Category: personal

seriously, sorry

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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: On Your Own, Blur

mediterranean

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In an effort to dispel a little doom and gloom, or flagrant ego, we note that we try, several times a year, to have themed dinners with the whole family. And we picked Mediterranean.

And it was good, but apparently, a trail of gas is following me around like a trail of death, according to my wife.

And I woke up in the night, thinking, I don’t usually get that from Greek food.

And my butt answered.

This is not Greek food.

This. IS. FARTA!!!!!!

I’m so terribly sorry.

Target: 600 words
Written: 866 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales
Comics: American Vampire 30-31, American Vampire: Lord Of Nightmares 3-4
Music: On Your Own, The Verve

relaxation?

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Yeah, no.

About ten minutes’ worth of quietude on the front porch, until a person walked by and the dogs started barking, thunder came up and the little dog lost her shit, and, and, and.

It’s a poem, in bleak deconstruction.

Stillness, peace.

Ripped open by the rabid sound of protection,

And the heightened screams of fear.

Target: 600 words
Written: 631 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tale
Comics: American Vampire 28-29, American Vampire: Lord Of Nightmares 1-2
Music: On The Radio, Green Day

trauma

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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 for it seeming so petty that even suggesting that’s an equivalent trauma to be raped or shot is absurd, but 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: On A Train, Mudmen

weight

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Oh, God, it sounds so horrible, like some kind of Tolle/Robbins platitude, meant to sound deep and meaningful, but actually being somewhat of a scam.

I mean, I don’t want to go too deep into it, because I’ve got a whole idea percolating that I don’t want to spoil the punchline on, but you know how we often try to teach the things we most need to learn?

Next to the dictionary entry beside ego, I suspect there’s a picture of Eckhart Tolle. The Power Of Now and A New Earth practically drip with his ego, his unhinged desire to be a messiah, don’t they?

I’m not sure stealing a bunch of ideas that have been around for thousands of years, or basic common sense ideas, and drenching them in an insipid slurry of rancid toss to pretend you’ve found some special knowledge, is messiah material.

Honestly, it sounds exactly like the kind of bullshit I was writing in my late teens and early twenties, when I was also trying to be a messiah, but was actually a schmuck who didn’t live any of the platitudes he was spouting.

I guess I was too busy with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to make the millions he did.

Anyway, my point is: The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner is the better option if you want to learn about presence. If you strip all of the bullshit and pomp from The Power Of Now, and replaced it with humility and practicality, there you go. And Mr. Sterner isn’t trying to sell you on being Jesus.

Or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, whom Tolle seems to only mention in passing, despite having ripped off the Tao Te Ching extensively (though not anywhere near as well, and with added layers of unnecessary drivel). I guess he doesn’t want anyone to realize he hasn’t actually generated an original understanding, but rather, stole everything he purports to have discovered from luminaries long dead?

Anyway, my thought was: I’m such an insignificant, microscopic piece of the universe, why am I carrying its weight?

I know, right?

Target: 600 words
Written: 576 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 3-4, American Vampire 19-20
Music: Old Plaid Shirt, Mudmen

long, fast, weekend

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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’ve 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: OK Go, OK Go

three

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Man, I cannot believe she’s three already. A picture popped on the screensaver of her parents’ television and it was her, at a very young age, in her high chair, bib and face covered in white icing.

It seems like yesterday.

It’s all moving so damn fast.

So damn fast.

Target: 600 words
Written: 995 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire 13-16
Music: OK Computer, Radiohead (been a while, but it never fails to remind me why it's considered one of the best.  albums.  ever.)

off to see the baby

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Well, she’s about three now, so not really a baby, but I’m due for more childish glee and less adult drama.

Hell, nobody really wants drama, unless they’re enjoying fiction or missing something in their lives.

Peace is much more fulfilling.

Highest filling, next to a nice garlic cream sauce.

Target: 600 words
Written: 436 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire 5-8
Music: Oil & Gold, Shriekback

shitty spots

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I can’t help but think of how the last forty or fifty years have left us in such a precarious position.

As a member of the first generation to be poorer than its parents, I can’t help but be furious with those who’ve put us in that position, and the fact that we’re still having to fight that battle, that we’re being told poverty and debt jail and total submission to the whims of billionaires is a fucking good thing?

I mean, I don’t know about you, but it’s enough to make me want to scrap the whole system and start over, sans cash.

Sans power.

Billionaires made to live on the fucking street, so they know how it feels.

What they’ve done.

Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all. If I’m ever a billionaire, I’m giving it away. Keep enough not to worry, to be able to live and do what I’d like without having to worry about if I can afford it. Simple pleasures – a quiet place to live, the ability to take my whole family to dinner and the ability to travel frequently and wherever. I don’t need pampering. I’m simple, man.

Keep enough to keep me in shelter, food, books and travel.

And the rest? Fucking gone, in the pockets of whoever needs it.

We can all dream.

Target: 600 words
Written: 348 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins (do you think this guy understands how much damage he's done?  I doubt it - after all, half of his "models" turned out to be con men and wannabe fascists - an unconscious attraction of like to like?  Or does the utter superficiality of his philosophy keep him from seeing past the paint to the rotting structure beneath?)
Comics: American Vampire 1-4
Music: Oi To The World, The Vandals (still the king of Christmas albums)

that’s what they all say

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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: Oh Love, Green Day