I feel terrible. Not physically ill, not really, just a combination of stress and sadness, fear and a sense of foreboding that says something bad is coming.
I don’t know what, but I can’t stop feeling it.
It’s all about to go to pot, isn’t it?
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1624 words, novel: Father LightningUgh. The worst. And the fact that we (or rather I) have things to do every single night this week sure makes finding time to edit difficult (not to much energy and focus).
Jesus, I hate working for a living. How many lives have been ruined? How many great pieces of art killed as embryos, because of the necessity to feed the corporate machine?
It’s terrifying to think about how much wonder has been stifled in the name of survival in this world’s sickening imperialism.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1934 words, novel: Father LightningMaybe the last of the year. Maybe the last forever.
Who knows? Things change so much over the course of the year, while not changing at all.
The forces of change and stagnation, ever at odds.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 2187 words, novel: Father LightningThat’s all I can say about today.
I’m in desperate need of sleep. Like 24 hours straight. Maybe longer.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1833 words, novel: Father LightningIt’s funny – I used to think when I took on a project, I’d take its theme to heart almost immediately and be like, look at me! I know how to think and behave!
But that’s never the way it works out. I didn’t gain immediate freedom from trauma and life’s various aggressions from The Mungk; I’m not gaining the intimate knowledge of kindness from Father Lightning.
I have understood how hard life can beat you down since I finished The Mungk.
That gives hope that maybe when Father Lightning is done, the transition to a man of kindness and understanding as a logical way of life will be complete.
Of course, it’s all work.
And progress need be made before it can be said to be true.
Nothing is given; everything is earned.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1523 words, novel: Father LightningAnd we’re only halfway through. What I wouldn’t give for peace.
Someday, I pray I’m proven to be wrong, and there is a heaven, and it’s just an opportunity to do and learn all things you never got a chance to during your life. Every bit of knowledge learned.
Who shot JFK? Were aliens actually here? Who really controls the world?
And the scariest of all: what did people actually think of me?
Plus, you know, doing all the things you wanted to try: travelling to every part of the world, kayaking the Colorado, trekking the Amazon, finding out if Patrick Stewart is really as cool as he seems. Seeing if Helen of Troy or Cleopatra live up to the hype. Is Rasputin’s dick really pickled somewhere? Was kindness really all it was cracked up to be?
You know, stuff like that.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1969 words, novel: Father LightningI mean, I’m twisted up in knots here and can’t get a goddamned thing done or a wink of sleep, or so it feels, but I am not broken yet.
Take that, life, you heartless bastard.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1568 words, novel: Father LightningI think The Mungk really fucked me up. I always think each book will teach me a little something, to give me time to explore a subject and really think it through.
The Mungk was about trauma, big and small, and how it can utterly destroy a person if they don’t work through it, and just keep repeating the same behaviour in various forms over and over. There’s a mindlessness to it, a lack of introspection that works (in my opinion) to really show how completely derailed life can be by allowing trauma to drive the train.
Father Lightning was meant to provide the opposite, an exploration of kindness in the face of bad shit, and while it’s doing that, it’s not here.
I meant to write about it in these pages, but instead, I’m just telling you how much life sucks, little snippets to say I wrote something that day.
That’s changing.
I am going to make more of an effort in this blog to really document how things are going. The Mungk may have destroyed lives in its blind fatalism; Father Lightning will serve as a way out. A glimmer of hope. A path forward.
Then again, no one’s ever truly reviewed the books I’ve written, so yeah.
They could be piles of shit.
Killing the ego is everything; denying all value is not.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1427 words, novel: Father LightningFriday, Friday. Girls are working tomorrow so it might almost be a relaxing day.
I doubt it though. I am not a lucky man, and I do prefer to remind myself of that fact.
Of course, I do it with kindness, because you know, maybe it’ll reverse the jinx if I don’t overassume good things will happen to me.
Assumptions of goodwill can be a virus, especially if you haven’t earned it.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1479 words, novel: Father Lightning Seems like a real solid dude. Hell of a musician.
I really do have to go see them live.
At least once before I die.
File under: Things to look forward to, so you don’t drive into traffic.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 907 words, novel: Father Lightning