Category: personal

the science of trauma

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It’s the science of impact, not influence, but impact, IMPACT, something smashing into you so hard, like a monster asteroid that slams you off course, out of your steady elliptical orbit, to plummet out into space, away from your neighbours, away from the source of your light and heat, away from where you’re supposed to be, out into the endless void, where it is dark and frozen and immensely lonely and the only hope is that somehow, there’s something close enough, large enough, with enough gravity to suck you in and put you back on your axis, but the void is so big, and so empty, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be close enough to centre in your new rotation, that you’ll be in that sweet spot where life can bloom, but instead you’re cold, cold, cold, shivering without relent, or on fire, burning, bleeding, blisters bursting in poison gas…

This is the nature of trauma, and it pays to remember: there’s a hell of a lot more void than stars.

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

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 17-20
Music: The Very Best Of The Smiths, The Smiths

welcome back to emotional destitution

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I know people don’t care and they sneer at people when they’re suffering, the whole “suck it up, princess” thing and sometimes, that’s a valid requirement for getting out of the shit, but sometimes…

Fuck you. Sanctimonious fucks.

Those same people often rip open their chests to show us their bleeding hearts when the sum total requirement of their action and empathy is a post on social or an off-hand comment about those poor people.

But when it counts?

When it’s people they might actually have to deal with in their lives, rather than just people they can posture around? When the reality comes in?

Suck it up, princess.

Useless.

Eye rolls.

“They just want drama.”

Absolute dismissal.

If your empathy and ability to understand the struggles and needs of those around you ends with a couple of lines on Facebook or an off-hand comment to friends about how hard someone has it, in order to forgive behaviour that doesn’t affect you in the slightest?

You’re not empathetic. You’re not compassionate. You’re not an open-minded person who wants to help people. If you can’t hold that same empathy and understanding for the people actually in your life, whose behaviour influences your world?

Well, then, fuck you. You’re just another self-important prick, more interested in looking good than being good.

Target: 600 words
Written: 369 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 13-16
Music: The Very Best Of The Original Dubliners, The Dubliners

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

veruca

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It’s funny how this seminal alternative band from the Nineties has such an influence on modern pop, but no one seems to ever mention them.

I mean, if you can listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts and not hear Veruca Salt channeled through her, I have questions about your hearing and your mental state.

I try to tell my nieces these things, but they’ll, like me, have to figure it out for themselves (although I went through phases growing up that exposed me to a lot more great classic stuff, as filtered through a modern lens, than they seem to. Big band, underground Seventies punk, classic 60s acid rock and the original Fifties jump rock – crooners, The Beatles, The Doors, hell, I even went through a Michael Jackson/New Kids On The Block era – though not after I heard my first alternative – INXS and R.E.M. are forever my gateway drugs, as was The Joshua Tree).

Anyway, great band. Listen to them more, if you can. L7 too – nobody rocks harder, except maybe Lemmy.

Target: 600 words
Written: 556 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 53-56
Music: The Very Best Of Elvis Costello (I mean, it was shaping up to be a hipstery kind of day, anyway)

man

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It all gets away from us so easily, doesn’t it?

Like trying to hold on to glass covered in WD-40.

Target: 500 words
Written: 1286 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 49-52
Music: The Very Best, Nirvana

late

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If you know anything about me, it’s that I hate being late.

HATE IT.

I’m late for one thing and it’s like a Rube Goldberg machine of frustration, a fucked-up domino of cascading destruction that leaves me absolutely fucking enraged.

And I’m the chill one.

Target: 500 words
Written: 549 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 45-48
Music: The Verve EP, The Verve (fuck, I love these guys)

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)