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: Volume 2, CKYI 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: Volume 2, Plea For Peace/Take Action 1 (at least, that's how it's labelled on my iPod? Yes, I still have one, and yes, I use it actively.)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 BuffettListen 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 TuesdayToday, we brunch and we honour our mothers, those of us who have them, and all the many things they’ve done for us, while ignoring the fairly complicated relationship we’ve had with our parents over the years.
Mother’s Day is a good time, a sticky wicket and a timebomb waiting to happen all in one.
My mother is a good mother; it doesn’t mean there’s not complexity there.
Like many GenX kids, we were largely latchkey, left to our own devices and using that time to spoil our minds with alcohol, drugs and the seedy underbelly of non-corporate living. Part of me wonders if things would be different if we had helicopter parents, but then, I’d never have the freedom or independent mind I was forced to cultivate by virtue of being left alone to figure it all out.
Perhaps a blend would be nicer; I regret a lot of my actions, but I don’t regret being able to think on my own, to be self-reliant.
So, for that, thank you, mothers. For the freedom to be, and the understanding that responsibility is inextricably entwined with that freedom.
We do what we will, and the consequences come, as is inevitable. There is no free ride; only free choice.
Target: 600 words
Written: 141 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: IXth Generation 3-4, IXth Generation: Hidden Files 1, Athena IX
Music: The Voice: The Best Of Ultravox, UltravoxI ain’t got it.
Beck’s better at it than I. So is Flava Flav, Eminem, Ernest Hemingway, Erica Jong and Jules Verne.
I ain’t got it.
My niece raps better than I do. The other one sings better.
Everyone connects better with one another.
I am a non-valence electron, there but not involved, outside the chemical process, lurking in the outer ring.
I ain’t got it.
Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite IX: Hidden Files, Aphrodite IX v2 8-10
Music: Vivid, Living Colour
Hey, chipper self.
I don’t know if it was waking up to find out the Leafs actually won in OT and live to play another day, or finishing the second draft of The Mungk, but I feel marginally better today.
The deck is shuffled, time to re-deal.
My body is still “depressed”, but I’m going to fight the cognitive dissonance of a body and mind telling me I should snuff it and focus on focus.
Get things done. Try new things. Use the mind. Let things go. It’s good for the soul.
Move, maybe a little. Enjoy my cats and dogs.
Are you buying this? I’m certainly trying to.
Target: 600 words
Written: 538 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Gate Of Ivrel, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Monstress 47-50
Music: Vessel, BjorkI’m not sure which direction I should take.
Lay on the floor and wait for the end? Go down on my knees and beg for the end of pain?
The bed? Hiding in softness that quickly becomes uncomfortable.
I feel like my body is a prison from which I cannot escape.
Which, of course, I cannot.
We are all victims of our failing forms, our own sadistic minds, our throbbing and relentless pain.
I used to sit and drool; a pretend vacation of the mind. Master of me over mind; I too, can vacate.
Instead, here we are, waiting for the day when the drooling is incontinent and out of control.
And then, beyond.
Target: 600 words
Written: 1431 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Five Weeks In A Balloon, Jules Verne
Comics: Monstress 43-46
Music: Vespertine Live, BjorkThere’s a line in Southern Bastards when the sheriff, a ex-high school football star whose career could have been astronomic if it hadn’t been for circumstance and bad choices, says about his opportunities, “I’ve fucked up every last one of mine.”
It wasn’t entirely true there. Esaw and Materhead took out his knee, on Coach Boss’ orders, thereby ending his collegiate career before it started (something you’d be surprised to see Boss do, maybe, after the way he was shafted on his own career for Bear Bryant).
But the rest? Everything after that?
That’s all him.
I feel like that’s me these days. Fucking up every single one of my chances. Settling for safety in fear and losing the plot.
Too scared to try. Too scared to ask. Bubbling up inside like a vat of acid set to boil, scraping out everything internal, until there’s nothing left but molting flesh.
There’s some thoughts for you.
Target: 600 words
Written: 1324 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Five Weeks In A Balloon, Jules Verne
Comics: Monstress 39-42
Music: Vespertine, BjorkI use it mostly to create zucchini noodles, but sometimes, it likes to take up residence in my head, and spin me out of control, akin to a piece of fluff floating on top of a bath, that’s being rapidly drained out.
Where does all that water end up? The sewer?
Am I a piece of fluff, doomed to hang out in the shit the rest of my life?
I used to think I’d like to aspire to living in a cardboard box, but it’s a hard life, feeding yourself and begging for enough money for booze and drugs. Too responsible.
Then, I thought I’d like to be super rich, but rich people are always fighting off scavengers for their money, and there’s a disconnection and cruelty that festers beneath the freedom, and that’s not who I’d like to be.
Plus, there’s all you have to do to get there. You have to, at least, go to the convenience store attached to the gas station and buy the lottery ticket.
There’s no escaping responsibility.
The only way out is through.
Or death, but that’s a whole other topic.
Target: 600 words
Written: 725 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Five Weeks In A Balloon, Jules Verne
Comics: Monstress 35-38
Music: Very Proud Of Ya, AFI