maybe i’ll just focus on enlightenment

Like, let the world burn.

I’m just going to write and read and figure out how to be happy.

Maybe I’ll get it by the time I die of old age.

Maybe I’ll die before then and never know, but then, at least it will be over.

Target: 900 words
Written: 832 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories, NOFX
Comics: 100 Bullets 89-92
Music: New Born, Muse

everyone’s going to die

I don’t know why, but I’m watching this guy talking about fashion on TV and all I can think is…

Someday, he’s going to die. So is the interviewer (which is a shame, she seems nice – they both do).

But so will I, so will my wife. So will my daughter, my dogs, my cats, my extended family, and every since animal, plant and person that’s ever existed.

Bummer, dude. I get that growth cannot be endless or it becomes cancer, but damn.

If there’s a higher power, garbage build, bro. Change is the only thing that does not die.

Target: 900 words
Written: 454 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Shining, Stephen King
Comics: 100 Bullets 61-64
Music: Never Saw A Thing Coming, Gregger Botting (a friend of mine - check him out)

if you see me getting by

Knock me down.

Or least, that seems to the motto of the universe around me.

Are there actually happy people against whom the universe doesn’t conspire? I should think not.

Target: 900 words
Written: 1610 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Lost In The Barrens, Farley Mowat
Comics: 100 Bullets 1-4
Music: Neck Of The Woods, Silversun Pickups

revelations that we pray are not

I’m not talking about the Bible (which, by the way, is bullshit, and anyone who’d actually read it would tell you right away it’s not something to be followed), but about personal revelations.

It occurred to me in the midst of making notes about editing for this ninth draft that I could be one of those people that has a repressed memory that they refuse to acknowledge, but which has subconsciously destroyed their entire life, and sent them so far off track from normal that there’s no real return.

It would explain a lot.

The problem is, I can’t think of any instance of that. I know my downward spiral began at twelve, when I was going through confirmation classes and I decided, because I am a completist weirdo, that I would read the Bible (so I guess I am talking about it).

Keep in mind that I’d really committed myself to being a holy little roller at the time, and I will say it again and again: nothing will turn you atheist more than actually reading the Bible cover to cover. If you’re not out by the end of Leviticus and its pro-slavery, anti-woman stance, then certainly, by the time Saul and David have committed their eighteenth genocide, you’ve got to be asking questions.

Anyway, that threw me sideways, because this was the dominant philosophical framework of the world around me, and if it was not only faulty, but downright evil, well, then, what to believe?

(The burgeoning alternative scene that came along around the same time didn’t help – thanks, Matt, for introducing me to INXS, Dead Kennedys and R.E.M, which led directly to grunge, punk and any manner of anti-social glory. I’m sorry I never got into Cannibal Corpse. Rest in peace, friend. I’m sorry it fucked you up even worse than me.)

Anyway, this repressed memory. What if I’m walking around with one of these things dictating how I interface with the world through a lens of trauma I wasn’t even away I had?

The world is spinning out. Please don’t be a revelation. I don’t want it to be.

Target: 900 words
Written: 904 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 23-26
Music: Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen

shadow

Yesterday, I saw my shadow stretch across the yard, a giant apparition that stared back at me with thoughts of monstrous consumption.

We stared at each other for a while; it’s said one should not stare into the abyss.

Surely, it looks back.

Target: 900 words
Written: 1736 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Happiness Of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 18-21
Music: Upstair's At Eric's, Yaz

back to workin’

I got a little ahead of myself for a bit again, with the longer edits, but now, I’m back to having to meet actual targets again.

Hence the bump in target words.

I’ve been trying to build it like a muscle. Every once in a while, bump the target up, increase the reps, the duration, the requirements for the cardio and endurance and lifting power of the thing.

Hell, it’s everything I do.

Slow increase in exercise, in meditation, in the difficulty of the material.

More beautiful desolation. More tragic pathos.

More little nobodies, thinking they’re somebodies.

More me, thinking I’m not nothing.

Feeling empty and alone, the best and worst feeling in the world.

Target: 900 words
Written: 888 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hilarity Ensues, Tucker Max
Comics: The Magdalena: Seventh Sacrament 1, The Magdalena v4 1-3
Music: Unreleased Album, Screaming Trees (so underrated, these guys - Lanegan's brilliant)

friday the 13th

Thank the universe, finally a day I can get behind.

I’ve always had luck with this number, probably being born on it (and its opposite, seven), so I feel like my entire life is a good luck, bad luck story, but with most of the luck actually being supplied by my own decision making and the unfortunate decision making of others.

Plus, you know, random fate.

We control our response, our decisions, our behaviour.

When we talk of freedom, this is what we mean.

Total freedom isn’t freedom from responsibility or consequence.

It’s giving in absolutely to the knowledge that total freedom means total responsibility.

We are responsible for the consequences of our choices, our actions, our words, our behaviour.

Sure, we can have neuroses and trauma and all that informing it, but we are not helpless.

Don’t believe anyone who says you are, or that you just have to snap your fingers and you can move past it.

It’s not easy; but not impossible. Total freedom means total acceptance of what is, and making the decisions and taking the actions that you want to take, and understanding that if you make poor decisions or demonstrate shitty behaviour, there will be consequences for that.

That’s what Republicans and Conservatives don’t seem to understand: freedom is not freedom from consequences. It is not a license to behave as irresponsibly as you want without any fear of retaliation or judgment.

Guess what? You can say whatever your want, and act however you want, but you live within the world; the world can (and probably will) push back.

Target: 800 words
Written: 530 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hilarity Ensues, Tucker Max (I recognize the irony of this blog post versus this book)
Comics: The Magdalena v3 1-4
Music: The Unraveling, Rise Against

/end rant

I guess I should apologize. I hate to rant like yesterday, that shit needed to get off my chest.

Not only for the release, but because we know, ultimately, we can’t do anything about it.

What are the options? Fight back, get fired? Lose our second income? Go to court for probably years in order to either lose or get less than we deserve, and not enough to pay the bills?

Quite frankly, any system that allows this is not just.

One should never silenced solely because the other person, the clearly guilty other person, has more money than you.

A system that doesn’t protect its least powerful can never be a just system. A system that allows the threat of having to engage in the system as a means to silence dissent can never be a just system.

Our system is broken.

Target: 800 words
Written: 144 words

Read: It's Just A Thought, Thomas Sterner
Comics: Ain't No Grave 1-2, I Hate Fairyland v2 14-15
Music: Uno, Muse

ride on

I’m not ready for the forgiveness conversation. Not yet. I know what I want to say, up in the head, but for now, suffice it to say that a better slogan would be this:

Don’t ask permission; don’t need forgiveness.

Show us you’ve thought about the consequences of your actions. Show us you’ve thought about the people and world around you. And if the gatekeepers are still unfair, still blocking creation, still blocking joy or sustenance or the application of basic human decency, well, then, fuck ’em.

Fuck ’em all.

Target: 800 words
Written: 1633 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Grimm's Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm
Comics: The Me You Love In The Dark 1-4
Music: Even More Live Crap I Have Lying Around, Pearl Jam

ask forgiveness, fuck you

I mean, that’s the gist of that phrase, right?

Its origins are obviously in the idea that certain people or organizations act as gatekeepers and therefore, the way to be successful in that field without these fucking creation cops is to just do it anyway and ask forgiveness after it works out.

The problem, like most other platitudes, is that it’s been co-opted (sort of) to become something worse.

Allow me to explain.

Not bothering to ask for permission has been adopted by the extortionists masquerading as capitalists and fascists masquerading as politicians – do whatever the fuck you want and if someone complains, well, then, they must be a whiner or a gatekeeper.

We’ve forgotten the ask forgiveness part.

We’re just doing whatever, fuck permission, and fuck you.

There’s more, much more to be said on that, but I went full marathon today and my brain is D-E-A-D.

Tomorrow, maybe.

Target: 800 words
Written: 2814 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: 'Salem's Lot, Stephen King (so classic, but I'm a little irritated my Kindle copy updated and all the extras somehow disappeared - not what I fucking paid for, Amazon)
Comics: Middlewest 11-14
Music: Live Shit, Local FUCKING H (talk about bands that bring it live)