Category: religion

the mungk

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It started off as a riff on a couple of classics, as so many of my things do: the monster under the bed and it was a dark and stormy night…

I can’t seem to help postulating on other ways to see things; it’s a gift and a curse. The need to play devil’s advocate and constantly ask what other ways a thing can be seen is so ingrained in me, it’s just about impossible to keep from indulgence.

The monster under the bed merged with the concept of little things draining the life and verve you’re born with, and grew to encompass loss, abandonment and trauma.

The Mungk is a meditation on the birth of resignation, of fatalism.

Hopelessness, as seen through the guise of a children’s story.

It’s an exploration of how, as we grow, the world reveals itself to be far less well-meaning and static than we presume as children, where parents are gods, friends are forever and it’s one adventure after the other.

I won’t claim to have been abandoned or abused or any of that good stuff. My parents were pretty good. We had our fights, but nothing like what other poor souls have been through. I was disemboweled by a tree when I was eight; it didn’t make me grow up vowing revenge against improperly cut stumps.

(What a shitty superhero that would have been – the Leveller!)

I was more traumatized by the loss of faith; as I’ve said before, if you want to lose your religion, read the Bible. If you’re not out by Leviticus, there’s something wrong with your basic human decency.

The Mungk is trauma on trauma on trauma.

It’s overwhelming, it’s so much bigger than something we can deal with, in a child’s parable.

I’m sorry to unleash this on the world, but well, it’s the thing I’m most proud of, to this point. It’s good.

I think it’s great.

I could be wrong.

That’s the risk a person takes in creating anything. We build, we create, we connect the dots. We put it out into the world and now, it’s something for the jackals. Their noses twitch, their lips pull back from their teeth.

They pounce.

Anyway, the Mungk is born, for better or worse.

Only time will tell if this post is the beginning of something huge, or just another whisper in a storm.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 1618 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success, Carol Dweck
Comics: Chew 1-4
Music: Neutral Milk Hotel Essentials, Neutral Milk Hotel

according to my calculations

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The Mungk should be finished in ten to fourteen days.

Then, onto the scarier phase – trying to fucking sell it.

Writing it is the easy part, compared to all the gladhanding and sending and trying to build audiences and dealing with the constant rejection.

And it’s a lot of rejection.

I think maybe sometimes that the whole universe has looked at me with the most cursory glance and said, nah. Not interested.

Dismissed out of hand by god.

The question is do we disappear, or do we get pissed and say, oh yeah? Look at me now, while smashing everything around them.

How you like me now?

Target: 1000 words
Written: 1173 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: I'll Be Gone In The Dark, Michelle McNamara
Comics: The Boys 47, The Boys: Highland Laddie 1-3
Music: Nazi Punks Fuck Off, Dead Kennedys (because, you know, fuck 'em. Fuck all the Nazis. I'm looking at you, Conservatives and Republicans.)

everyone’s going to die

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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 single 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: Unreleased Decca Live Album, The Rolling Stones

revelations that we pray are not

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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 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 aware I had?

The world is spinning. 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: Unknown Pleasures, Interpol

morbid wonder

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I suppose I’m giving the impression that I’m suicidal. I’m not, not really. I’ve too much I’ve not done in this life yet for that, though the depression’s relentless attacks on my ability to do any of it is wearing on me.

So, in that sense, yeah, maybe. There’s a lot of the time where giving up, half-assing it, letting go of any sort of potential for joy, all seems like the best path forward.

Sinking into mediocrity, a sort of mind-numbed endurance, its own special skill, though any and most of us have mastered it.

It’s called “waiting to die”.

Coming up here reminds me there is more to this world than our petty differences, our pointless bullshit.

There’s more than in-fighting.

There’s wonder.

One look at that sky, graded robin’s egg to to royal blue, stroked with tender brushes of clouds and one can’t help but be reminded: religion may be a fiction, but there is still a sense of the divine.

Of majesty and beauty, grandeur.

Holiness.

It has nothing to do with little men in the sky and everything to do with the sheer vastness of what’s beyond our own meager skulls.

It could be so easy to give it all up.

But then what?

Target: 800 words
Written: 584 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Brothers Of Earth, CJ Cherryh
Comics: The Crow: Skinning The Wolves 3, The Crow: Curare 1-3
Music: Ultimate Survivor, Survivor (again, why?)

echo chamber

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There’s one in my head, and it rings with hopelessness. It sees the march of fascism, the flagrant entitlement of the world’s insipid victim mentality, and it knows the end of us is near.

There’s an external echo chamber as well, harming right and left, cutting off the ability to see any other perspective at all, let alone try to truly understand the other, which is the only method of finding resolution and peace.

I try to limit my external echo chamber. I don’t wish to be like my stepson’s friend who was heavily radicalized during the pandemic, to the point of losing a very good teaching position at an Ontario college because he bought into all the “vaccines are poison” nonsense.

Yesterday, he was posting about how a woman in Tennessee won her case and received three quarters of a million dollars for being fired for not getting one, making it sound as though a litany of similar lawsuits were about to bring the corporate world and government to their knees.

Of course, for a guy that I used to think was fairly smart, he sure didn’t much think it through. I’m not even sure he read the article he posted.

First, the woman won in deep red Tennessee. That has jack to do with Canadian law, and second, in the ruling, it specifically noted that the award was given not because the woman didn’t take the vaccine, because she’d had other vaccines, but rather, her religion opposed abortion and there were rumours (that at the time apparently had yet to be debunked) that the vaccine was made using fetus cells, and she felt, on religious grounds, she couldn’t inject that into her body.

Regardless of where I fall on the abortion issue (pro-choice), I can see why she’d be opposed to it.

It was noted in the article that the case was different than most other cases wending their way through the system, because the documentation proved without a doubt that the woman was doing it on religious grounds, not political or ideological ones. The vast majority of vaccine deniers can’t say that. All they can say is they were being selfish and stupid and would rather endanger other people’s lives than do something a liberal might support.

This was a one-off. Hardly the landslide this young man was celebrating.

It’s a weird thing to me, that prior to Trump and the Putin-pushed (and social media and mainstream media endorsed) disinformation pandemic, that perfectly intelligent, otherwise logical individuals could have gotten so locked into their echo chambers that the ability to reason, think or even want to question the information being presented to them has completely disappeared.

I understand the celebrities that do this; they’d been irrelevant before, and this buys them a fan base. It’s a grift.

But the average individual? Even the ones that had previously shown no hate in their hearts?

It’s terrifying to know how quickly someone can abdicate their own mind.

Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes.

Unfortunately, their willful myopia is likely to kill us all.

birds fall down upon / weighted wings they choose to fall / blindly into night

Target: 700 words
Written: 254 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Living Dead In Dallas, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Think Tank 8-11
Music: Only The Strong Survive, Bruce Springsteen

of long walks

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I’ve walked probably about fifty New York City blocks of varying lengths and my dogs are barking.

I appreciate what the city has to offer and all, but damn.

I am peopled the fuck out.

There are too many people on this planet. I’m not calling for a plague or anything, but like, stop breeding, people.

Republicans claim to be pro-life, but man, abortion is one of the many ways we can help this planet by not contributing to overpopulation, unhappiness, children and parents in poverty or abuse, because they weren’t ready and didn’t want kids… you’re contributing to fucking misery and death, the death of us all, with your anti-environmental, anti-woman, anti-life stances.

Like fucking vegans, you’ve taken a high-minded principle (don’t abort fetuses or eat animals), and missed the actual real world impact of such a stance, both from a moral, and historical standpoint.

The most “noble” of intentions based on completely flawed premises (of course, I’d also argue that vegans may actually have noble intentions, but Republicans, given their pro-gun, pro-capital punishment and pro-who-gives-a-fuck-what-happens-to-the-kid-after-they’re-born stance, are entirely disin-fucking-genuous).

Anyway, people. Keep fucking, but stop breeding, for Pete’s sake, whoever Pete is.

Target: 700 words
Written: 962 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Assholes Finish First, Tucker Max
Comics: Danger Girl: Renegade 3-4
Music: OK Go, OK Go

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: Voodoo People, The Prodigy (pretty much the only electronic music I consistently enjoy; the rest is mostly bullshit)

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’d 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: Voodoo Lounge, The Rolling Stones

good friday

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I’m not a Christian, because, well, religion is mostly bullshit. I don’t necessarily discount the idea of divinity or spirituality, but I always think of it like this:

If this being/entity/force/thing is omnipotent, all-encompassing and all-powerful (pervasive), then our ability to understand it is probably on par with an amoeba’s ability to comprehend particle physics.

Times a billion.

So anyone on earth claiming to know the mind of God, or whatever you want to call it, is utterly and completely full of shit. They are trying to either take your money or control your mind, or likely, both.

Let’s keep in mind that the primary drivers in many of the most horrific acts of humanity are rooted in religion.

As I think maybe Penn Gillette said (or at least, my recollection is that I heard him make the sentiment), a person is not a good person because they are doing what they are told.

They are a good person because they choose to do good things, and that has nothing to do with gods.

So, be good on this Friday, and all Fridays, because you’re choosing to do so, not because you’re scared of some boogeyman in the sky, or the afterlife, or whatever.

I guarantee the upper moral hand belongs with those who choose kindness, not those who have it foisted upon them.

Target: 500 words
Written: 595 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Gregor The Overland, Suzanne Collins
Comics: Rat Queens v2 10-12, Rat Queens: Neon Static 1
Music: KROQ Weenie Roast, Sublime