbaby about it, but it’s hard. Grit and determination, man. No need to pull the wuss card yet.
Save it for when you’ve got a real disease.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 312 words, comic: Western Cradle #2
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Haley/X
Comics: Preacher 13-16
Music: New Wave B-Sides, Against Me!EVER.
And not like you’re travelling and seeing and doing things.
Nope.
House cleaning. In-laws that are mildly insane (okay, a lot insane – seriously, someday I’ll write about it, but it’s very difficult to write about it in a way that’s empathetic and believable, at this point. Seriously, you try to explain it to people and they either reduce it to a simple thing that can be easily fixed (it can’t) or they think you’re exaggerating or outright lying).
Hint: you’re not.
Anyway, my back hurts, my brain hurts, and I’m very, very fucking tired.
Fuck Christmas.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 150 words, comic: Western Cradle #1
Read: The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith (cannot recommend higher - it's a shame she's apparently a TERF as well - I guess we'll have to agree to agree on this, and disagree on the trans thing)
Comics: Chew 60, Outer Darkness/Chew 1-3
Music: A New Kind Of Army, Anti-FlagFor all the things I wanted to do with my life, I probably would have had to start as a teenager.
Unfortunately, the lessons I needed to learn, the skills I had to grow (and am still growing), the mindset, the life experience, all that stuff… it unfolded a little slower than it probably should have.
Maybe I could have gone a more traditional route, and maybe I could have been content with that, but when have I ever been content with anything? In the moment, I can be, in the midst of a good meal or a great book or great sex, a nice moment in the sun while walking the dogs.
But isn’t that the only time ever?
I know it will take me probably until I’m a hundred and no longer able to function physically or mentally to do the work that I want to do, to see the places I wanted to see, to have all the experiences I’ve desired.
I probably won’t make it, barring terrific medical advances. Of course, I could live that long but the growing spectre of fascism, the threat of climate change, bigotry and hatred, the complete breakdown of both civility and the willingness to stand up for what is right, in action more than words, is likely to end this planet (or at least my life or the ability to do the things I desire to do), all that pretty well guarantees that this is a fool’s errand.
But what’s the alternative?
Giving up?
I know I’m a late bloomer, but hell. Fuck it.
There’s no do-overs, so it’s now or never, and if I die in the attempt, without making the impact I would have liked, well, there’s no shame in trying.
Only in giving up.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 1479 words, short story: Late Riser
Read: The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (also, this has nothing to do with this book, it was garbage, like Eckhart Tolle fucked Hans Christian Andersen and their baby read The Secret on the way out - stuff like this is why people get stuck in their own heads thinking they just have think things into existence, or that all skill is just natural, instead doing the fucking work.)
Comics: Chew 42-44, Chew: Warrior Chicken Poyo (POYO!) 1
Music: The New Abnormal, The StrokesI’m up earlier than I wanted to be, but so is everyone else, which kills my time to meditate and read and put on headphones and plow through a random selection of music on my way to the second coffee of the day.
And I’m thinking about time.
I’m thinking about how frozen I am; how stuck; how the only barrier to me getting what I want and being the thing I want to be is myself and this mental block, this block behind the tires of the trailer that is my mind.
My wheels are spinnin’.
Moving beyond is terrifying; there’s so many bad things going on in the world right now to stop it from ever happening, but I cannot control those. I can only control what I need to do to get what’s in my head out of my head.
It’s getting past that that’s the real trick.
Can I get it done before I die? How does the world find it if I do?
Geez. I guess there really was a theme to all this.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 1273 words, short story: Late Riser
Read: The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Comics: Chew 39-41, Chew/Revival 1
Music: Nevermind, Nirvana (in a day of uncertainty and terror, transcendence was necessary)It tears at me. This urge to drive myself forward, to drive myself into something better, while simultaneously fighting not to give in to all the shit people of the world (and there are many).
It’s the dream of free people everywhere; it’s the slavering desire of every monster to put a stop to it.
It’s those close to us who behave in ways that benefit only themselves; who’d screw over their own blood for their own sick self-interest; who are so lost in their own little world that they fail to see that other people are not simply NPCs in the game of their lives, to be slaughtered or ignored as needed (or at a whim).
My biggest concern is that I’m one of them; my biggest fear is that I’m not serving myself by consistently taking myself out of the equation.
I know I need to help more. I know I barely have enough energy to hold my insides in. It’s a virtual certainty that if I stop holding it together, my body will burst and disintegrate, spilling my entrails to the floor.
Is it too much to ask for wings to emerge from the viscera?
I don’t believe in God or heaven, in no small part because it sounds fucking tedious and hypocritical, but I’d like to think peace is the end result, rather than an eternity of regret.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 432 words, poem: Feathers Falling
Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 20-23
Music: Never Let Me Down, David Bowie (apparently, he hated this album, which, like, okay, I guess it's less lyrically poignant than most of his others, but it's not exactly horrible, which just goes to show how good he was, I guess. If the work you hated is still pretty good, you must be doing something right.)