blank space

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And not the good kind, where there’s peace filling the void, but rather the kind where you just kind of stare blankly and the implications of your entire life’s arc stare you in the face and you struggle to see how it was a good thing, or a way out.

It’s definitely not the Taylor Swift kind, no matter how much my niece insists I should love her.

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

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 5, American Vampire 21-23
Music: Vs., Pearl Jam (one of my all time favourites, I cannot believe it's been so long since I listened to it. Indifference is my spirit animal.)

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

three

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Man, I cannot believe she’s three already. A picture popped on the screensaver of her parents’ television and it was her, at a very young age, in her high chair, bib and face covered in white icing.

It seems like yesterday.

It’s all moving so damn fast.

So damn fast.

Target: 600 words
Written: 995 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire 13-16
Music: Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane

not quite three

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Man, this kid.

Also, I’m simultaneously way out of shape and still surprised that I can scamper up a giant play zone to help lift her up to higher heights or rip down slides as much as I did.

I did realize my claustrophobia is starting to get worse.

Some of those tunnels were way too tight.

Also, I couldn’t help but think about Wytches and kid farts and matches blowing the Jones family onto the wall.

Birthdays are weird.

Target: 600 words
Written: 185 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire 9-12
Music: Volumen 1993-2003, Bjork (I don't know what it is about her, but there is no female artist on the planet I connect with more; something about it - there's an innate empathy, an honesty, an innocence that's somehow all mixed up with sex and love, but in the sweetest way... Maybe it's youthful memory, but there's love in them there words)

off to see the baby

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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, CKY

shitty spots

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I 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.)

about yesterday

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I’m sorry about that. The world is getting to me these days. Too many assholes, or people who aren’t necessarily assholes, they’re just lost and don’t know that if they dropped all the bullshit, they’d probably get along much better with others.

At least, we wouldn’t roll our eyes when they talk.

Target: 600 words
Written: 675 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Ares IX - The Darkness 1
Music: Volume 1, CKY

pretense

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I think I’ve had it with people pretending to be better than other people.

People for whom a book or a band or a type of food is a status symbol, and not something that’s to be enjoyed.

People who enjoy certain things because they feel it makes them look good to their cooler friends, or better than those they consider to be of less value.

People who automatically assume others are lesser people because they don’t engage in whatever trend they do, because they don’t come from a big city, because they aren’t into something that considered cool on social media.

People who know very little about the background and lives or minds of those same “others”, and fill those gaps with assumptions of “hickness” or “redneckocity” or worse – the automatic lumping in with all the hateful bigots of the right wing.

No one wants to be associated with that – we can all look down upon that kind of evil.

Just because someone doesn’t share your exact views of what’s cool, or because they come from a smaller town, or because they have different life experiences, or different interests (or different skin colour, romantic preferences or genitalia), you label them lesser than.

No one wants to be labelled “lesser than”. Ask minorities. They’ve been dealt that garbage hand for centuries, and it’s far past time we put an end to that bullshit.

So, maybe, when you’re out there looking down on others because they didn’t read your snooty books or aren’t into shawarma, ask yourself: do I actually like this? Or am I simply doing the stuck up equivalent of “keeping up with the Joneses”, more interested in looking cool than figuring out what actually makes me happy?

Because from this side, you look lost and insecure, and looking down on the people around you proves it.

Target: 600 words
Written: 291 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite V 2-4, Aphrodite IX: Ares 1
Music: Volta, Bjork (not her finest hour - much prefer Debut and Vespertine)

that’s what they all say

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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 Buffett