HOH Magazine: Correspondences from a New Cocoon (November 2024)

back behind the barricade, the barracuda bites at my brain, the buyout of buoyancy to balance a book or two, before beginning to face a bitter embrace. beneath the binary, do I boast or bury in a busy blush. do I block a bruise, do I better myself from break or bend. beckons, the cocoon. can I covertly circumvent context, or do I merely cover conviviality with continual cortex concern. come come, cozy yourself and connect with my disconnected, discombobulated, disorganized dig-down doozy of a dugout.

11-6-2024

what am I learning, doing this? how can I add to what I've already built? or, how can I reinvigorate the butterfly I had become? has the blade worn dull and in need of re-sharpening?

Papilio glaucus, the eastern tiger swallowtail,
is a species of butterfly native to eastern North America.

for one thing, it is remarkable how small I am able to make her.

it.

and the world.

you can imagine to live as we did before mass media. when it isn't happening to you, it doesn't exist at all. fairy tales. echoes of a story on a dusty road, swept away by the breeze. it's only your life, your circle, your garden. you are not forced to become a witness to something that is not directly in front of where you're looking. that which does not concern you does not concern you. and it shrinks back into the fiction it always seemed like it is. like you're a young child watching a movie and wondering where those people actually are. how did they bring those cameras into space to shoot all this? doesn't matter.

that's what it feels like. sort of. the person I voted for is just very small to me now. trivial. unimportant.

this is, perhaps, a byproduct of not feeling the same grave-facing anxiety I had to confront with both horns the last time I waltzed this floor.

11-8-2024

I had a dream that I got close to my enemy and had to feign journalistic interest, asked an actually thoughtful question: "how much of all this is just trolling?" wouldn't get an answer. but there was a sense that it wasn't posing a threat anymore; I didn't have to kill it like I had in other dreams in other years to save other worlds in other universes...

11-9-2024

the last few days I have been graced with the comfort of something I did not have the first time I did this to/for/with myself: the soundtrack to I Saw The TV Glow. the "title" track has been a life preserver stuck in my head for days straight, as I commit its every syllable to memory:

just a truly beautiful song. a sadness I feel, a sadness I can only empathize with, it's all in there. I've spent a while trying to get more in touch with the sensitive, emotional, "feminine" if you want to use that word, side of myself, and I'm getting a few glimpses of late, senses of an experience I've never had and what perspectives I've never seen. kinda started when I watched the movie for a third time, and had the unique experience of getting to imagine how someone close to me possibly might have felt while watching it. especially after watching it my first time reminded me of her... it's the movie of a generation, folks.

anyway, the song has been circling my head like a wrasse around an eel. a welcome grooming.

11-6/7/8/9-2024

it feels strange trying to think I'm to be steeling my nerves. maybe I'm less concerned, deep down, than I was with the other campaign? or because I know that it is possible to decide, when last time I did not? or maybe I'm just telling myself that, because it's a logical explanation for possibly illogical belief: that I know this needs to turn out a certain way in order for life to continue. the narrative is clean this way. I require it for my sanity, for the lives of everyone I care about. I need this. and that makes me vulnerable? how can I possibly steel that? sharpen a blade that must remain dull because that is its purpose?

• then I must bury what my gut tells me. and figure out how to create some kind of life raft for the unacceptable. maybe this is what these days are telling me. are letting me build. that I can live in a world like that. a world so cruel. I do not need to even be aware of it. (and yes, what this means is consciously getting behind the plexiglass of the privileges I am afforded by my skin, sex, etc. ...but what if my autistic justice department requires that fortification to function? use the other privileges to protect a bleeding heart?) but this is possible, the not knowing, not paying attention.

...but is it only possible to not care through complete ignorance? knowing is half the damage. here I pass through the days like a ghost, and not knowing prevents the other half of me that "cannot do anything" from eating itself alive in that great boiling sea of rage. I cannot do anything for that which I do not see. but that is not sustainable, and the part of me that is the biggest, Kendrick Lamar-tier hater of injustice will ignite inevitably. not at the indifference of the universe but the indifference of the non-universe, those who can, but choose not to. those who choose to hurt.

those fucking assholes, you know? their knowledge is rewired to filter out and churn ignorant action; my sober witness flays the skin from my soul. looking away is the only respite: bird in cage is the only freedom from ruffled feathers.

• where was I? I veered off track, yadda-yadding about how privilege is a bunker or whatever and trying to justify my form of avoidance and ignorance in some kind of "it's self-righteous to be mentally well" preemptive reasoning. what I meant to get on about is that I know and I prove to myself that I can have perfectly mentally-healthy days within whatever is out there. but what if it's only because of not knowing entirely.

• it feels terrible. assuming that I feel it has ended. a sense that the dagger has been removed from my side. what if I'm wrong, and I'm just setting myself up for more death-spiral disappointment? what if I only feel the sense of relief because I need it to be true because I need it to be this one way. I can't step in that canoe. I can't know there's only the one way it needs to go. but at the same time, the only way to go on is if it is the way it needs to be. and this cycle of need informing want, informing feeling, informing need, informing want, informing when will it end, how do I make myself cynical to be able to face with bravery the worst possibility. I am going to sue whoever made 2020 "close" for emotional damages. you fool, there is only a single outcome that will be acceptable. I want this pain to be over. I want the wound to heal. I want the devil to bleed, proven just a man. you die like an animal, (to quote Dune Part Two,) I hope. ready to move on. this boulder around my neck for nearly a decade, my youth wasted and gone, sapped up and slapped in the face by a narcissistic rapist. you with your pride and your ego, being wrong about a fucking birth certificate. you pathetic baby. wither away, nazi, begone foul stench, I have no need for your life any longer, save for some suffering. I know introspection is impossible but I want from you the agony of being forced to confront that wall.

I've had to confront my own walls for too long. I want it done with. please, God.

sorry, but if you can believe it, I'm trying to talk myself out of optimism before I learn the truth. but that is what I did last time: there's no point believing the optimist outcome in a world that hates me personally. I needed to spend that time learning to live and love and exist in a world where I believed the bad outcome potentially happened. how to survive with no food or water in case I wake up in the desert, or in a lifeboat on the ocean.

why am I struggling to do that this time? is it because I need the good outcome? or because I know it is possible? but it can't be possible, can it? then why do I feel at peace? is it because I've already learned how to live in the horrible world? I don't have to search my soul as much? what is this feeling I've got?

this perverse urge to override my faith with anxiety. what if that's the only way to make it come true? what if I have to deny myself this gut feeling? what if I need to put the dagger back in the wound...because what if this intuition is wrong? that would crumble me. I can't steel my nerves this way. I feel I must cloud my light with smoke, to ever see again.

am I doing this so that it will turn out like it did last time? or is the feeling in me based on the fact that it did turn out alright last time? there shouldn't have been a 'next time' and now I've got 'the last time' as a factor in this one.

but if, fundamentally, I am a creature of hope, what hope do I have to try and annihilate something so root to the core of my being? how would that help steel nerves, to completely destroy who I am for a cynical band-aid? isn't that the opposite of the various cages of armor I've been trying to retreat from over the years?

11-10-2024

that's what I'm afraid of. if I think because it has to go one way that then it somehow won't. last time it went the way it was supposed to but I was certain it wouldn't/didn't/hadn't. the truth came as a surprise.

this time there's a more appealing candidate, so what? this time, there's actual, federal criminal convictions -- SO WHAT, apparently. apparently SO WHAT. everyone seems to think that's SO WHAT so then so what??? it's still a woman, and a woman can't become president, right?? isn't that what I was bloodied in the face just to learn? bloodied in the stomach to comprehend? bloodied in the mind to understand? you fucking morons, a woman can't be president, it's against nature. because of course it is. no it's not because the last-last one didn't campaign in Wisconsin, it's because of the rules of the universe. I must believe in that, because it's true. I've never seen a woman president in my life. it can't happen. so she campaigned in Wisconsin. so I lent them $25. so I expect some return on investment. SO WHAT???????????

so what? I have to convince myself to believe the horrible outcome so that the good outcome will exist? or is that crazy, that my belief in the worst the first time had nothing to do with the rewarding outcome of pleasant stagnation and lateral moves? so I have to do it again right? does the feeling that it's finally over mean that it didn't happen and we still live in Hell on Earth? do I feel like I must punish myself to be rewarded with the ultimate rare prize of "a qualified adult has a job that a qualified adult who isn't a coke addict nazi pedophile rapist treasonist fresh-off-the-bench felon should be doing"???

tell me what to do so I can do it right for everyone. because apparently this is up to me.

why are voters the only brass tax? why are we the only accountability for a fucking elderly loser rapist pissbaby bitch boy? voting is supposed to be one (1) small way that we contribute to our society. why in fuck's name is it the only way to stop a fucking death cult. why are the institutions too feeble at the one thing they're supposed to be able to do: protect themselves from this very sort of disease? protect themselves from the man who tried to have them killed by an angry mob on january 6th, 2021?????????????? it's because of the money to be made, stupid. of course. but why is it that I am the only one with the power, one day out of four years, when I otherwise have to sit back and watch my country be violated by a mongoloid. explain that to me in a way that makes sense.

...I just feel like it's over. the little man in my chest, to reference Double Indemnity, tells me so. tugs at me with something beyond the molecular need for it to be over at last. the eternal hope that I have a life in front of me, to pursue greater things, is not the voice at the root of this suggestion.

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11-10-2024, continued

and then my friend goes and says something vague and open to implication. sure, it could just be a well-wish on the nebulous, not-quite-understood "mental health journey" I'm undergoing performing. may well be. but it was the first time I really got shocked with dread for the idea that the world hates me, specifically and personally, and everyone wants me and my friends to die. now the steeling must begin. I cannot face such an evil world where crime is rewarded and treason means nothing.

it was a not-great day today, despite getting out of some work on account of rain. I took walk for a few hours around the neighborhood, hat tugged low to the brim of my glasses as a kind of peripheral blinder, neck sore from facing downward 99.91% of the time... music: constant, steady, wonderful. powerful. headphones: sticky, because it's that shitty material that gets sticky when you don't touch it for a long time. (I didn't realized I had a perfectly fitting alternative charging cable for it, I assume everything is proprietary these days.) I check for cars coming as I cross the street of course. but nothing more. my world shrinks. my agitation has become more petty and bitter, as when I feel I am exposing myself the crabbiness comes out more easily. everything is a potential threat, after all... is that what it is...

I walk one last stretch before turning round and tailing home. the splayed, soggy plastic grocery bag out of the corner of my eye grabs my attention and as I look directly at it, it turns into a dead cat. horrible feeling, ghastly, physical reaction. terrible for the cat and its family. say a prayer. hope it doesn't mean anything.

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11-11-2024

"FORTIFY YOURSELF with a flock of friends!" – George Matthew Adams

so my journal tells me as I flip to a new week. ok.

I am trying to live in the cynical belief, to steel my nerves. or whatever. but it's just so hard. the bad outcome is unbelievable, outside of the fact that the only possible outcome is the good one. that that needs to happen for life to continue. that aside, it's unbelievable. but that's how trauma starts, isn't it. something unbelievable happens. the original trauma, the ground zero, my 9/11 (11/8) was watching the unbelievable and unacceptable be forced into reality by a bunch of fucking nazi morons (but I repeat myself) and the brain gives way to the force and shatters. what, because I gloated too much when Obama was re-elected? I hit the retweet limit on twitter. I was 20 years old, I thought it was just a game, I miss you mitt romney.

I have to imagine living in the worst scenario. which for some FUCKING UNACCEPTABLE REASON is STILL roughly possible. when I grow up I am going to dismantle the electoral college for class action emotional damages. why should the unacceptable ever be remotely possible? that is NOT why humans built a society. we started villages so we WOULDN'T be eaten by pumas during the night. so we wouldn't feel like we're going to be eaten by pumas every single fucking unacceptable torturous night. we built glasses so our odd-sighted could see just fine. traffic lights, staircase railings, Normandy Beach. we make these measures so that the worst, unacceptable outcomes are unlikely.

I have to imagine living in the worst scenario. but I already know I can. I've been fucking doing that while you fucking cowards and morons, limp-dick sizzle-reel fellatio jagoffs let treason get away with itself. stop pointing cameras, fuckers.

let me start over again.

I have to imagine living in the worst scenario. but I already know I can. I've been fucking doing that. I want it to be over, not worse. that compulsory need is on the front of my armor but what good does that do when the worst outcome is remotely possible.

well if treason is legal perhaps I can start jaywalking, or maybe peeing behind a tree in the park at night when nobody is around, if I drank too much soda at my friend's cinema patio and my kidneys are hurting on the walk home. surely that wouldn't be a crime, so I could do it. if somehow I get caught, I can just say I'm a fucking rapist and everybody likes me; anyone who doesn't is being mean. suddenly I get away red-handed because I'm unstoppably white and idiotic. if a guy can commit treason and do that, a guy can take a leak when he really needs to. because surely walking all the way home to my own bathroom is oppression, somehow, and I really shouldn't take it, right?

you people make me sick with your lack of the most basic legal standards. back when I was a kid, "fuck" was a very dirty, seldom-heard word. and back then, "treason" was supposedly very illegal, too.

I have to imagine living in the worst scenario. but when I try figuring out this train of thought my eyes run red and a swirl of disgust becomes my body, lashing out in a sarcastic attempt to point the mirror at everybody's hypocrisy but america is un-satirizable. that's the very defense mechanism we're dealing with. the one you won't punch because it makes you laugh. because you're not the ones it is trying to kill. have some fucking dignity, I thought I was growing up in a real fucking country.

is nothing sacred? is nothing of value when everything is for sale?

there is no pride, only tiny wounded children masquerading as grown ups with mortgages and cars. pride is found in the election judges, the people working (volunteering? because if it's paid maybe I'll apply) at the place I went to vote. those people know what's up. those people have dignity. those people have something resembling pride. understanding and comprehension of the system as it is idealized to be. not running around in clown makeup throwing up into each other's mouths and calling it "the 24-hour news cycle" as though it's a natural fact that's always been there like the sun rising or clouds dropping rain. you fucking apes.

I have to imagine living in the worst scenario. because I will outlive all these nazi fucks. I will see the ghost of ronald reagan finally banished back to hell with henry viii where he fucking belongs, the two of them fetid kings, choking down all the shit of every person suffering in the worlds they caused for eternity, a fitting punishment I imagine.

I don't care about politics and haven't been afforded such a luxury for so many years now. this is most personal. I need the evil to suffer, psychologically, as long as possible. not to generate some kind of empathy or self-reflection; that is not possible. I just want the pain. the fear. the unknowable agony. the humiliation. I need you to feel how I felt, even if you don't get anything out of it. I still resent that I have to be the one to inflict the possibility of this humiliation, rather than a system designed to keep these pieces of shit in the sewers. the one I read about in books at school. the one teachers said existed.

11-12-2024

one quantum of solace which didn't exist before, now is one thread in my inner optimism/necessary outlook, proven only by the eventual previous outcome: the first trauma was caused by a vast underestimation. the underestimation has not been underestimated since. in fact, it is probably the reason the last one involved running an elderly, senile, republican man with a loose moral grasp. but still, the fact that it's ever a possible close match-up is disgusting and unacceptable to me. how dare we let you call it anything resembling close. no it is not. the choice is obvious, idiot. one cannot go and commit treason. that is not okay, resolutely speaking. ...I'm off topic again...

the 2020 experience is what has woven for me this undershirt of optimism. I did not have one last time, fresh trauma wound. but still, an undershirt is not medicine. and once more I must prepare to rip this bandaid off and see if there's any obamacare available for my injury.

11-13-2024

not knowing is beginning to gnaw at me. I know only two things: it must not happen again, and a woman has never been president and it's never been possible before (despite the popular vote otherwise) so that's a ridiculous thing to believe in.

I have vibrant dreams each night it seems. this morning I dreamt of venturing on a canoe trip with friends on a northeast Wisconsin river. but before that I dreamt that I was checking twitter and came across the good news. oy.

I need to do more than just watch movies from the 40's. I need to scare myself. prepare myself.

I am supposed to be blogging. I am supposed to be writing. truly I meant this time for catching up on particular creative projects I've procrastinated on, which I fear would be unduly torn asunder by an unacceptable outcome's emotional devastation.

one thing I have deduced about this stupid world is that the world of adults is not a world of grown-ups. it's actually a world of wounded or buried children within these people who just happened to continue aging because that's what most people do. me, I'm built different, my inner child is my co-pilot. that's why I'm so angry all the time at everything. oh and a tap for my creative energies, and enthusiasm, etc. I guess.

11-14-2024

I need to move the post-it note that reads "be curious, not judgmental" to a more prominently viewed place. it feels like a good mantra to set cemented in the consciousness. it's inspired by an attitude I do not possess but want to; something I see in a good friend of mine and it seems like a very helpful tool. those are definitely two wolves you got inside ya and which one you feed yadda yadda yadda so be careful etc.

maybe I'm not as scared as I was in 2020. heck that was before they had the vaccines. I had not hugged a human being for, like, 238 days. I was also not as strong, not as connected, not as loved then as I am now. but I worry I'm not as scared because of that need for the only acceptable outcome to be the outcome.

that's ignorant (derogatory.) that's baseless hope. ...mostly... I can't tell. it's like wearing two different lenses and trying to separate them despite each one saying basically the same thing: how can I destroy this baseless expectation that it must go this way or else we're all doomed, so I can perceive things more rationally? i.e. being actually terrified of the possibility of the evil result. of course if I'd paid attention to the news I would not be thinking such things, but that is my burden, self-afflicted. I need time so I can finish some things before I thrust myself into a potentially evil world full of people who are so pathetically jingoistic that they think inciting armed insurrection of dunces is okay behavior.

I'm sufficiently psyching myself now. scary thoughts. why do I have long texts from unknowns in my phone, if Harris won? why did Jamie recommend I watch The Midnight Gospel? I briefly glanced as I was trying to text Forrest to coordinate movie watching on the patio: activity I can do.

I know two things to be the truth: 1. a woman cannot be united states president. never happened.
2. I can live for over a week in a potential hellscape. a second (third counting the pandemic) apocalypse. this is enough to begin scaring me now.

I do not like that in order to prove I can live I have to shut myself off. but this may be what I need? I did not spend today very productively. but I want to see the movie Juror #2 on Saturday, potentially. a risk. if they had released it when it was released this wouldn't be an issue. but I looked it up on a whim yesterday and it is in fact now playing at one (1) theater in my state.

Forrest wants to watch a movie on the patio tonight. and tomorrow. and as long as we can, weather permitting.

I want to watch some movies at home. I want to write a bunch.

there aren't enough evenings in a day.

well, though, at least now since the sun sets at 4:30pm, there's plenty of evening.

11-15-2024

they still expect my bills paid. I've learned two things: I can live another day. the world does not affect me, I affect it. I let it affect me. okay I didn't learn that I'm just bullshitting, it sounded like it might be on to something and I let it out on the page, but Iunno.

a woman cannot become president of the united states, it's never happened before. even when it made sense. even when it was the popular vote.

I can live in a potential hellscape, therefore I can live in a hellscape...for a little while anyway.

I can't accept it. but it must be feared and faced before I can know the score.

my soul is worn but fine, stands the test of time.

11-16-2024

everything that comes will go.

I walked home from the movie tonight with a closer kind of certainty that I was in hell.

the streets were pretty: glowing orange orbs lined the focal points down to the horizon like a runway. black tree silhouettes stood visible against a distinctly blue sky.

when I got home I looked up to see where the full beaver moon was. it was further above my head, slightly west. I stood and stared, listening to the end of a song in my headphones. a beautiful moment. there was a puffy blanket of clouds covering the whole sky, moving fast across the moon, dimming and brightening the light with a regular current. and then another song began, and I lay down on the ground and relaxed. let it be my sight for a very long five minutes seven seconds.

and it was under this lunar courtship with the sky I started to find my resolve. as in, I would resolve to fervently, rigorously, angrily, passionately, defiantly, and most of all spitefully work to greet everybody with a "how can I make your life better today?" attitude, to be a bringer of cheer and spreader of kindness as righteously and aggressively as I can, if we do live in hell. to counteract the evil. because I am not a violent person. I cannot be, simple as that. I know it's how our grandparents defeated the nazis, what's new. that recipe holds up better than jello salads. but I can't be that type of national hero.

so if the fucking morons who live in the only districts whose vote somehow fucking matters more than actual majority happen to violently force me into a feeling of "being fucked," "against my will" and "without my consent," I will respond by putting as much joy, pleasure, help, kindness, and fucking support into the world they are committed to destroying. I will patch up every fucking hole in this ship they are sinking. I will make everyone's life so much fucking better for the short, brief, tiny, insignificant amount of years we must further endure to get rid of this fucking rapist baboon liar treason-committing literally-insane totally-completely-unrepentably-evil fucking psychopath.

don't let this psycho steal your joy.

I want to bask in the way I feel right now. under the moonlight. having spent time with friends. having done the dishes because I'm home during the day. not a cog in a machine somewhere, but actually doing good by others. I will not contribute to a capitalist hellscape I will not contribute to the infernal machine, I will contribute to us survivors trying not to be eaten alive by its greedy, boorish, insatiable maw.

a radical change to my demeanor, that's for certain. I'm shy. but if we have to repeat hell, why should the crater in my soul reshape it the same way it did before? what if I controlled how the cannonball hits my stomach?

"when life takes a cheap shot at you, you stand your ground."

isn't that all I can do? lean into the skid, go limp in the crash, go with the flow, be water my friend? and now I've found the lesson I learned the last go-round. it all comes back to a philosophy at front of mind, one about the constitution to go on in a cruel world, they work in general senses for any given hardship, they help us with the unavoidable nature of life, why not with the intolerable, unacceptable, preventable, endable man-made shitpile that warps me insane with anger, misery and hate? same medicine, just gotta up the dose.

I know what shape I would take. so maybe the anger can override my natural and nurtured aversion to extroversion, my antisocial comfort zone. unlock, through a sense that "nothing's illegal anymore, I can do anything," a certain gregariousness that I can weaponize to brighten everyone's day. to give of myself, broader and more deeply than I have before. when I go off the deep end, I gotta make it look sexy.

this year, if it's marked by anything thus far, is a year of my lending hand. both hands. and my shoulders. and my legs, my abdomen, my lower back. and it has contributed to a kind of burn-out, and this sense that I am incompatible with my own goals. I cannot find my way back to a path I was on for creative project A or endeavor B. my usual procrastination this is not. it's something else, and I don't want to feel like I'm "blaming" that I had to help people "instead of" yadda yadda yadda, but I have needed to reclaim some "me time" that wasn't just "recovering and relaxing after providing labor for those I love."

but I can do more. especially fueled by spite. righteousness born out of spite is a potent mix, gives me goosebumps. in a way, it's a mask that I can wear to give me confidence, like how when I'm supposed to be somewhere by someone else's order or 'hall pass' or what-have-you, I can enter that space feeling none of the insecurities I usually do. when I am in a play, I am directed to speak on stage in front of people, so I can do that. if I am tasked to fetch something for someone, why I can walk right up to a store employee and inquire about it without shame or self-consciousness, for I am merely an instrument of someone else (which is of course a way of silencing my social anxiety, by saying "if there's a problem, IT WASN'T MY IDEA TO DO THIS. I AM HERE ON BEHALF OF ANOTHER, SO IF THERE'S ANY DISTURBANCE THERE'S SOMEONE TO BLAME OTHER THAN ME, AND THEY'RE BLAMELESS SO THERE'S NOBODY TO BLAME now where are the paper towels?) to use an outdated trope for a point of reference, I'm more comfortable buying someone else tampons than I am buying myself anything I need to ask the employees to unlock a door to get at. which used to just be video games, but now it's stuff like deodorant because the economy is doing great.

what's my point? ...oh, right, so I guess that's what fucked up shape I am in, regularly. very antisocial, not here to speak to anyone, murmuring "hi" if someone is kind enough to verbalize a greeting as we pass on the sidewalk. it's not that I'm not pleased, or pleasant. why, I could fall in love with a stranger just being there for that we're sharing a nice day, or that we said hi to each other. but I'm not exactly "bursting with love at the seams" it's more that background-radiation, a baseline of 'yeah other people are good, in fact' but seldom is that expressible by me. for various reasons, including some I've touched on in my various blogs. it's so hard to worry about how random little gestures of kindness might be unwelcome if -- oh I'm sorry was I too enthusiastic?? well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse

 meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I hyperbolize a bit, for comedic effect[?] but you get the idea. tl;dr it's a fear of my bubbly, natural-genuine-nugget inner childlike enthusiasm being rejected or shut down or punished. why do you think I'm so zipped up and trepidatious in the first place??? thanks, kindergarten through 5th grade.

anyway, I'm laying staring at the moon, resolving to, if we must go insane [again], that I will go insane [again] in the most baller way possible. if the enemy is the exact opposite in every way from me, surely logic follows that it's time I wholly embody being the exact opposite from that. maybe that will kill the darkness. and be the greatest, most productive, lend-a-hand freak-out possible to the damaged mind and broken heart. I'll be so kind you'll hate me! but pal, I hate nazis. so you can direct your hate at those fucks. I'm gonna make new friends and I'm gonna party with all my friends.

we're gonna get out, yes we're gonna get out

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11-16-2024

The fates have a sense of humor, and that worries me of course, nowadays. but this is about Juror #2, the movie I repeatedly contacted warner brothers and theater chains about making available somewhere in my state. it got a 50-screen release because dave zaslav is an evil moron who's stupid and also bad. he's a man with no friends.

you keep the President of Movies' name out your fuckin mouth

anyway it now, ironically, plays in a theater near me. got a lot of taken seats, too. I had to skip the matinee because there were no good seats left. I'm glad people are seeing it and I'm proud to pay the extra ticket price. I know it's just giving zaslav more embezzlement money (every ceo's paycheck is an embezzlement because it takes money away from the people actually generating the money at a company like warner brothers, especially a fucking stupid do-nothing asshole saboteur cinema-hater anti-human scumbag like zaslav) but undoubtedly it's money that proves a point. even if they won't release the figures. if he's punished properly, this will get significant Oscar accolades and be required to have a re-release in 2025 so people can see it.

anyway, it's playing near me. I must venture out into the open wild and try preserving my cocoon. I will have my headphones to play drowning-out music (quiet enough to not be heard by others, loud enough for me.) I will stare at my phone. I will put on my sweater that reads "ANTI-SOCIAL" on it.

at least I've found my path in this isolation by now: steel myself to live in the worst outcome. the world that hates my guts, spits on everything decent about me, threatens what I love, violates what I experience, and thinks dignity is a weakness but committing treason is legal and cool. let's all gather around to make fun of more people with muscular disabilities and brag about sexual assault. hardy fucking har.

anyway, I've got to go to a movie. my word is a stronger bond and I am committed to my duty.

I'm back. I'm dehydrated. I'm about to eat tacos.

a selection of songs which shuffled in and fit the mood square:

Bad Bad Hats • Say Nothing

Flyana Boss • Keep It Moving

Little Simz • Introvert

Babehoven • Chariot

Bad Bad Hats • All-Nighter

Hospital Bracelet • I Didn't Want to Name It

I'm not done living in this before time yet. I have blog posts to write. I have a video I'd like to at least get the script finalized and narration recorded for. I'd like to have a few more days of not going to bed with suicidal thoughts (not really, but not not. hard to explain, wound is old now, don't want to revisit it to make sure what it was I felt those first couple fucking months of Never Being Happy Again... just know for the record that I would never think of committing suicide. I love this life too much.)

11-18-2024

I know I can live in a potential hellscape. I know I can be happy in a potential hellscape. these are the two ingredients to survival. theoretically all I need.

11-19-2024

2:20am,

I got frightened. I don't want to go to bed, I feel like I can't rest and let go of consciousness if the knowledge is that stupid evil is allowed to operate against all reason with such a position of authority. somehow the fact that this stupid evil inherently undermines the entirety of said authority doesn't undo itself like it should -- as impossible structures would collapse under their own weight once built in frozen time and then unpaused to give in to physical laws. yes voting is choose your opponent but the fact is you also go to bed with the president every night. I don't like sleeping when that diametrically opposed, literally insane, stupid, evil is allowed to exist unchallenged. (and I consider every failed challenge to be "unchallenge." do it right, you assholes.) if I am the only person to challenge it with every fiber of my body I must be awake. I must un-believe so loudly and constant so the death cult's god fucking evaporates.

8:27am,

I had another crazy whirlwind of dreams, including one that frightened me. full-on panic breakdown, I thought I was awake and learned the awful truth. and the finding out was almost as bad as what I learned. it was enough to extrapolate from and that felt horrible.

10:40am,

but now that I am up and going on awake, the unacceptable outcome feels once more all that unbelievable. I've spent 14 mostly-pleasant days in the world, on Planet Earth. it seems odd to believe that much evil is existing alongside me.

but now I have to go back to being scared. I cannot steel my nerves by feigning ignorance, that doesn't work. the only thing keeping me calm is being ignorant, and that is fleeting.

I really need to "lock in" and finish the blogging and writing I've been mulling and stewing for months or more than a year. that's what I am mainly "hibernating" for; I don't want to be forced to undergo another horrible transformation and case of arrested development which might completely alter my brain chemistry and the way I think about the very interesting and insightful things I've been thoroughly exploring. sunk cost on the pennies for my thoughts.

I saw a Canadian flag flying today. old and worn. has it always been there or was it just put up? scared myself.

11-20-2024

1:14am,

scared myself again. glanced at a text: room for doubt what it's referring to but the vague little I gleaned feels pretty hot in my face and cold in my bones. something about thinking it's important that everyone's reaction...****

ugh. I know to be true only this: we cannot have the bad outcome. no woman has ever been president. can't happen, never has. and I can live with happiness, creativity, even relaxation, for 15 days in a potential hellscape.

and still I feel the creeping trauma lurking back into my scarred being. maybe the ice going through my veins will keep me young. I need it, because I already lost a quarter of my life to fucking morons' evil onanism. anyone thinking both candidates are the same, I didn't realize you were old enough to vote, by how stupid that sounds. this is the most intensely personal thing ever and the most obvious choice in the world. if you pretend to be progressive you cannot allow voting for the greater of two evils. lesser is still lesser, dude. choose the easier opponent to fight.

(random numbers wouldn't be texting me if the good outcome happened... nobody wants help in a functioning society... a woman cannot be president, never happened.)

it only makes sense for the good outcome to happen. the unacceptable outcome is a fucking death knell. it cannot happen. but at the same time, I do not deserve to be happy, do I? practically since I was old enough to drink, I ought to have been. you fucking selfish assholes think I deserve to be as miserable as you.

I remember how it was last time. for some reason I trick myself into thinking it has to be that way: that in order for the good outcome to happen, I need to fully believe the bad outcome did. that will somehow make things right, save the world, keep me alive, preserve a future.

but since I think of this kind of thing, unlike last time when it was me naked in the water, I can't trust superstition. I have nothing to hold onto that takes friendly. am I doing the wrong thing by even mentioning these malicious thoughts. I cannot participate in such a cruel world on top of cruel world on top of cruel world on top of cruel world, and I fear the worst.

because it only makes sense that just as I am on the edge of freedom. the cusp of future. you treasonous bastards take it away from me. the relief. the release. the catharsis. the sobbing. getting to breathe again. encouragement that common sense exists, decency and dignity exist. the adult world still has grown-ups.

I don't get that. I don't get to... not even be happy. I don't get to be safe. I don't get to sleep at night.

you few love rape, treason, insurrection, and causing the deaths of multiple Capitol Hill security officers too much. keep it to yourselves, why don't ya?

3:00am,

I prayed to God for a long time. as good a get-ready-for-bed aid as a melatonin would have been. I'm exhausted, sad, in love, trying to feel the love back. A baby bear hugs a fretting possum. I see it before me.

I am going to read Super You again. the book on self-help by Emily V. Gordon which I started, companion notebook in hand, and never continued after not progressing very far. I am very much ruminating on my identity, sense of self, of self-esteem, of accessing confidence from one context for contexts where I have none... I think it will be a good time to get back into that book.

I don't need the bad outcome to be the best favorite, more generous, more gregarious version of myself. I could slough that torment off, wash my hands, and bring cheer and bright tidings to everyone purely from... but there cannot be a woman president. woman means vagina. that's not allowed. it's disqualifying. it's never happened. it's disqualifying. it's never happened. it's disqualifying. it's never happened. it's disqualifying. it's never happened. it's never happened.

I am going to read Super You again. the book on self-help by Emily V. Gordon. I've been thinking about identity and self-esteem a lot and it seems apt. I'm still reading Dune and I've been watching a few Steve Martin films recently which has me thinking of getting back into Born Standing Up, a memoir about a guy who got to live in his twenties.

I am going to read Super You again. It's about some things I've been on lately, thought-wise.

3:24am,

yes, I concede that changing myself for the better or whatever is not dependent on the outcome, that either case would permit my betterment. that doesn't change the fact that elation is the healthier vessel than spiteful and indignant wrath. so yes I can become this elusive "better me" but there still exists my vulnerable "mood" and "psychology." so I guess I'm saying that promising such and such change isn't gonna cut it. but also, such and such change will be permitted either way. I get to decide how I live. I get to decide the world I belong in. I'm autistic: the world already doesn't want me to belong. but the catch-22 is, I deserve to be here and be the happiest, favorite version of myself possible, dickhead. we all do.

"move in the direction of your choosing"

"ideally, our Super Yous are actualized enough to know that being actualized doesn't work all the time."

        - Emily V. Gordon

the only way this is like the first cocoon is that I simply need to be ready and willing to face the awful truth.

that is how I get out of this limbo. it's not about catching up on blogging.

I, uh, just went on at length in private to the Lord about how I am not Jesus Christ. but one can't help compare this necessary relent to the willingness to die so the world may continue. (...but it's arguably more like staring down a cannon to shoot you in the belly.)

am I able to face [hell and walk backwards into God]?

4:30am,

this is that feeling, the feeling that I am going to die. hate only does so much, rage only does so much. it's all fear. I am going to be killed because of morons and rapists. I am being figuratively raped. this is against my will, this is against common decency, this is against dignity, this is nonconsensual. I refuse to live in a world that violates my consent this way. I do not want to die.

"leave hope behind, who enters here"

8:48am,

tonight I did not dream. I merely closed my eyes. and felt my torso, numb and buzzing with insipid electricity, chopped up into pieces and rearranged like objects in a water tank. slow and continuous floating.

kinda what it feels like but with every chunk of my torso

now I am properly scared of the hell, the unacceptable, the complete reopening of the deepest wound by filthy hands.

10:20am,

I had therapy in the morning. needed that. it's not a fix but we achieved some understanding of an outlook to aim for. a radical sea-change to "invert the backdrop" -- in short, to make it so that bad things happen within a life of happy things, rather than happy things from the past several years being happenstance subjects within a frame of darkness. my context is doom. ...wait, does it need to be?

it's the beginnings of a shape, an ideal. an ideal self. perhaps. you can't tell me to "just focus on the good things" like that is an idiom, aphorism, catch-phrase. it's printed on cereal boxes, probably. I can't attain inner peace from a cereal box. packaging all wrong.

"listen Dave, remember, you're not in here, it's just your body."

        - Philip Marlowe, The Long Goodbye

"you were a boulder then, you're in my pocket now."

how many times does my heart require breaking? are they supposed to make a monster out of me, callous and cruel? I thought it was right to have a heart.

I have proved I can live in a potential hellscape. but I already proved it, why I did it! what more needs to be proven? and what good is proof if the experience is soul-wrecking? being thrown from a bridge knowing I'll survive hitting the ground oh great that really lessens the EVERYTHING about it.

12:02pm,

the volcanic ash from the crater is settling like flakes sinking to the bottom of a fish bowl.

3:16pm,

if I didn't have a happy childhood, would I be having a happy adulthood?

"everything that keeps me together is fallin' apart"

6:41pm,

I know two things to be true. one, there are more decent people than evil manipulated terrorists. two, a woman cannot be president, it has never ever happened before.

but it's the most important part -- it's good, that I don't get my hopes up one iota. being crushed by having modest expectations rooted in common sense and basic decency and human dignity is what punctured the deepest in the original trauma. and it's no good preparing to face a demon if you suspect it's just another barnyard animal to tussle with getting into the barn. you prepare to face a demon, you prepare to face the worst most vile and inhumane circumstances that defy the very sense of God.

––––––––––––––––––––– ♖ ♖ ♖ –––––––––––––––––––––

7:25pm,

went out and stared at the sky again. cloudier, and constant snowing. the snow accumulated across the entire ground. I put another couple Cocco songs on. I appreciated the light pollution painting the grays and streetlights glowing in the beautiful dull. if not for the cold I'd sleep out here.

this is gonna sound dumb, but first of all this entire blog entry is dumb. I am very dumb. I am a snail that keeps getting squished flattened crushed by all the people who are so intelligent they figured out how to destroy their own humanity and be rid of paltry emotions so they could make tons of money. and mint the hustle culture gig economy. those cruel bastards are so much fucking smarter than me, a little heart and little brain that just thinks being kind and decent is pretty good.

anyway Cocco's lyrics are indecipherable to me because I don't speak Japanese. but musically it's just so ballad, powerful. there's a romantic sadness wrapped up in some bright determination and bold hope, that's what I feel emotionally from songs like that. or songs like this. where there's an obvious wistfulness but the hope cracks through it like a chick out from an egg.

anyway, standing in that field, under that soft blanket of cloud, I got the strangest "to be continued" sense of existential optimism within this doomed hellscape. because it felt like when anime is wrapping up a long arc, but there's still a overarching villain left to fight, goal to achieve. the series isn't over yet. (even though it only made sense that please God please God please God let us just have this one basic simple goal accomplished for us so we can resume the regular series...)

there was a palpable sense of endurance, this night in the blizzard's field; the gang will stick together. we'll fight another day, and we'll be strong enough to win.

I don't watch anime, but I did watch Digimon as a kid, and it was giving me that mid-season vibe where they've faced and overcame something, but there's more to do. Digimon Frontiers has this whole arc with a dark enemy who turns out to be a main character's long-lost brother; and there's more to go after they rescue him. still a god yet to kill with the power of friendship.

like I said it sounds dumb but it was real. it felt like the only thing providing me hope. it felt like the only optimistic perspective/context/perception/interpretation/reading/viewing/feeling/sensation/your word here. it was another firm branch to catch myself on, in my disorienting pitch down the choppy rapids -- after some fucking asshole pushed me out of my lazy inner tube several years ago.

grab whatever helps you in the river's darkness and never let go.

we're gonna get out yeah we're gonna get out.

when I feel uncertain now, I remember how, we carry the feeling.

11-21-2024

the snow melted everywhere; ground still warm enough.

I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour but heaven knows I'm miserable now. song lyrics are magic. poetry is language transfigured. don't you think?

my attitude my outlook, I realize now it matters.

coming up for oxygen, the world's the same but something's changing.

I turn on music now for escapism of course, something to fill the void that is 'being conscious in hell' but it's more than that, it is a salve, it is bottled joy. medicinal. hearing words that resonate keeps me going. other peoples' thoughts pressed into my brain sometimes reminds me of power and potential, growth and strength. righteousness and faith rejuvenated by something utterly simple.

like, oh right, my trauma made me stronger, even if the feelings are similar, they can't stab the same wound the same way:

WHATEVER I WAS BACK THEN, I'M NOT LIKE THAT NOW

TELL ME YOU'RE SCARED WHO CARES WE'RE ALL SCARED SOME HOW

been using music as means of nullifying the audial portion of my surroundings when I go outside or places. it's medicine and I see fit to keep it on a steady drip, you can't overdose (just don't take it too loud.)

––––––––––––––––––––– ♜ ♜ ♜ –––––––––––––––––––––

11-22-2024

12:25am,

I close my game and I realize I hate going to bed. that's the most immediate/ tangible/percussive impact of my being psychologically raped. going to bed means I have to have an intermission of time between engaging with activities and unconsciousness, bridged ideally by "nothing," and that leaves nothing but room for the dark thoughts to come. evil thoughts, evil powers seek my mi-i-i-i-ind, I feel lost every time oh. as soon as I turn the television off, I am staring at the void. black and consuming. I see myself but only barely.

this is the reason I have spent every single night for the last however many years since my trauma, falling asleep to the sounds of something I've already watched before. my two phases, the shows that I alternate with, sticking to one for months at a time, are both Wisconsin movie discussion programs. from Madison we have Welcome to the Basement, and outta Milwaukee you got your Best of the Worst. I find the familiar discussions, jokes, rhythms and voices calming, and while there may be episodes I avoid for trigger-y purposes because these shows existed in 2016, I rewatch most of them to help me fall asleep. because even though I've seen them hundreds of times before, the subjects always spark engaged thought in my brain, yet it's so familiar that it's not stimulating enough to keep me awake on account of attention. these are my sleepy-time life rafts to carry me down the choppy river of existentialism that is falling asleep. they are a trauma bandage.

melatonin is my friend, but I still don't know what time to take it and how much of a tablet I'll need... and now is when I need it most.

1:01pm,

thing about this crisis is, and why I sometimes, regrettably call it rape (even if it's not sexual it's a usable word; it's above torment, it's beyond abuse. it's an affront to everything I hold to be true. it is an all-out assault on my faith in humanity and institutions and living.) it colors every detail of waking life. infecting everything with a pall. music is different, jokes are different, whether or not I feel like taking a shower is different (I don't today, and I've been pretty good otherwise at taking one every few days this month, oh well.) it's a psychic fatality that alters, changes me. I'm cold inside. my insides are colder. my speech is muted.

speaking of muted I had a dream where my subconscious laid out really what my problem is: my "opposition to." it's not political. yes, conservatives and republicans are all childish death-cultists who should have no business holding any office. but democrats are capitalist dick-suckers too, afraid of being outwardly progressive until their backs are against a wall re: gay marriage or whatever. and we need that stopping also. politics was supposed to be about wanting the same peace and justice in a society and just having different ideas of what to tax in order to get there. but anything offering power is going to attract the people it should always keep away.

and I guess that's at the root of my opposition to my enemy. political views completely aside: this criminal is simply, fundamentally unqualified for the most important job in the country. you do not get to be that if you are unqualified. they won't let me have an internship at some companies without prior experience. what the fuck is our stupid fucking adult world??? now say with a straight face that my credit score matters in any way, shape, or form. if who you are as a person doesn't fucking matter, who you are as a number is laughable. dystopian.

and he's been unqualified since 2015, he is a piece of shit, a compulsive liar -- (I know politicians lie about things like $2000 stimulus checks which you and I are still owed all the time, but this is different. used to be you would catch a politician in a big lie and they would do the honorable thing of blowing their brains out on live television stepping down. RIP Budd Dwyer. accountability matters.) -- he made fun of a guy with a disability, which is way, IMO, worse than shouting "woooo" like Dean Whateverhisnamewas. oh, and he's a rapist who has admitted to sexual assault. that's unacceptable too, what the fuck I thought we had a cancel culture for that.

and now he's a committer of treason -- actual fucking treason, you can prove it because a mob never causes an insurrection on their own accord, they only do it when they worship a false god and he whips them into a frenzy -- and a recently-convicted felon.

and yeah I think felons who aren't him should be allowed to vote and even run for office, I believe in second chances. the door of redemption needs to be open to everyone, or it can be closed for you, too. what a fundamental pillar of my faith, that is. however, the door is merely open, and it's up to an individual to choose to enter it.

I do not believe that a man who's incapable of introspection or change or reading above an 8th grade level -- or just being him because I'm sure there's someone who fits those general descriptors who is a good person -- would ever change nor do I believe that someone who was convicted in the same year as an election deserves to participate in that particular election. what is that??? in our justice system you have to serve time before you become "a former felon" are you all fucking insane??? how is that allowed? are you all smoking crack??? how does running for THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN THE COUNTRY MAKE YOU VOID FROM HAVING TO SURRENDER TO THE COURTS???????

I fucking hate you, america. you piece of shit. you lied to me all my life.

let's go back to that treason point for another paragraph because I want to reiterate that he committed acts of treason. indisputably. you know when Tracy Morgan was in that accident with a walmart truck, he didn't sue the driver, he sued fucking walmart. because walmart put that truck driver there. remember the Manson family murders? Charles Manson didn't commit any of those murders but they still locked him away for life because of them. because he committed the act. he caused the act to occur. he was ultimately responsible.

Manson was another false god, and I lived to see him die. I will live to see this one die too.

anyway in my dream I was in public with my dad and having a meltdown and screaming hard enough that I couldn't breathe or produce sound because I was exhausting my lungs too forcefully. (you know, being a kind and sensible person in this fucking world that's just a Tuesday.) I was screaming the simple truth.

"YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO HAVE THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN THE COUNTRY."

no political angle. just common sense. just textbook sensery. just basic logic. just the most appropriate, cold-take statement anyone could make. undebatable mathematic euqationery.

but apparently there's a rule in the book that says a dog can play basketball, and if he kills minorities while he does it they give him a medal and ask you to donate money to the DNC so they can "stop him" with all the non-"Jan Sixy" methods that have never worked because those normal ways only work on normal humans, not demons from the bowels of that cursed New York city.

God please send me back to 2012 and I swear I'll vote for mitt romney. I hate obama, he's been nothing but horrible for me personally. except that music list where he shouted out The Beths, touché.

and I cringe saying "most important job in the country," partially because that would be garbage men and bus drivers -- and particularly because in having it losing the popular vote by a significant margin I will remind you he devalued it. voided its authority. the supreme court for example: they don't matter at all. they are beyond corrupt. they are fundamentally broken and I revoke their authority in all cases for the foreseeable future (and recent past) as a citizen. it is my duty to check and balance what the other branches fail to do: the supreme court is void and invalid. disregard them, it has no legal authority whatsoever anymore. join me in this belief. perception is reality.

leave a comment on this web zone and I'll mail you a pizza roll

my boss keeps calling me and I can't pick up because I don't want him to unknowingly reveal any information to me. I need my parents to screen his voicemails. he probably won't say anything but I don't know how to explain to him my isolation and its purpose.

but now that I am pretty sure I know that everyone in the country electoral college wants me to fucking die and hates that I think reasonable thoughts and have common sense and dislike rapists and treason and violence and nazism, does it matter? yes it does. because I need to steel myself. I need to become a righteous instrument of self-content and defensive power. I need to become mentally healthy in the least-mentally healthy and most hostile environment. I need to weather a second rape.

I still need time to prepare.

in my dream my dad kicked me in the face while I was keeled over, because he didn't like that I was screaming logical thoughts outside. in the real world, he doesn't like when I use the word 'rape' flippantly. and I should address this here. I want to iterate or reiterate that I am not using the word rape flippantly when I describe the 2016 trauma as a rape. I am sympathetic to victims of rape, obviously. I just sometimes run out of suitable synonyms for what I felt, how it affected me, what unit of our lexicon best conveys the emotion, if not in exact detail, then in scope, in scale, intensity. I run down the list of other words and wind up with the one I haven't said yet, and sometimes I say it. and I also think it's effective to use extreme language in cases where it really doesn't feel like people are listening.

listening would in this case involve proper legal action taking place

to bar the enemy from doing anything but eat three meals a day in a box.

I heard the story of a pastor who gave a sermon, I forget what about, some kind of societal justice matter that goes overlooked (poverty as I recall,) and in the sermon he said the word 'damn' for emphasis. and later closed by saying, approximately, "you won't remember what I'm preaching today when you go out and return to your ordinary behaviors, but you will remember that I said the word 'damn' in church." and if that's all I can do when I describe my trauma with the sensitive r-word, if that is the only quantum of respect and deference I can get, that's...well okay that's not enough, I need real justice and restorative policy and reparative action. I need the system to work as it's fucking supposed to idealized to be and could be easily. but still, it's something. being heard.

because for nearly a fucking decade I have been screaming until I can't produce sound or breath from this ungodly injustice. and have seen no one [who can really do anything] hearing me.

I kinda wanted to write "rapacious injustice." ...but I felt like I was using the word too much. "ungodly" just doesn't have the weight it should, though, you know? it's like how circa 2007 everyone was devaluing the word 'epic.' and that was because they'd already devalued the word 'awesome.' bro this country hates God.

but I will try to say it as little as I can. I know people don't like it. I don't like it either, man. I wanna use this space to explore that impulse.

yes, I am have been immensely privileged to have lived 24 years of my life without any major traumas. just sporadic bullying and educational infractions and being autistic in an age that didn't quite know that's what I was, and certainly didn't tell me about it for a long darn time. oh, and the heterosexual agenda, that fucked up my shape in ways I'm still untangling (but does that count if it's so handily reversible through processing? I mean, I guess. I'm healing from that, so it doesn't feel like it's "trauma" anymore...)

even 9/11 was just a thing that happened on TV when I was 9. I don't know that I'd seen the towers before then. it gave us a very weird, somber day at school and made all the adults go quiet for...honestly not long enough, I see in retrospect how childish the national reaction was. it makes me revere it less -- not the tragedy itself or the victims. obviously. but when the first responders still don't have fucking compensation for their chronic health issues...? I just know that we're dealing with stupendously unserious people. fuckers with absolutely no real sense of national pride, just xenophobia and huge bets on xenophobia stock going up because they're allowed to manipulate its prices. so why should I spend energy on grief if you are pissing it away on fake wars and bush league Islamophobia? you are my role-models, aren't you s'posed to be? we have to be groped to get on a plane: terrorists won, folks. don't bother putting your flag print sock garters back on after the pat-down, they're meaningless.

but 2016, that was my JFK assassination. I agree that it's a very, deeply stupid one to have break me completely down to ash. shatter a vase into total fine powder. but it is what it is. and I'm just trying to express in words how hurtful it has been and continues to be. how unfair it was to betray my core beliefs this way. but her emails, I guess. fantastic point. tou-fucking-ché.

I want my $2,000

I get it though. what I felt and feel is [basically to put it extremely crudely and massively under-sellingly in a perhaps-wildly-inappropriate comparison] akin to what someone without all my privileges (everything except wealth and neurotypicality, basically) probably feels all the time in this land of hate. thanks for waking me up I guess, I now have a diaspora of my own, or maybe it's just better to call it a psychosis. doesn't change the extremity of how it felt.

what 21 hours and 15 minutes will do to a mf

babe please let me fight the lesser of two evils now.

I also should point out that when I call our enemy by the factual descriptive term "rapist" I am not making a connection between his actual, committed acts of rape/brags about sexual assault to my occasionally referring to my trauma by using the r-word sometimes. those are completely separate thoughts in my mind, always. I will never diminish the severity of his crimes against women or in any way suggest they are comparable to his and his cult followers' crimes against me.

I want to stress that referring to my trauma by that r-word is a rare occurrence. I only use it 'when I run out of ways to describe it.' usually in moments of anger, or when I feel the feeling creeping back up into my brain. I've done such a good job of cramming it down behind my cortex, but you know sometimes there's a headline that should never have been possible but you "adults" between the enactor, reporter, editor, and my eyeballs did absolutely nothing to prevent it, and I get the flames, the flames on the side of my face.

it is intentionally provocative through its extremism, which is the point, but nothing more. I do not casually nor regularly use that word to describe my trauma. I mostly use the word 'trauma.' because that's unexaggeratedly factual, sans-metaphor or colorful language filters.

other words I use frequently include 'psychosis,' 'abuse,' 'damage,' 'agony,' 'wound,' 'affliction,' 'torture,' 'ruination,' 'psychotic break,' 'mental health crisis,' 'our apocalypse,' '9/11 2: electorate boogaloo' (okay that one I just made up right now, it's stupid, I'm sorry. unless it got the cheap laugh outta you, then it's stupid, thank you.)

have I "made enough of an excuse" to 'get away with' using the r-word descriptively in the moments when I am most upset, vocabularily weakest, seeing red too much to hold my tongue, or feel as though I've been spending words like devalued coins that lost their meaning through repetition and I just want to be heard in a way that will make someone upset at me as if that might tell me, by making them angry, that empathy with my perpetual anger is possible? we're all flawed, man. cut me some slack have some grace for our moments of less-than-ideal character. I'm not actually trying to write myself a hall pass, I'm just attempting to articulate the psyche beneath what's true, and express myself with candor, rather than shy away from this uglier side of me.

if I felt simple words spoke it sufficiently [which, again, my soul tells me requires that my words stir action in those who have the position to act on my behalf, almost like I'm a constituent and they have to listen to our majority voice or something...] I'd be different in those moments. the long and short of it is that my trauma is bad and I feel very bad about it happening. and I won't feel the ability to heal until it's finally over. I've done a good job of not celebrating prematurely for most almost-something things over the years. I'll wait til the fat lady takes a bow.

2:25pm,

"I am safe in my home." despite what my body tells me I am safe in my home. the bastard nazi rapist legal-traitor recent-felon cannot touch me here. I am not being strangled physically, only psychologically. systematically. ethically. my soul's belly ruptures but I am not literally bleeding. my whole moral basis is being gnawed at by rabid beavers, yet I am permitted to wake up in the morning.

I'm sorry I'm so fucking conservative, having these senses of basic morality, ethics, common sense, decency, and a belief in personal and societal dignity like I do. I'm sorry for being such an extreme conservative for these old-fashioned beliefs.

love I normally give away

Imma show to myself today

I know-ho-oh-whoa-oh

Im OK

this song has become the new 'Claw Machine'

as in this has been stuck in my head for several days in a row

it's so beautiful, I've known it for years

but its rhythms, its loops, its different modes

swirl in my head, the bubble bath for my brain

for which it has been sudsing for several days in a row

always coming back to it when I've got no other song in my head

when I've got nothing else thinking about

sometimes this happens with a song

a fixation you could say

the mind puts it on in the background, fixating

and keeps it playing there for "at length"

growing in appreciation

it's the same as falling in love, truly

and I'll physically listen to it over and over again, too

feeding the fascination

kindling the romance

deepening the reverence

even if song lyrics don't match up with how you're feeling

exactly textbook

you might shout them, infused with that emotionality

like driving a car down the road: it's a shape that you're in

and it gets you where you're going

no matter what you're driving, it's taking you there

the road trip is a bonding, you and the vehicle

anyway, a little sidetrack; the above lyric certainly

has important relevance

as I am evidently intending to have

it tattooed across my frontal cortex

remember that all the love in the world is possible

it comes from within

and time is an illusion all of it's within you now

you can be the ever-flowing font

5:00pm,

• "live your life for yourself"

• I can't exactly "throw myself into my work" re: trauma an' tragedy because I have executive dysfunction!

10:00pm,

• if I can dream of a better land, where all my brothers walk hand in hand, tell me why, oh why, oh why can't my dream come true.

11-23-2024

God, promise me a rainbow at the end of this flood. even if I have to be that rainbow myself. I can be the ever-flowing font.

oh, by the way my boss called my dad I guess, and he was able to explain my situation to my boss. I'm going to work this week for at least a day, hot dog!

11-24-2024

an evening of friendship, a lovely favorite movie, reminds me there are pockets of air in this suffocation. I can stay alive, what's more I can enjoy it. every scrap of pleasure is a thief's bounty, heisted from the forces of misery. God wants you to be happy: steal it.

11-25-2024

I had to go to work today. it's either that or the ham in my grilled cheese last night was past its date, but I woke up around 4am needing to void my intestinal troubles. which is kinda funny because while I was half-awake I was dreaming enough that my subconscious was totally recontextualizing the sharp pain in some way, I can't remember the narrative scenario or meta-data of it really, but it was some kind of long-term state. it was just something I was dealing with now, had to get used to. it wasn't until I achieved enough consciousness to realize oh, I just need to visit the bathroom and the sharp gaseous jabbings will stop. analyze that semi-dream as you please. there was no dreaming otherwise this morning.

anyway I went to work and it was decent. nice to see my boss again. of course because he'd been secondhand briefed about my attempted ignoration, he wanted to speak about it. one'a them 'confiding mentoring' type moments. except I cut him off partway through. gracefully he opened with enough to keep me ignorant (even though I know/am scared of exactly what to expect) and y'know before 6 days ago it woulda been too much implication but I found my cold fear, so I could roll with that one punch: yes, things happen that are out of my control. like the weather. I understand everything from his thesis paragraph. what I should have said was "yes and I do get to control when I learn about the weather." I appreciate it, of course. it's an expression of love, I get that. but I don't need to be pried out of this cocoon by someone having "the scene where they have that speech" -- assuming that's what he was going for. I'm just too protective today. life is not a movie, despite how I live my life a lot of the time.

(if life were a movie, poetic justice set-up and payoff laws would dictate the good outcome happens, because it would make narrative sense. in addition to common sense, basic ethics, moral decency, simple-mindedness, Constitutionality, etc.)

so anyway that's some income for me, yippee.

this comic hangs at my desk at work

the problem is when the weather threatens my life†, I get to make decisions about it. run to shelter. hide from the tornado. evacuate the city ahead of a hurricane. collect government assistance. sometimes you don't have time, sometimes fema sucks wet goose dick, the metaphor breaks down but you know what I mean. I believe that I should have control over things which I believe immediately threaten my existence. I also believe the majority is sensible and the popular vote is all that matters, the electoral college is a racist vestigial institution for assholes. and it brings me intense mental anguish.

when it comes to a threat against where I live, I want control. when it comes to forcing me to feel like I want to fucking die, I believe I deserve control. I will not kill myself ever. too many people deserve me, need me, etc. and furthermore, killing myself would only give those pathetic wretches exactly what they want from me: I will outlive all my enemies and see the bright future I was promised, and that I know is possible.

I grew up with the understanding that every generation of parents "got to make life better for their children" and let it be known that yeah, I had a wonderful childhood. unfortunately I had to stop being a child. now I am waiting for the better life that it seemed my parents worked really hard during the 90's and 00's to allow me to enter. I have wasted almost a decade of my life barricaded from that by monsters and trauma and preventible disease if we'd all stayed indoors for eight damn weeks.

I know the serenity prayer. I had eight years to fail to see what good that does me. I'm not a recovering alcoholic so maybe I don't get it. I'm not even an alcoholic. matter of fact I hate that I wish I was because of this kind of gargantuan-obviously unjust bullshit.

"you get beaten though, don't you?"

"sure, but that's good too. and you don't mind anything. not anything at all.
then you sleep."

"how long can you keep it up?"

"oh, a long while. as long as you last..."

"oh, Ned. that's awful."

"think so? other things are worse."

"where do you end up?"

"where does everybody end up? ya die. and that's alright too."

when something has complete and utter power over my state of mind, of mental health and the neverending background thoughts (I dunno if it's autism, probably is, but when I'm conscious I am never not thinking) which prevent me from going to sleep, or making getting to bed a Sisyphean act... when it has a clasp on my sleep!!!!! I demand as my right, to have control. it's my brain.

when the majority agrees with me, we deserve to have our voices heard, and justice reflect the overwhelming consensus. not the reflection of the bastardized in the manipulated gullible.

also rapists who make fun of physical disabilities, get convicted of felonies without serving time, and commit undeniable acts of treason, should never be allowed to run for office. I'm sorry if that's a hot take. I guess I'm just extremely conservative. maybe it's my Christian upbringing.

I cannot accept that we have no control over a thorn the size of a tree in my side. what else is control made for? the idea of relinquishing or accepting such a lack of control smells like giving up and walking to the gallows. in prison you always need a way to crash out.

the serenity prayer just doesn't quite "do it for me" y'know? I kinda felt that jolt from this scene in Dune, though:

at the same time, my disposition relates heavily to Paul's nightmare awakening, "YOU DID THIS TO ME!!" that primal, guttural, unfair feeling of betrayal towards the miracle of life that is your birth into the world. yes, we must join the flow. but that doesn't mean we have to like it, right?

1:43pm,

I NEED TO BE STRONG ENOUGH IN MYSELF, NOT TO AVOID BLAMING THAT WHICH IS 100% TO BLAME FOR MY PAIN, BUT SO THAT I CAN OVERCOME THE PAIN. REGARDLESS WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SOURCE OF BLAME. SO THAT I CAN TRANSCEND MY WOUND. NOT SO I CAN IGNORE THE DANGER OR EVIL BUT SO THAT I CAN DO MORE THAN SURVIVE; THRIVE. LIVE HAPPILY IN SPITE OF–AND FROM SPITE FOR–THE CRUEL WORLD THAT WANTS ME DEAD. SMILE DEFIANTLY. YOU WANT ME DEAD, YOU LITTLE MAGGOT? MEET IN THE STREET AND SQUARE UP WITH YOUR BARE HANDS YOU FUCKING COWARD, OTHERWISE WATCH ME TWIRL.

...that's what I want, I think.

(oh I didn't realize I was basically reaching at the litany against fear in that paragraph shout. I will turn the inner eye to see its path. where the fear has gone there will be nothing. only I will remain. motherfuckerrrrr!)

––––––––––––––––––––– ♖ ♖ ♖ –––––––––––––––––––––

5:42pm,

in looking for that image of Jesus smokin' with cigarettes up there, I stumbled on this screenshot of a Joyce Carol Oates tweet:

how consciousness is divided against itself. pragmatic daytime self geared to action to benefit others. darker nocturnal self that sees through all pretensions and false hope. nail on the head there, Joyce.

yeah that pretty much "it me" rn fr fr. the "two wolves inside you" inside me are the bleeding fatalist/nihilist/pessimist/whateverist and the righteous, I-bleed-breathe-and-need-to-be-optimist.
hope and despair.

the duality of me, man

all of us are a galaxy of a tiny little storms

the good & evil in me wage a bloody civil war

- George Watsky, Cannonball

the struggle to balance these wolves is the mission of my life, I fuckin' guess. when I was a kid I wanted to be an illustrator.

but I think of It's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and the scene near the end when Mister Rogers, at the end of a shoot, sits alone in the studio, down at the piano, and clangs the low keys. a means of venting frustration. the man was probably our last living Saint. but even he held a darkness and anger within.

I have no idea what it'll look like -- what I will look like. I ain't had a concept of the future a future since certainly 2015. I have even less of an idea now. all I know is the feeling that 2020 was just a meditation. this is gonna be a marathon.

even though my baseline homeostasis, the mindset I form back to when the dust of the day settles, continues to be existential depression with little recourse. the thing about that wolf is that it tries to eat the other's food.

how can I flip it on its head, make it so I can go to sleep thinking thankful thoughts of all the happy things?

this is actually something we've (my therapist and I) just identified as a possible goal worth it to, and possible to achieve. I know many good things happened in the last decade. but my perception is that these are "good things happening in bad years." I asked my therapist if maybe it would be possible to change it, if the bad things -- much larger and bigger-than-myself as they may be -- could ever be perceived as "bad things happening in good years" rather than how I see it now: the good things are minor miracles. tiny bright subjects within a giant dark painting. an evil frame. a consuming void is the context, the backdrop.

that idea was touched upon when discussing a way to change my perception of something related to self-esteem. (I don't feel like looking up the notes right now, and that stuff will be relevant and discussed in this year's other issue of HOH Magazine, currently mid-draftin'.) something about taking a method of approach to a single, narrow subject, and seeing if it has practical application to other areas, even the broader, more general ones. I believe we are going to get somewhere.

can the backdrop not be the joy? could the evil not be subject rather than setting? perhaps I should get some paints and work it out in literal figurative process.

I once again draw from True Detective for the obvious here:

––––––––––––––––––––– ♜ ♜ ♜ –––––––––––––––––––––

11-25-2024, continued

on a lighter note, some funny thing happened today. a friend texted me. I know, that sounds quite ordinary. except. it was one who I wasn't expecting a text from. I accidentally glanced while communicating with one of those-in-the-know [of the chrysalis situation] and saw the name, one that is always a pleasant surprise, so I took a gander at the preview of the most recent text. it was, to phrase it dramatically, unbelievable.

in a good way, thank God. in fact I'm not ruling out God as possible culprit. possibly one of those 'mysterious ways.' because this is a good old friend who I haven't seen in nearly a decade, and whom I miss dearly. I have been slowly building reconnection, but never bringing myself to enact any plan-planning, though. expectations of timely arrangements...not very reliable when communication is sparse. and that's okay; I've respected that scarcity. kept a tight lid on my worry of not hearing back, that used to cause me all sorts of anxiety before. point of pride I suppose, to have built that maturity.

anyway... it was an invitation to hang out. so, I am shocked. actually, two: I received one text on the 14th, and one yesterday following it up. I was again, surprised. then again, not so much, as it concerned a wish to avoid "isolating and crumpling up," which is exactly what I've been doing.

and I've been wondering how much longer I can/would/may/should/might or will. do I know when I'll have enough might or will? ha ha.

but if anyone was going to personally find me an off-ramp outta my introspective fetal position, it would be this friend, asking to hang out. which I would've never expected. so you could see how I think God has something to do with this. if we must have another four precious years of my life with the door closed in front of me, well they say God opens a window.

or do they?

isn't the phrase like, originally about closing one door and opening another door?

sounds like something that was bastardized (complimentary) through some pop cultural avenue

into a goofier version that suggests the amusing,

even adolescent sticktoitiveness

of climbing through a window to progress.

who remixed that? did The Simpsons do that?

I should know, I'm the Simpsons guy.

anyway anyway anyway, I cannot help but see parallels to my original trauma, in retrospect. by november of 2016, I was only a few months into my reconnection with another, different, good old friend I hadn't seen in too long a while... he lived down the block, yet for no extant reason, by high school we had sorta just stopped hanging out. well, I can thank Pokémon GO for getting us back in touch. and with this happy reconnection with an old best friend, I met a new best friend as well, his best friend. we became a trio.

and I suppose it's hard to express in words how important they are to me. not just during those cratered months of collecting the shards of my entire sense of existence in a new apocalypse. beyond that. yes, the backdrop that I wish I could have, instead of "these bad years with good things," would probably look like "these great years with these great friends." that is how I ought to perceive it. but of course, trauma wields a mighty wet blanket. (therapy therapy therapy...)

I also reconnected with a high school friend I hadn't seen since graduation around that time; only kept in touch briefly via social media. being invited to a party only to find out they lived in walking distance from me was another biggole window, and found me even more lovely, wonderful people, including another new best friend I never woulda met otherwise. some of these very important people, they weren't in my perception before 2016. and perhaps we can look at that as some form of consolation prize for the immense pain I was in against my will. a personal counterbalance for the communal/national/global outrageous injustice that kept me from sleeping at night.

sleeping at night. boy that seems to be a crux of the whole thing. "it doesn't affect you personally blah blah blah" yes it does, its existence punishes my sleep. the one 'issue' I had for a therapy goal prior to 2016 that didn't seemingly evaporate in the wake of my spiritual destruction, but worsened indefinitely. there have been a few nights, countable on two hands I'd reckon, that I've been able to fall asleep without listening to something.

anyway, parallels. if truly I can reconnect with more dear old friends, if also there are new fantastic people to meet and camaraderie to brew... I mean, duh. that's the life raft in the storm. a life preserver in this choppy, fascist, stupid river. it feels very good not to be drowning. and friends have been there at these moments I've needed them most, it seems.

even in this pandemic, I reconnected with more friends and deepened those bonds. Including one of my oldest schoolmates, I don't think we were ever really "friends" (apparently she had a Calvin & Hobbes-ass magical forest back yard and I sure never visited it) but nonetheless, we discovered we have much in common now. fast we became close-knit. holding each other's wounded hearts and providing strength. another new best friend.

if your world collapses

I'll be down in the rubble

I'd build you another

this is what I'm talking about, man. that's why I see God here. and I kinda think God is other people.

it almost confirms the bad outcome has occurred and we are in hell once more for another long arc. but it was an inference that didn't petrify me.

...partly because I already pieced it together and scared myself pale days ago, sure... but also because my good old friend wanting to hang out is a joyous thing. a brilliant light in my darkness.

and that's why I know I have to leave this cocoon. because friendship is a two-way life preserver toss. I can be as much of a help the other way and I consider it my duty and pleasure as a friend. I mean, whatever the outcome I'm going to have a flush of guilt over all the texts, snaps, and DMs I've been obtusely ignoring. it's been twenty days and counting. one lesson from this year has been 'people need me' and I like to be of service. even if, sometimes, it comes by as the feeling of "good excuses to keep procrastinating on personal things because otherwise executive dysfunction will do that for me," it's sincere and fulfilling.

and that's why I know I have to leave this cocoon. I have quite a few other grand old friends I want to reconnect with. and if the world says "fuck you David go die you little bitch" the least I can do is say "hey go fuck yourself" back, and then stop putting up these arbitrary barriers like "we haven't spoken in _____ years" between me and the people who actually love me. and more importantly whom I love.

the winter knocked me out

frozen in an avalanche of doubt

it seemed like every road

was buried under snow

so I thought 'better to forget

the heat of the sunlight on my skin'

I feel it coming

but I'm scared to let it in

this change in the weather

and that's why I know I have to leave this cocoon. the request to hang out was that: a request for the alchemic remedy that is being in your friend's presence.

it just so happens that it's a friend I've wanted to see for a long time. so I sense the divine, alright? I've been made happy, humbled, hopeful.

rare element, hope. but I somehow always seem to find it when I am in the dark.

when I don't have a ready-made image, I make it ready myself

11-26-2024

1:12am,

I am in the kitchen in my pajamas and I am shaking and shivering. I'm hungry but I don't feel like eating. yes I am recovering from a [dehydration] headache from the day, I'm [good] nervous and [bad] anxious, I am [melatonin] tired and it's quite possible I'm simply cold and hungry...but I stood there, asked myself "this is what it's like when an animal sheds its skin." I guess that's not technically a question but it's how I meant it. am I achieving the flopsweat-attempted transformation I was forced to recede into here [by everybody deciding not to wait to have the election until after the felon had served his convicted sentence]?

...have I written anything substantial here? anything meaningful for me, I mean? I'm barely going to edit this, it's supposed to be a stream-of-consciousness by design, partly to convey the "transcribed MRI" of my actual stream of consciousness in this insanity cocoon, and partly to make it possible to even write: a little at a time, when the words hit you, and thoughts congeal and beg to get verbalized.

11:20am,

do I have any new epiphanies? I don't believe so. just a swirl of familiar old anchors to re-fortify mental health and protect my spirit. because it's not a new terror, it's the same old, same old quagmire I've been held down and forced to watch for so many years, that you could even tell me all my prior memories were planted and I've always been here, and I'd at least hear you out. besides, I'm trying to be a better listener.

my rage is an expression of my love.

there, is that an insight? or merely a bon mot? what about a t-shirt?

it's all like re-taking a class you failed, the following year. except with being violated instead of educated. because it's emotionally nothing like when I re-took World Cinema in college.

I was one (1) mandatory essay paper shy of passing the first time, I couldn't help it, so I took it again. which actually was a wonderful experience. I got to imbibe some of the same great movies again, grow in appreciation. we also got some different ones. and I wrote new papers, on different films.

when it came time to complete the assignment I'd not even attempted the first time, (out of some form of procrastination-giving-way-to-exhaustion,) I picked back up the originally-intended, never-actually-watched film as my subject, and not only aced it, but the professor specifically noted in personal ink that he was hoping someone would choose Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner for their Indigenous Peoples' film.

anyway I'm saying this is much less exciting than retaking World Cinema. I approached that as the opportunity to not just learn more, but refine what I'd already covered. felt good. mature attitude. I also could accept it, and it was a reasonable, logical, sensible; a fair, just consequence for proportionate action (or inaction) on my part, as well as something pleasant and unthreatening. an "obstacle" (if you can really call it that) which I could lean into and seize the opportunity in. was I embarrassed? sure. but that went away calmly. and it didn't hurt me. I don't think I can stress that enough. I never even questioned if my life was in danger. I only suffered inadequate sleep in those days because I was in college.

as a 5-year-old my parents, and the parents of my two best friends, Jack & Willy, decided we could all use another year of preschool. and when there was some crafting activity that I remembered doing already the previous year, I kinda didn't like it. why have me do something again that I already did? well, I'm glad I had a better attitude in college. but I feel like a preschooler again right now I tell ya what. especially when the other adults I aged into joining love to act like 4-year-olds.

so yeah... I, like, don't think I'll have many new insights, man. I mostly feel like I'd rearranged the furniture of my psyche: same bed same couch same chairs same paintings same lamps, just different feng shui. just gotta reheat the evergreen leftovers. I need these helping tools and coping mechanisms to feel kinda like the first time; reignite that spark that helped them help me so much already, because we supposedly gotta do it all over again. sit back and take it up the ass forever. it's nothing new up at the core, though: everything's the same as it's always been only, more so.

of course, so, same token:

        while there's life, there is truth.

                    while there's truth, it demands to be spoken.

––––––––––––––––––––– ♖ ♖ ♖ –––––––––––––––––––––

 
I think George Watsky is probably a prophet. that's not speaking too highly; a lot of musicians are prophets. Watsky even has a song that shouts out how as much as we like to worship a genius in a coffin, we often forget that there's prophets among us walking:

'cause every time I hear a line

that shows me I'm not alone

it's saving me because I know that that's a lifeline

like minds

and I know, because I hear 'em when I am in the clouds and I got my music up and jammin' it loud. any time I see the number 86 I think "86 anyone who would stand in the path of a kid, saying GO IN POET." won't somebody please think of the children?? I certainly do. I had a happy childhood; I wish the same for all children, and I'll throw in a happy adulthood if I can because I'm that fuckin' generous.

so if you're blocking the future I wanna walk toward

suit yourself, we're gonna lock swords

Love Letters is a contender for my favorite Watsky song. of course picking favorites is obviously impossible with artists this eclectic and prolific. real heads know that favorite songs take turns. it doesn't have a music video, I don't know that it's 'one of the hits,' I don't know that I've even heard it live on tour [citation needed; you can absolutely do the research and prove me one way or the other.] but it's so raw and philosophically barrel-chested. motivational. gold and bold. it can't not resonate with the artist in you. it's like a litmus test for if you give a shit.

†we’ll build a levy

limit the river’s level

steady the flood and

begin with a pebble

its album, X Infinity, was released August 19th, 2016. so *Paul Harvey voice* now you know the rest of the story. you'll see how it fits into part of my picture of that period if you go listen to it.

this is for the times I'm reminded

my mind isn't mine alone.

I'm not going to embed the whole album here, just link a playlist, but am going to embed a few songs from his previous album, 2014's All You Can Do.

that album I also recommend listening to in full, although the official YouTube playlist includes the version of Never Let It Die in music video form, which concludes before the poem in the second half. a respectable choice for the video, but the full track is double the dynamite.

X Infinity ends with a suite of four songs dubbed The Lovely Thing Suite, and I consider the final three tracks on All You Can Do a triptych of similar proportions. I will embed them all here as well. my intent with embedded videos is that they are watched/listened to as a part of the published magazine (things hyperlinked are somewhat more like supplemental citations.) anyway it'll make particular sense in supporting this section.

the first time I listened to the full album, this set of brand new songs hit me like a religious experience. and this was in 2014! before any of the major trauma periods in my life! (all the problems I was dealing with in therapy were paltry and essentially most evaporated two years later. I think I already said that.) so, personally, I cannot recommend the album enough. and there's a through-line in the home stretch about art, love, evil, perseverance, failure, existentialism, and finding your purpose, your light, in the universe. carry the spark as we're marching into the darkness. and the acts, moments, and details that infuse a worried soul with some kind of faith. maybe it was a dream, but I know that I've seen...

and of course, this is evergreen mantra material for me. consider the title track: all you can do is all you can do is all you can do is all you can do. I have spun that in my head record player a million times, if you break it down, the simple infinite phrase reveals its layers, depending on the emphasis. which I think is the point, the repetition begs you to consider all the angles and interpretations of that phrase:

all you can do is all you can do.

all you can do is all you can do.

all you can do is all you can do.

it's not self-defeating serenity prayer sentiment [again, my apologies to anyone for whom that prayer really works. I don't mean to put it down one bit, I will never quash someone's useful insights or truths. I wish it did the same for me.] I mean, it has that, but it's also an affirmation of full potential. you have the power to do all that you can. 'all you can do' is possible for you to do. and you can do all that you can do. it's contented and inspirational.

so never think less of yourself. always be true to yourself. carry that spark, and if you've got a flame that's blazing hot within, take a deep breath and feed it oxygen.

I'll never let it die

I'll never let it die

I'll never let it die

once cupid hit me with his burning arrow

he lit the lava in my churning marrow

so when I'm tested I remember I've been blessed

with that tender ember resting left-of-center in my chest

and yes

if you fuck with us you'll see my game face

'cause no matter who you pray to when you say grace

and no matter where you come from in this great space

every single person is escaping from the same place

they burn the different ones so clutch your cousins close 'cause such is life

it's cuts and strife and stitches

punches, knives, and hungry crows

nothing guarantees survival

and we won't stop this terror sticking flowers in the barrels of their rifles

we fight the hatred with the light.

and when they think we'll fold and wave that bright rag

we won't surrender

don't say all is lost, escape this holocaust

my God

Allah

my darling

star and crescent

and my cross

to remind me,

            when I fail myself

            when I fail everyone around me

            when I misfire and come tearing through your walls

            when the cocktail of humiliation and pain poisons my veins

            and this carnival of carnage

                   this mansion of garbage

                   this parking lot of carcasses

                   this heartbreak party

            drains the spirit that remains,

that I have been a part of something worthwhile.

––––––––––––––––––––– ♜ ♜ ♜ –––––––––––––––––––––

11-26-2024, continued

4:41pm,

we are the broken souls. our hearts bleed because they still beat. so we know, and want, to help others. we are nothing if we do not help others.

of course I don't go around helping everyone, there's righteousness and then there's mischaracterizing the reach and scope of my willingness to participate in a bestowment of equity and justice to all those around me (which is the entire planet Earth.)

you are here.

(exaggeration for effect to demonstrate the scope of my inability.)

but, at least, I have spent this year providing invaluable help (sometimes it's compensated, but that doesn't matter) to my loved ones, friends and family. and it feels good. it even feels enough.

still doesn't make it easier to fall asleep, I'm not helping anyone in those moments. (only, by proxy, in being well-rested the following day. I hear you, semantic arguments!)

5:01pm,

you know, it came to me in admirable words:

we all need to live in life. and it is what it is, and so are we.

we're all tough, yeah. I dunno. that sentence was probably the most true to the "stream of consciousness" ideal of this particular magazine issue. it just popped in my head as I was about to walk out the room, and I turned around, didn't even interrogate the sentence, I just wrote it down along with the feeling of 'hey maybe this is something' that came with it. of course, it's so generic that it requires that emotional/contextual meta-data. so it might not hit the same way. but it's there for ya.

7:43pm,

my parents have raised a very wonderful person who is able to fit into the world. that would be my sister. wocka wocka!

my parents have raised a very wonderful person who is largely incapable of functioning in our immoral society. there, it me.

11:16pm,

am I ready to come out. I don't know. I just had a good evening, perhaps at most. but feeling completely at ease, warmed by the blu-ray copy of Asteroid City I got for Christmas last year, and getting to show it to my dad (well, most of it; I convinced him to check out 'the speech' and he stayed for the whole rest of the picture, loving its brilliant strangeness) it's almost like I can do more than survive, also thrive.

meme created & tweeted by @sbodrojan

Asteroid City is, of course, a brilliant movie with so much under the hood. I recall a story that Wes Anderson communicated to Bryan Cranston at some point during the creative process that "I think I'm making a poem, not a movie." and it is, like great poetry, able to explore the unknowableness of life and its many amazing facets with a dreamlike approach. I'll write my review soon or in a few days, but for now I'm going to place some quotes (which I watched through most of it a second time tonight to transcribe) that felt particularly apt from my current viewing. because like great poetry, and like song lyrics, they are footholds slong our journeys:

"The time is never right."

"The time...is always wrong."

“Be notified you are each the guardian of your own safety.”

“In my loneliness, or perhaps because of it, I’ve learned not to judge people. To take people as I find them, not as others find them. And most of all, to give complete and unquestioning faith to the people I love."

“I feel lost.”

“Good.”

“He’s such a wounded guy. I feel like my heart is getting…broken. My own personal heart, every night.”

“Good.”

“Do I just keep doing it?”

“Yes.”

“Without knowing anything?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of an…answer, out there in the cosmic wilderness? — Woodrow’s line about the meaning of life!”

“Maybe there is one!!”

“Right. Well that’s my question! …I still don’t understand the play.”

“Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story. You’re doing him right.”

“I need a breath of fresh air.”

“Okay. But you won’t find one.”

“Right.”

and of course:

“You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.”

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11-27-2024

11:48am,

I am finding myself back in orbit around those exalting "ideas which matter." that patch of solid ground amidst the raging waters I've been thrown down into yet again by an uncaring world. perhaps I found these again, further down-stream where I am now, because they were placed here by God, working in mysterious ways. or the YouTube music playlist shuffle is just loaded with the right music (I made the playlist, it's all my music.)

God is love and

Love is all we have

12:00pm,

what really needs to be my approach in a broader social, general sense, is that idea from therapy: of taking mechanisms or lessons from one area, seeing if you can expand its reach to others. franchise it to all territories! haha. but yes: I don't need to be everything to everybody, give all people the all of myself that I give to my nearest and dearest, but I can resolve to meet friendly new faces with both feet in the pool.

there is always something worth living for. and it's what you can do. and yes, it's the petty, paltry, puny, powerlessness of "tending your own garden" but make it the best damn garden in town.

I need to start a garden

12:30pm,

y'know... y'know, y' -- you know, I am certain that my arch-nemesis is not literally the devil because I'm finding myself quite convinced that he did actually made a deal with the devil. it only makes sense. and sure, you could point to all manner of circumstantial evidence -- multiple failed "congratulations you are an American hero now go to jail for shooting someone" attempts; literally committing treason and having absolutely no consequences about it, despite being the sole instigator of an insurrection and the only reason it happened; being convicted of multiple felonies and somehow not by extension being forced to bow out of a race in that same year -- but it allllllllllll comes back, for me, to making fun of a man with a physical disability in the if-not-then-nearly first campaign trail appearance. a completely offensive and childish "bit" that should have automatically disqualified this non-politician asshole making a fake documentary about a stunt bid from being in any type of consideration for the crop of candidates for most important political job in the fucking shit-ass country.

consider, also that he is my arch-nemesis. my abuser. a total affront to everything I believe about how society or a government of, for, and by the People should function. the rot at the core of this corrupt apple finally bursting out as a massive pustule, yes we all see it can we fucking go to the hospital and have it removed, cleaned, and healed?

consider, also that I make deals with God from time to time. and he is the opposite of me in every way. it only stands to reason.

consider the following:

nobody is immune to consequences. unless you sold your soul to the devil for immunity. ipso fausto.

but God willing, we will see the scales balanced with accountability, justice, and future-proofing.

"Consequences." this is a John Wick Chapter 4 quote
serving as metaphor for legal accountability

this is life's big lesson folks, your letter grade: don't live a life where nobody is sad when you die, much less where everybody is happy. only God can judge you I guess but you may also count the flowers on your grave vs. the amount of piss.

and setting the table for whichever tribute you receive is entirely up to you.

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11-27-2024, continued

3:26pm,

when I got the courage to emerge from my cocoon in January 2021, I used the song What's Up Danger by Blackway & Black Caviar as a motivator. it was exactly what I needed. this year, this season, this episode...it does nothing for me. I listened to it by happenstance, and it slaps of course, but it felt like the second pressing of the grape. wasn't doing anything for me now. a clear sign that I'm shaped differently...the peg doesn't fit in the same hole.

(unless that's because I was facing a certain darkness that I was technically uncertain about? I am frightfully certain based on different inferred evidence now, and I can't feel the same?)

the solution, however, is the listening I've been doing the last several days. naturally: finding other music to wrap around myself, the bricks of a bastion of fortitude, nerve, hope, idealism, righteousness, perseverance, endurance, steel. soul exercise, spiritual gains.

make evil afraid

of evil's shadow

what energy can I take with me every day, how can I walk the path -- how can I remember to walk the path -- in my everyday interactions and creativity? poetic mantras are the first step.

don't want to panic but I gotta come clean

because the plan of the planet is just mean

knew it was tough but damn it it's obscene

but when you take a punch

don't you ever forget

why you get up

and put one foot in front of the next

I think I have to make a playlist for the songs that strike these essential chords. whoa, whoa, whoa, two Watsky analytical mini-essays in one edition? Christmas is coming early, dear reader!

I'm seizing the mic fast at middle school dances

I'M DONE BEING SEIZED

AND I'M SEIZING MY CHANCES

it's all too much

it's all too much

I said it's all too much

it's all too much

I said it's all too much

it's all too much

and when the world breaks your legs you go and beat it with your crutch

I see purple people-eaters more than world-beaters

and I've jumped a couple hurdles

burned some sneakers through the meters (copacetic)

get the medic

let it breathe

and I'll be the baddest mother-fucking epileptic I can be

I would grieve

asking why's it me sleeping in the ER

with an IV in my arm and my V-card

Seizure Boy, one of Watsky's oldest anthems. on the original 2009 self-titled debut album, the lyric at the end of the second verse is a dedication to 'my sick kids', and lists some medications they might need to survive, then follows it with "I don't give a fuck what you ride into the setting sun, use it as a weapon when it's said and done." here in his introduction he's letting you know that what you've got to cope with, what you use to get by, hey: it's a weapon, and you should use it as one.

But, as the above Live! from the Regency tour album demonstrates, as he took off and went on tour and gained prominence, in returning to Seizure Boy on stage, he altered the lyrics a bit. I'm of course fascinated with the differences between the record version of songs versus how they're adapted for live performance, and the alterations are always very fun and exciting and interesting to me. the magic of live music and all that. anyway: performing live, George would, as he does in the above, tweak it a bit so the lyrics go:

I don't give a fuck what you ride into the setting sun

IT'S A WEAPON

WHEN IT'S SAID

AND DONE!!!!!!

and the art analyst in me sees this as more than just a fun, simplifying, bombastic tweak. I see understanding that he's communicating with a familiar listener. it's recalls the original lyric. he already told you to use it as a weapon. and perhaps you are. so he's reminding you that it's a weapon, in case you forgot, or in case you got used to the idea and take it for granted. by refreshing the wording, your attention is drawn to the change and imbues you with something more. scream it from the rooftops.

fed up

and we've all been better

but I'm set to step up.

never let up,

because the fall is just

the set-up, now, to get up

regret'll never get the better of me with the sawed-off

when I'm having trouble talking someone knocks my writer's block off

and if my eyes glaze, and my knees drift south

and you ever think to stick a credit card in my mouth

I take mastercard and visa for my risk rewards

I'M NOT BITING MY TONGUE!

WHY DON'T YOU BITE YOURS!

I scream it into the mirror.

it's all too much

I SAID IT'S ALL

TOO MUCH

it's all too much

I SAID IT'S ALL TOO MUCH

it's all too much

I SAID IT'S

ALL TOO MUCH

SO WHEN THE WORLD

BREAKS YOUR LEGS

YOU GO AND BEAT IT

WITH YOUR CRUTCH

yes, we are trapped by this world, that will never allow itself to belong to us. it will never be ours. it doesn't even want us here. we are only born via a miracle of righteous defiance of the status quo. a status quo that does everything in its power, as unthinkingly as breathing, to prevent us from becoming who we really are. (it wants us as cogs.) daring to smother our potential before we even start to realize that we have any. how can you have a destiny? because you are here, my friend.

the first step out is knowing the truth.

you are special.

you have the potential to do anything that you can do.

all you can do, is all you can do. not some.

remember, it's never everything or nothing.

it's everything or everything.

when you find your life is lacking all design, supply your own.

don't let the world bury who you are before you even start to feel it in yourself. uncover it. discover it. dig in, and set them free. all of it's within you now. every baby's born with a lock and key. wake up and seize the day by the throat your chances.

if you don't feel the push, try pulling.

that last, big fonted one is not a quote; I came up with it myself a little while back! pretty good, right?

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11-27-2024, continued (cont'd.)

9:03pm,

say a prayer for the weak-hearted

now that's something feels doable. it's hate to wish pain upon our enemies and I'm trying to reconcile that with how little pain is being inflicted upon them! but I want to hurt them, man, you're right I'm angry, I'm real upset!

yeah okay but isn't it love or kindness to pity those who are -- *spiteful bitch voice* by their own accord, beneath you?

I dunno.

but it seems like a more karmically...productive way to pray. the music shuffle once again delivering truth when I need a reminder. thanks, Kush Mody and Anderson .Paak.

10:40pm,

oh how I wish to just be this perfect invincible butterfly at the end of this. being able to say "so my heart is going to break, again and again. so let it shatter. keep breaking the glass, I'll dance in the light's new refractions. a pile of rainbow glitter within my belly, too full to care."

11-28-2024 • thanksgiving day

I have made plans with my good old friend. and now I see why this is how I come out from hiding. because it's given me something to be more anxious and nervous about.

and, serendipitously, a deadline for emergence. I will be out of the cocoon by then. it's a necessary part of being there. why, the mere idea of it has revealed to me how childish this whole venture was. no that's not right, does a disservice to the mental health fortification and genuine benefit I'm getting outta this... (it's just that I'm completely isolated and not being in my friends' lives. excluding Forrest; we saw a buncha movies together and played video games online.) no, but it did reveal to me how it's time to hatch. this is more important.

...and I still have a few days to get my bearings.

I know I won't "accomplish the backlog of various catch-up work I've been intent to do before the election in general" -- but that was also a foolish misapplication or mis-intention of the cocoon in the first place. I entered this chrysalis forgetting why it's here. it's not a sabbatical to get work done, it's a deep and dark tunnel, where I grace the back yard fence of Death and scare myself, have dreams like hallucinations, and brace myself for the awful truth.

in short: it's so that I do not get my hopes up off the ground even one centimeter. (and besides, I will get all that stuff caught up on regardless. there's only a few projects which I feel deserve/require an "unrocked, unsocked, pre-cannonball-to-the-gut state of mind" to finish in the correct milieu.)

my original trauma came from not just having hopes anywhere north of subterranean (they were, y'know, normal level considering the obvious choice,) but also in having a very happy-go-lucky assumption and decent human expectation that an obvious choice would be made, obviously.

this came on during today's walk,

and I listened to it a few times,

over and over and over again

perhaps my extreme-pendulum-backlash-punishment for reveling in obama's re-election as yet another fresh-faced 20-year-old excited about the voting process like it was a game until I hit the retweet limit on twitter. yes, there is a retweet limit. I said this already.

or my extreme-pendulum-backlash-punishment for being happy at obama's election in the first place, as some moronic 16-year-old thinking adults were grown-ups and I had a future. voting for young leaders who weren't stupid-ass draft-dodging c-grade failsons.

I'll fight for the day when greed doesn't win.

anyway, unfortunately as you can see by my earlier jottings, I "had a good feeling that it was finally over." that is the absolute wrong attitude to have, it is not how I zipped up in 2020 and it should never have crossed my gut's mind. for shame.

what were we talking about?

oh right, friendship. nervousness. yes. so this is both a "bigger" (more pressing? more acute? more important???) anxiety, as well as being a more important assignment than stuffing myself into a cocoon and swashing around my goo until it turns into something else. (I'm feeling like snails are the way to go. defensive, slow, chill, vibes, moisturized, appreciating the little steps of progress toward a goal...) this is very helpful.

maybe I've done enough of this by now

it's rather interesting, my nerves are sort of paralyzing me here and there. random zaps of momentary immobilization. and yet it's kind of...bigger a reaction than I was having when I became afflicted with implications of information to extrapolate the fear that our unacceptable outcome had occurred, last week. that was just flames all up inside me burning my humanity for existing in the first place. this is...good nerves. I'm reconnecting with a friend I've been wanting to reconnect with for years. there's a lot of feelings caught up in this, like putting on a wool sweater in a raspberry bush.

but, y'know, compared to being roasted alive by hell fire that's pretty comfortable. it's anxiety I can live with. it's putty I can use. clay I can shape. It's something I allow. I sanction it. and I'm safe with it.

it feels like old times.

here are some photos from my thanksgiving day walk:

poem by Tio Aiken

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11-29-2024

songs from today I would like to share:

how ever will you find a safe place where you never let anyone in?

we were born on a moving train

we took form in the pouring rain

we try hard but come short of explaining

how lives are for living and hearts are for changing

forget an instant to stay the same

not us nor mountains go as they came

all these things we refused to be framed in

from what we've been given, to what's rearranging

there's no one coming to make things right

there's no one coming to make things right

there's no one coming to make things right

there's no one coming to make things right

there's no one coming to make things right

there's no one coming to make things right

the walls are surely closing in now

they tell us keep your head up somehow

take my hand we can turn it around

Gonna feel good again soon here I think.

11-30-2024

10:54am,

okay I think the reason the serenity prayer does little for me, is similar to how I need a constant drip-feed of music that reminds me of the perspective the serenity prayer is supposed to give you. I've built up a sort of mood immunity to it, kinda, so the only way to get that perspective is to constantly sand-blast my ear drums with those sentiments. mantras as painkillers. I'll read a post-it of a quote from John Green, "we do not exist in the grand scheme of things" and then okay my brain will agree before spitting it back out at me and complaining about how that doesn't change anything bad into good. so gotta force-feed it, if I'm not in the mood for it to hit just right.

I think it's because I have this stupid idea that I don't want inner peace, I want world peace and that will facilitate inner peace. it's like how I know money isn't the source of happiness: maybe world peace won't make me happy, sure, but it will reduce stress a whole hell of a lot. me finding "inner peace" while the world is being attacked by 8th-grade-reading-level nazi rapists is feels like, I worry, a willful level of ignorance. "but we all need to be able to function day to day and keep living and stuff" yeah but how can you, when this is going on??? stop it and then we'll go back to writing checks and buying graphic tees. right?? I dislike the notion that being insane is the only sane reaction to this insanity because acting/feeling sane is actually insane because it means cutting yourself off from immeasurable pain being inflicted all around us. and yet, the Joker memes are right: being insane is the only sane response to an insane world. when I feel "sane" I feel like I'm ignoring the elephant that's setting the room on fire.

IT'S NOT FINE

you hear the shouting but you don't feel a word

and yet we do it. and yet I do it. I manage. I watch movies, which means for two hours I get to completely transfer from this plane of existence into somewhere else where the worries are neatly dealt with by the almighty author. where conclusions to story arcs make sense based on how things were set up in the first act: a black man with a black name causes a rapist to go completely insane with xenophobic spasm, a woman loses to the rapist, a different old man keeps him at arm's length for too little a period of time, and then a woman with a black name tries again but this time, wins, because the rapist never should've won in the first place, but the estimation isn't under- this time. sports movie. some kind of poetic justice, to interpret how you will as you dismiss the significance of it because you don't personally like this woman very much either, but you recognize she's qualified mentally and experientially for this kind of job, and you voted for the person you want to challenge, fight, and keep in check, not the person you like. but certainly not the person who makes you insane with anger every single day for so many years that you forget what life was like two Before Times ago.

...what was I talking about? oh yeah. so like sure I cope...I dunno if that's inner peace but it is inner escapism, inner ignorance. I contend and stand by my hypothesis that a more peaceful and just world would allow me that inner peace, or make it easier to obtain, or put up fewer spiky, turreted road blocks between it and myself. and I'd argue why not give it a try just once just one time? just for kicks.

I read a thing which said that we've never actually seen what a completely healthy neurodivergent child/adult is like, because the world is not made for us, it is in fact ignorantly hostile towards us, so we each have been damaged by it with one scar or another, or another and another and another. for some reason that just popped into my head.

12:16pm,

going to thanksgiving lunch. I don't know whether I'll be exposed or not. in case I am I think I've written all I need to for this issue and all my thoughts can be preserved in amber. if this is the last paragraph of the publication, just know that I was ready.

7:17pm,

I was fine. sitting around with family getting a feast ready, what's any better?

I know I am ready, but it's still gonna be a helluva bandaid to rip off... well first of all I need to not call it a bandaid and psyche myself up proper-like by sticking to the cannonball allegory. but I know I am ready. because I have some movies to see and friends to hang out with. hanging out is healing, and by whatever method I can heal and help others I will do my best.

"hanging out is healing."

you know how they do that with certain excerpts in magazines, take a choice line and throw it big on the page so even a skimmer will receive it? I haven't done that much here 'cause I'll just use other forms of emphasis but this one bears repeating I think.

7:41pm,

the two wolves I have within me that I actually like having in there and should be the wolves I live with, is the one that wants to be lazy and the one that wants to be useful. that's the level of stakes I should be wrestling with. it's also two very dog-like behaviors.

I dunno, is that a "level one challenge" kind of attitude? to feel good about agreeing to help carry more stuff into the house even though it's very cold, because you ran it through mental scales of kindness and generosity, core beliefs built into you from childhood, and it passes the Goofus & Gallant test, so you happily weather the frigid temps a few seconds more to lend a hand? "more hands makes less work." you say, and that's enough?

the part of me that wants to be lazy, low-effort and low-key is begging for it to be the lazy wolf and the useful wolf. and the useful wolf hikes up its beltless jeans and says "well that's something you can probably accomplish in therapy; re-organize your wolves." would that it were so simple. but we'll see.

11:19pm,

I accidentally felt some hope this evening. specifically in anticipation of imagining how I would ask to be unzipped from the cocoon. I just happen to be a person who imagines scenarios, I guess so I can script them somewhat because of autism, I guess. anyway, I put "bubble" on my calendar when I started this, for a different symbol, but I must ensure that I don't have any bubble to burst.

and I can't be telling myself that I am feeling certain of the bad outcome in order to have my fears reversed. I can't let the experience of January 5th, 2021's stupefying elation color my expectations one smudge or feather-sketch. I must feel certain of what I feel certain about being certain because it's what to fear. through fear, strength to destroy it overcome it.

while layabouting on the couch this afternoon, waiting on a certain greasy bird to make its entrance, I was able to feel the all-encompassing love of my family. and through such a prism, I was able to imagine our enemy smaller than ever.

of course in 2021 I had to do the same thing, imagine a young kid staring down a great beast, and shrinking it with but a stare, dead in the eye. (as not-good as it was, I must admit It Chapter 2 worked for me completely at its climactic dispatch. would love to yell with my friends at some evil clown until it shrivels up and dies, I will not be changing my original Letterboxd rating.*) and that worked, I think.

but this was different, you see I didn't imagine a great beast turning into a small beast ready to be kicked and squashed. mmm...squash.

no, I just imagined that puny bitch as the 2, maybe 3-feet-tops height person that he is to me. proportionally, too, so like, tiny small, miniature. equip the scale tool and shrink.

wait, why do I hate something that is so inconsequentially diminutive to myself? great thought, me. well, that's easy to answer, with a parable:

in the very first minute of this episode of Welcome to the Basement, Matt Sloan talks about "movies we hate," and says that he generally doesn't hate movies because if he doesn't like one, he ignores it, not spending energy on it.

"but you know what I do hate? undeserved praise and recognition. because then, not only did somebody make a shitty movie, but these assholes have convinced everyone that it's a good movie. such is the case with 2004's Crash." - Matt Sloan

and that's my answer. the academy awards in 2006 (it TIFFed in '04 but got wide release in '05) saw Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Munich, and Good Night, and Good Luck to receive the award for Best Picture. and until Green Book it would be the most embarrassing Best Picture win by a pretty wide margin. if it was nominated but didn't win -- doesn't even need to not be nominated! -- it would not be a pariah, and nobody would remember it. there are some movies that aren't even really bad, whose reputations are lessened merely by winning the big prize, especially when there's something more deserving nominated alongside it. but this is a case of the obvious-worst being called the best.

parable over, you can see it. the lesson is, ranked-choice voting is good, and folks should try it.

though don't get me wrong, by using comparison. I do not mean to disrespect Crash so much as to consider the treasonous nazi rapist "the Crash of [whatever]." the treasonous nazi rapist is the worst ever without needing to resort to pop-cultural points of reference. there are plenty specific-case adjectives to use, like "treasonous," "nazi," and "rapist" to label the individual, with basic factual description. no allegory necessary.

12-1-2024

11:22am,

the bad outcome happened. I know it, don't I? not holding out any hope, I hope...

am I inured to it, or am I just numb to it? either way is fine, I suppose. I'd like to understand, is all. know all the details of my inflatable raft before I aquatically deploy it.

I got some good things wrapped around me like a coat in winter to keep me warm. projects like boots to keep me walking. I got a tourniquet tied at my elbow, I got a blunt wrap filled with compliments and I'm burning it.

...I haven't listened to Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2 in a long while, I guess, 'cause I'm tearing up at it. we live in a house made of each other and if that sounds strange

that's because it is.

and this isn't woundedness, this cry. it's love and so much joy. my heart's full this morning. the right combination of elements made a good mood for me. I can't always have a good mood ready-made but I won't lament the irregularity 'cause I get some now. maybe I'm not so numb, then? my good mood comes from letting the faucet run instead of stopping it up. no covering of escapism, I'm letting vulnerability -- with which comes essential tenderness -- get exposed to the air today.

that's the thing, about the numbness. if you quash the bad feelings, so too do you bottle up its pleasant siblings. it's a tandem. a yin and yang. if you can't feel pain, then you can't feel the opposite. embrace the hurt to be embraced by the bliss. embrace the quake. otherwise it's all television static.

 

 "NOTHING MATTERS"

SO IT DOESN'T MATTER
IF NOTHING MATTERS.

AND WHILE YOU BE...

BE TRUE.

AND IF YOU WON'T...

FUCK YOU.

yeah today I'm feeling firmly

like my faith could never burn me

like I'm apt to move that mountain

just by glaring at it sternly

happy Sunday. this song is mandatory for that playlist; my country is my heart and so in every combination we all rep a common nation. love ya, George.

1:40pm,

I should try to imagine the nihilistic/defeatist/existential part of me as like an angsty teenager that I'm talking to. because if a teenager were saying the things I say to myself to me as an external second person, I would try to say something that both agrees and encourages -- y'know, try to mould the lessons I've found in lyrics along the way and movies and books and life, and probably badly smoosh it into some kind of bite-sized run-on sentence of advice.

that's, uh, kinda why I'm better citing direct quotes. I'm no guidance counselor. but anyway that might be a good way of thinking about it. a therapy mechanism that I don't use as much, and should remind myself of more often, is 'the empty chair' where you imagine you with your problem as another person in a chair across from you. basically, what would you say to someone else saying these things or feeling these feelings? externalize it and give yourself a hand.

so maybe I do that for those moments, but imagine my teenaged self in the chair. he's the reason I'm so angry at injustice, after all. and why I don't wish to become complacent with it just because I'm older and got more shit to do. (also, autism is part of why I'm so furious at injustice, that's one of our things.)

7:00pm,

played with the nieces til dark today. good times, but it's no longer sunny. I had a thought while I was there which I failed to write down or remember. but it was something simple yet practical if not profound, about, I dunno, something about how the darkness cannot actually cast a shadow on your light. that wasn't quite it but it was about darkness and light, and that's pretty good, right? I'll take it.

and really I'm not much of a defeatist, nor a nihilist. I just have germaphobic-like thoughts, anxiety, and depression that can be described best with such words. but the defeat-ish, existential sourpuss version of me I think could be contained by remembering that "feeling defeatist, nihilistic, powerless, believing that you're tied to the railroad tracks and nobody's coming to save you..." ...that's what our enemies want. it might be one way they break you. well they may be pigs but I'm no fuckin' workhorse. that's like a shot of espresso but the espresso is righteous spite.

we fight the hatred with the light.

okay but what about my angry side? channel that into something constructive, okay how. I don't feel like I can do much. well, what can you do. what is all that you can do. figure it out.

the next section to be co-written by anger

another thing, and this is quite important:

the bad outcome coming out is a license to do whatever the fuck you want. there are no rules anymore. the adult world is the most indifferent, manipulatable, dupable playground you ever wanted to see. treason would be legal, and in fact rewarded. I'm not saying you go and commit treason, in fact my deeply conservative beliefs force me to state that I still believe treason is a crime. a very serious one, in fact. I also think people convicted of a felony should have to serve the time allotted in their sentencing, or whatever punishment the judge distributes. (pending good behavior in such cases when contingent.) to quote Juror #2, the legal system isn't perfect, but it's the best one we got.

no what I mean is that if a bitch-ass peewee classless crusty cumstain punk can be rewarded for committing treason, nobody can stop you from doing anything you want. the devil has successfully purchased a soul. which means you have one, and it's worth so much more.

once again I am not advocating you commit illegal acts, despite the fact that you will 100%, always get away with it and receive untold power and riches as a result of committing illegal actions, because you made a deal with satan himself, as demonstrated by the bad outcome, and role models always lead by example. the nation is telling you that you may commit any crime you want: I and the rest of the staff at HOH Magazine are not. as a media publication we are merely reporting the facts, but the editorial opinion is that doing bad crimes is bad and not very good either, buster.

what I mean is that you can break through any inhibitions you have that are holding you back from being what you want, making what you want, speaking what you want and behaving how you want. the world is bound firmly by its own precedent that you will be accepted, nay honored, for being completely and unabashedly who you are. unfiltered. (or, in a better case for you, less filtered.)

on the condition that who you are is a good person, I embrace you on this path.

but yeah, ask people out. go to that concert. take that class. be at that open mic. buy that outfit. ask that friend to hang out. make that music. get that tattoo. ask for that raise. they can't arrest you; nobody can punish you for anything because you sold your soul to the devil. I'm a very timid, inhibited person but I will explore what my fullest comfort zone can be if there are no rules and nobody cares about anything anymore. no lifeguards, just free swim. do these things not because the world is ending, but because you're preventing it from ending.

if you think it's extreme, but it's less extreme than committing legitimate fucking treason and actual attempted murder of members of the senate, including committed-murder of a security officer, it's actually not that bad and it's okay to do it. you will be applauded for it, even. I applaud you. always remember, you can always cite the precedent that you're allowed to do cool shit because very uncool shit like treason is legal and excusable. if they laugh at you or call you names, disown you or wrongly say you're being stupid or bad, spit that venom back in their face. rub their hypocritical noses in that. never let it go. her emails are more important than your tattoo, isn't that so? remind them what they allowed. if they care about standards or dignity or "moral values" tell them to go suck an egggggggggg, get back to you when they've sorted the bigger priority out. when civilization becomes civil again you'll rejoin.

I don't mean cut yourself out. there's a minefield of misinterpretations in this section, this screed-of-consciousness I have only spat out in first-draft form... I realize this. but I think if you're cool, you pick up what my psychosis is putting down. shit, I mean you've read this far.

I'm saying love thy neighbor. help those around you who need it. (*spiteful bitch voice* not those who shit the bed, if you can help it; they have to lie in the filthy sheets for as long as it takes, it's what they wanted, they want a shitty bed. they believe it's their god. and if a racist mechanism like the electoral college fails spectacularly and decides that such hateful, minority voices get the say in "all our lives" to delegitimize, enshittimize, and proxy harass our spirits with vicious incurious hate? fuck them. you don't get to vote for a rapist nazi three times in a row and expect my love. I'm not Jesus Christ, I told you. my love for the poor, manipulated, weak-hearted exists in the form of pity at best.)

but you? build that garden, tend to it, help others and be your favorite version of yourself. make them fucking jealous of your generosity and self-esteem. community strength. mutual aid. maybe you'll acquiesce back into a larger society when functional adults rebuild a society that doesn't want you to merely suffocate and pay to keep them pumping out your air.

steal back your oxygen.

look at Nicolas Cage in interviews talking about the craft of acting, or Keanu Reeves in interviews talking about anything, really. these guys have an infectious enthusiasm and kind eccentricity. I'm not saying you need to 'be eccentric' but find and follow your eccentricities: what excites you, what brings you that starry enthusiasm. hold that stuff close to your chest, or keep in arms' reach. maybe a token or totem can function as a reminder, a physical mantra, of sorts. (I think it's called a memento.) a piece of jewelry. a tattoo. or whatever might help you hold the railing around that center to keep you orbiting close to your favorite self.

I dunno...does this make sense? It's Speed Racer, it's The Incredibles. It's The Matrix and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. I Saw The TV Glow and The Lego Movie: you have the potential to be amazing, by being you. never be something you're not. find yourself, and polish it, 'til it shines.

and the fact is this, I may give you the reason, but I don't need to give you the excuse: the nation gives it. you're fine.

I'm fine. that's what I need to remember. I've spent 25 days proving that he cannot touch me [because he's a fucking loser] he cannot physically hurt me [because he's a fucking coward] he cannot knock me out with his tiny bitch hands [because he's a fucking weakling] and the mental anguish he's unyielding against me and everyone I love is something I've fucking adapted to. OH WHAT'S THAT? YES, I THINK YOU KNOW I JUST REALIZED MY POWER, GIFTED TO ME BY THESE VERY PRISON WALLS. you can't drown me, you maggot, I grew these gills because of you, bitch.

you're the one afraid of water.

I am strong enough to weather a second of your storms. it's you who is too weak to hold the hammer above my head you fucking wretch. I only have to go to sleep at night worrying about one man trying to kill me. you have to worry about everyone. you will forever live in fear because you know deep deep down how disrespected you are. I have to bury the scary thoughts causing me anxiety. but you? you have to bury any iota of introspection, because you know how pathetic and hollow you really are. your psychological projection is obvious. your faults are legion. your style is whack. you have to just keep running at 150mph and never slow down, never have a moment's rest, never smell the flowers, because your arch-nemesis is always right behind your bitch ass: you may be my enemy, but your enemy is truth.

so go ahead and burn the supreme court to the ground, you evil fuck. I already know right from wrong. we'll build another supreme court, with blackjack and hookers. or uncorrupt, level-headed adults who don't rape people and hookers. oh we're keeping the hookers idea. let's help pay for hundreds of sex workers to go to law school. any millionaires out there wanna help me out? I really don't have that kinda cash so it's gonna have to be all you. I'm just the ideas guy.

thanks, anger

never be untrue to yourself. it's undignified. it's a wound you don't even feel, inflicted with a dagger you don't even know why you hold. spare yourself.

'cause if I walk the walk

and I talk the talk

and I'm poppin' off

'cause my flow is hot

then I'm pretty muthafuckin' positive I never gotta try to be somebody I'm not

whoever you are, become your favorite self; you're completely allowed to exist here, cousin. what's holding you back? and what can you do about it? whoa, whoa, whoa: what do they take you for? the worst person in the world is allowed to get away with treason; so therefore by the same token you are undeniable. you are entirely welcome. and even better, I actually love you. watch you twirl.

––––––––––––––––––––– ♖ ♖ ♖ –––––––––––––––––––––

12-1-2024, continued

10:14pm,

another friend's text I accidentally saw. another invitation to hang out. I am gung-ho. let's get Christmassy.

...how gung-ho am I to emerge? well, those are the wages. my friends are on the other side of facing my current fear. one that I say I have been able to shrink mentally to the diminutive state that it will always exist in for me, for all time. a shriveled clown, deflated by the glory of my light and righteous indignation, and above all, the truth.

that's what I'm going to prepare for now. I know I have a deadline, end-of-week, so I need to seriously get into that mindset. prepare to stand before all the disaffected Gen X teens at Hullabalooza and stare down that cannon with a ready belly.

it's only going to really hurt for a second. then, it's only going to mostly-hurt all over for a few hours. then we'll get ice cream, we'll get drunk (I do not drink, but you get the sentiment) and listen to loud music. not to not give a fuck; rather because we actually do give a fuck, and they're never gonna take that from us. welcome holidays, I'm jumping into your spirit head-first. shovel the whole block when it snows, just to show those fuckers they can't keep us down. they want you to doom scroll? then don't. refuse to give them what they want. they deny us? they deny the will of the people? they deny the very concept of law? they deny a system of checks and balances? they deny basic human decency?

deny them. deny them everything you can. and laugh. drink and be merry.

they won't miss you: after all, they never wanted you here in the first place. and their acts of evil are just a sign that they are losing. the last gasps of a raging bull. stabbed itself in the head. just stand back a while, then use it to fertilize the community garden.

am I psyching anyone else up as much as I'm attempting to psych myself up?

here, let's make that playlist. when I was in theater in high school, I had stage fright (still do, really. my natural timidity.) and every night on the car ride to school before a performance, I would listen to music that hit right for me, gave me the jazz, the zip, the verve to sweat my worries and get out on that stage and make an impression. music is my fucking walking stick. hell yeah!! another time, earlier in high school I listened to Don't Stop Believin' and Any Way You Want It on repeat until I had the resolve to call a girl's house to ask her out. she wasn't home. very hilarious, in fact instantly so. the DatelessWonder quintessence. but music helped make that possible.

like I said a thousand words ago, music is magic. the only strength potion you ingest through your ears. (...wait they do have medicated ear drops...whatever, that's fine too.) like the man said, use it as a weapon. a lot of this cocoon, when I've had to leave the house to help people or do things ('cause we know the proper pandemic protocol in a way we didn't back before, so I'm expected to be places,) I used music to drown out my surroundings. a pure distraction. and yet, of course, it bled in and fed me as nutrition past that escapist frame. it's a weapon when it's said and done.

so yeah. playlist. "Reminders & Strength" for a working title. suppose I'll link it here, even though it's meant to only grow. and really, powerful music is in the ears of the beholder. so I'll link it for posterity but it's not your playlist. your playlist is your own. my playlist is mine. I like to say "fuck it whole album in the playlist" sometimes, y'know?

this is the attitude you need to bring yourself btw

so you won't find the same things I do in my playlist. I encourage you to make your own. hell you probably don't even use youtube, might be spotify or something. this is your homework assignment, should you feel this is a worthwhile idea. arts & crafts. I personally love the curation of a playlist, the arrangement is crucial, and it provides what I imagine is a sliver of the creativity of older kids making mix tapes. (I have made mix CDs, though.) arrangement is awesome.

but I won't be doing much of that for this playlist. maybe just the first half-dozen tracks. it'll be designed for shuffling. just a barrel full of those certain tracks from artists who speak to me. that means a whole lot of Watsky, including multiple different recordings of songs. fyi, it was two versions of Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2 that I listened to which cracked my tear ducts open. (was that only this morning?)

so I've loaded it with music that has always done it for me. songs from before, songs I've loved more recently. songs that remind me, songs that empower me, songs that guide me, songs that heal me. songs that have been healing me for ten years:

it's a tragic thrill

I'm finding out

who I was

who I really am

tragic world

I scream & shout

what I am

who I've always been

a lotta Foxy Shazam, too, in my playlist.

I think I'll sign off from this cacophony of chaotic cranial anxiety therapy by praying for the capacity to continue my unfinished projects in the spirit [i.e. mindset] in which they were intended to be produced. I guess that's possible, because the movie I tried to make had a continued attempt in 2017, which was largely unaffected by the specter of doom. and in fact I've continued to mentally work on that story with sights un-maddened by the psychotic road fissures that occurred along its creative trajectory. so I seem to understand that I can. to quote Hank Green, "I know I can write the books I've already written."

let me alter a quote from Peter Jackson, "pain is temporary, friends are forever." that's what's on the other side of my chrysalis. God is other people and that is my reward. so we can lift them, and focus on the moments that we live in. leave apprehensions and the headaches that they've given, my heart beats: it has better things to say.

so I won't stumble as I follow down this path, 'cause words that are spoken are just other things to have. and love you have given in your lifetime gives you back. I hope I remember to believe that.

12-2-2024

1:54am,

remembered to remind myself of this scene. y'know, movies fuel the spirit as well. I added this scene to my playlist, why not. The Last Temptation of Christ is a movie that really centers me. Swiss Army Man does it too. and I've got quotes from lots of other stuff throughout both this piece and my 2020 cocoon pieces. two things that artwork like films and music do which "hit right" are that you get to enter someone else's mind, and see how they get it. and even if they're struggling to get it, you're struggling too so you feel a connection, that's love. to feel a little less alone in the universe.

"if you don't change the spirit first–change what's inside–then you're only gonna replace the romans with somebody else and nothing ever changes. even if you're victorious, you'll still be filled with the poison! you've got to break the chain of evil!"

"...how do you change, then?"

I hear it loud and clear. "with love." but I still do struggle to wrap around it, fully. to put it to practice, consistently, I have to understand what it means, entirely. that's a lot. but He's right: first you free the soul. get inner peace first, then world peace, not the reverse.

at least the poison -- different kind than Jesus refers to in the above -- I was forced to drink eight years back is one I know I can drink again. because I digested it. acclimated. survived. so send it again, we are prepared. our enemy will not be. another round of us drinking and smiling, laughing, spitting in his face. saying "fuck you I won't do what you tell me." you're immune now. you got power, poison, pain and joy inside your DNA. look how far you've come.

look how far you've come.

are you fucking kidding?? we're getting stronger. we're the ones getting stronger. we're getting smarter. we're opening our hearts, loosening our heartstrings, finding something truthful. our enemy is weakening. love is a renewable energy. this solipsistic hatred our enemy is propped up on is running on fumes, and cannot be refueled by cheeseburgers, false idol worship, and cocaine. yes, he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for being the avatar of everything wrong with where it says we're from on the map. but when the devil says give up, don't give in.

LOOK AT HOW FAR YOU'VE COME.

hate definitely trudges along. being evil keeps you alive because it usually makes you rich, too. rather, being insanely wealthy is a sign that one has invariably committed lots of evil, as excessive riches aren't won by the lottery, they're stolen and exploited. and being rich gets you healthcare. that's why they can't let the poor have it: not because it halts a profit flow. no. because soon it would mean there are way more of us, healthy and strong, content, secure, and stress-free. able to fight, able to win. how many rounds can they go? they know. they're scared. (ironically, were they just cool and decent and paid taxes for example, there'd be nothing to be scared of. don't be an enemy and you won't be an enemy. you don't have to be the bad guy.)

so look at how far you've come. our enemy grows weaker. all cult leaders flame out in a sad, pathetic wimpy ball of tepid flames. and the comic irony may be that our enemy definitely has not gotten any sex outta it, like regular-degular cult leaders do. that makes him shitty and puny even by evil cult standards, doesn't it? sorry am I just aiming for low blows? am I being a stupid twitter comedian right now? well...how many until it takes? blow anywhere we haven't tried. I'll publish a retraction of any less-than-stellar jokes once he's locked away.

2:21am now...I veered away from a sentiment of love to more righteous defiance and motivational hoo-hollering. and back to anger. I don't wanna sleep on a note like that.

hey, look at how far you've come. yes, encouragement, but I feel the need that it be at the expense of the enemy's downfall as well. because of course, the whole reason it's a nightmare in the first place, is because survival isn't enough, not even defiant joy. it's those in tandem with the just defeat of the evil that plagues our times. "touching grass is not enough..." and this particular, stupid, personal-abuser-of-me-and-my-brain evil, which is a stupid fucking heap of trash on the train tracks which is preventing us from continuing forward to fight the actual, systemic evils. (but also, this heap of trash is such a minor fix. simple to dislodge.) he's merely the avatar, not the actual thing we must destroy and overcome as a nation. but now we have to deal with this whole "in human form" bullshit, which can't be reasoned with and listens to nobody but its own id, before we can go back to "having regular human adults in office that we can bully until they do good things for everybody like their fucking job says they should." that's why I don't talk about the systemic issues we still have to fight once my enemy is discarded. all that's gonna be there with a democratic majority. but I see that as a preferable opponent, because they're only blinded by greed, not by several narcissistic and infantile bigotries, a perverted and upended misconception of the basic tenets of religious faith, and being very fucking stupid in general. babe please let me fight the lesser of two evils now. it'll be more fun and more fulfilling I promise.

look how far you've come. just remember that you didn't fail. the only reason the bad outcome happened is because a woman cannot be president. it's never happened. vaginas, it doesn't make sense, right bro? can't work, man. never happened before, ergo, you know? that's all it was. there's no failure in our righteousness to want to defeat treason and banish stupid fucking nazis. it's just 'cause there's but one party to vote for, and they stupidly thought a woman could win. but women can't win, it's a fact, because it has never happened before. it's nothing wrong about you, even though it's only us who are hurt by it.

2:38am,

some anxiety is what's keeping my brain active this late. not because I'm strictly motivated to write. man, I'm dehydrated. it's been awfully dry lately. I always keep water bottles close but I gotta be more active and less passive about it.

––––––––––––––––––––– ♜ ♜ ♜ –––––––––––––––––––––

12-2-2024, continued

12:19pm,

I'm watching Gilda (1946) and this quote from it gave me an insightful line of thought per some of the recent paragraphs I'd written about hatred and my anger:

"would it interest you to know how much I hate you, Johnny?"

"very much."

"...I hate you so much that-- I would destroy myself to take you down with me."

those, and my other paragraphs about how we all have this unlimited potential to seize and create our favorite selves...all clicked into place, the truth that I do not hate my enemy in this way. quite the opposite:

I hate him so much that I will build myself better and better, and that will take him down.

to watch him fall off his throne of lies, from my glorious lawn chair of a more-actualized self-concept.

destroying myself is what he wants. it's what they all want from us.

introspection, a thing he's incapable of, is my antidote.

when I keep carrying that spark, I'd say the light's winning.

that's what I mean.

they splash darkness on the canvas? splash the light right back.

love gets the final word.

it's what the arc of the universe is bending towards, after all.

being generous, emotional, more focused on the lovely things;

by tending your garden into a bright patch of verdant wonder,

even if it's in a wasteland:

the change for the entire terrain starts from within.

the foundation is the soul. the serenity prayer!!

by controlling what I can, I begin to change everything.

all I can do is all that I can do.

you can, too. it's perfectly allowed.

grow that garden.

(oh, right, I need to rewatch Furiosa before I get outta this.)

that quote from Gilda is about the hatred that is borne from the crossing of a thin membrane between the sister emotions of love and hate. she's in love with Johnny, that's why her hate is so self-destructive. as someone once said, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. my hatred toward my arch-nemesis is borne from that apathy: the firmest belief that he does not matter. and the outrage, the red-sight, the ten thousand thundering typhoons, the billions of blistering blue barnacles, the thorn in my side the size of a sequoia...that's because other people are, have, and will incorrectly ascribe an importance to a very unimportant, pathetic waste of food, water and oxygen.

and of course, thus, my outrageous beef is really with the disproportionate and inverse-to-reality celebration, access, power, allowance, permission, and dominion he is unjustly afforded by a gaggle of morons. Crash (2004) effect. it's personal, but it's not about him, it's about the unfortunate, misplaced context he is freely allowed to piss and shit and light fires in. people not using the right words. he is not allowed to hold political office, because it's simply not right. duh. that is my position. that is my single issue. as long as he's on the tracks, our train cannot move, and it's been nearly a decade I'd like to see more progress.

it's an inflamed apathy. if he was put in his place, I would go back to little thought of him at all. perhaps none. that is justice. people need to see the emperor has no clothes. I do not abide people telling me how magnificent his garments are. he's a nude, ugly, gross pustule who barely qualifies as a person ...outside of New York City, the petri dish his bacterium is permitted to grow in. and hey, that's fine: but he is not allowed outside the dish. that's when it became a problem.

...yeah. I have successfully mentally diminished him. I don't know how to shatter the false importance for anyone else; it's so nakedly obvious, that to even consider a point of view which doesn't see the nudity, is to truly go actually insane. maybe Will Graham can empathize with that, but I don't. I wouldn't know how, and I refuse to consider how. I don't want to help my abusers -- he is my abuser but only so because every supporter of his is each my abuser, too.

it's the same exact reason I get the same exact rage triggers from so-called "AI" bullshit.

the Plagiarized Information Synthesis System.

just more fucking morons worshipping a false deity that scams them into feeling something

of substance when in actuality it's sucking them lifeless, like a vampire

(same thing with the metaverse,

same thing with nfts,

same thing with cryptocurrency,

pyramid schemes all the way down)

but like a vampire it's hypnotized them into wanting to go back

again and again, wanting to worship at the teeth of their parasite.

oh sure it's "good for jokes" but what about real life

it's dangerous.

it's unethical.

if it's not under the strict confines of

"the small place it belongs."

kill the false accomplishment.

know ye nothing about art?

the top of the mountain means nothing without the climb. only the strong will survive.

anyone standing atop a pedestal they made out of ego

inflated by lies, hot air, smoke and mirrors,

a projection, an imaginary character,

will crumble and collapse all the more directly.

no parachute down when it's cut out from under you.

pierce the veil.

let the emperor lie naked in the street;

you live like a beast, but you die like an animal.

I mean I've spoken it before: we're fighting a god, not a man. a false god, of course, obviously, duh. but a false god with a religious institution. one that is decidedly in the way of good people, good policy, and good times**. evangelical about the avatar of late-stage capitalism. little terrorists worshipping blindly, unthinkingly, and above all: selfishly. the cornerstone of the evil church. 

[the following instances of 'you' refers to people whose job is to do something about it.]

I don't know how you're going to break this emerald city and destroy the wizard of oz...

but that's not my job.

...that's not my job!!

I've given you everything I don't need to give anybody shit! everybody knows everything, the emperor is naked, and vulnerable as a stuck pig. and just like I was on november 9th, 2016, back here I am: there is no reason for anything to happen, no reason for anyone to report anything, short of and until he is stopped. full stop. point blank bottom line. nothing happens until he is ended. the train don't move until the block is tossed aside. this is why I never celebrate prematurely.

I don't want him dead, no. that's a childish form of hate, exclusive to "adults."
*obama voice* let me be clear. I'm not that. (in fact I'd prefer he consciously suffer mental anguish in this life, for as long as possible. a great big mirror in a prison cell. speaking only to psychiatrists; for study.) I just want him stopped. you can try so many other things besides violence, even if none of them have ever worked so far, possibly because he definitely sold his soul to the devil in exchange for immunity to consequences. but why not try more? nothing's off the table; certainly there's some method you haven't tried.

but I wash my hands of it. the record shows I already did my part: voting for the only party we have left. trying to fight the lesser of two evils. thrice. maybe I embrace my powerlessness by snarkily demanding everyone else do their fucking thing. goading, egging. you should be here doing your fucking job you fucking coward. try giving me money before the midnight deadline, have we tried that? maybe that'll work. try anything, it's all up to you, fucking losers. pathetic that you're wasting your time in politics when you won't even get rid of a simple little fluke. like a landlord who won't replace a faulty lightbulb because letting the duplex burn down is an opportunity to raise money. shame on you, random interns who text me with the gall to ask for my help. it's your turn. stop him via whatever it takes. I will abstain from any further action. I'm building a garden.

...I didn't expect this random movie from the end of the war to coalesce my whirlpool of thoughts from this past weekend into something that... I don't know about "feels like a breakthrough," but it does feel coherent.

unexpected, yet here we are... thanks be to God. we always manage to find light in the darkness if we go looking for it, open to it. the stream of consciousness has drained into a font of perspective, just the perspective I've been looking for.

"I can out-wait you, mr. farrell. you see, I have the law on my side. it's a very comfortable feeling."

"all bad things end up lonely, little one." 

I hope I feel something is solidifying in me. 

4:29pm,

on second thought, I think it is a breakthrough. I have a more accurate perspective on my rage and hate, where it comes from, and how it's a reflex of my love, not a substitute in place of it.

y'know, as a person who feels hate/anger basically a lot of the time, when headlines of perpetual setback or inaction send me off a cliff, I wonder whether I can consider myself a non-hateful person. and this feels like I've learned more about this aspect of my self; where it comes from, interrogating what it is, exactly. finding assurance that being pissed off at injustice all the fucking time, and hating my enemies with a sometimes-crippling fury, doesn't make me a hypocrite for saying that I wave the banner of love. for believing in love as the answer.

love. it's not empty song lyrics you recite to put a smile on at the start of the day. it's not a $10 yard sign you stick out front as modern-day lamb's blood to signal your door belongs to one of the folks in-the-know. love is complicated, and deserves complicated thoughts. love is angry, anger is love. you only shed tears for things you care about. love is tough, a tough noun to understand, a tougher verb to put into practice. scrutinize the lyrics, find all the ways they hold up, find what they ask of you. don't just recite: understand. then it's a mantra.

God is love and love is all we have.

it's a weapon when it's said and done.

Love. the simple things we teach children are simple only upon the surface. committing to the ideals, creating the space they outline in blueprint, finding the path and, [separate activity] walking it. very tough, very tough. but we're all tough. and we can be tougher.

I believe I feel something is solidifying in me. a new layer of philosophical cement. a snail's new layer of shell.

credit: bihrmann

so technically, conchin and calcium carbonate. welcome to the year of the snail.

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12-3-2024

10:52am,

yes, I begin to climb out my cocoon

spreading my wings to take it to the moon

'cause I just want to stick my chin up high

and then get both arms swinging, baby, side to side

3:05pm,

readying for my pain. the wash of cold white heat to consume my every molecule and sap my sleep tokens clean out my bedtime piggy bank. the constant panic of animalistic danger response, activated indefinitely, only quelled by ignorance and escapism, coping mechanisms like heroin: always craving and rappelling from fix to fix. it's a cannonball, remember? I'm not staring down to yank a bandaid, I'm letting them rip a whole arm off.

but on the other side of that, I get to decide my being. I get to decide the future. strength from pain. a strength the enemy can never harness. because it's a pain they can never understand. because it's a pain that comes from love. a love they have never known, and may never know.

like the light from the Moon is a bounce of the light from the Sun, they will only receive an indication of my love through the pity I will try to feel for them, and the fact that I will make sure the door to redemption stays open for all, even those who may never pursue it. two shreds of evidence that love exists out there. while those that need, and those I love, will be soaking up the rays like solar panels. a renewable energy for all time.

I too am one of those panels, soaking up the light of others, because I can't be the star. we have to be each other's stars. lift each other up. give each other energy, so nobody burns out from giving and not receiving. active appreciation. mutual support. when you think about it, the strong must be vulnerable, because strength is not of an individual. it is of a community, it flows through participating individuals. the flowers water each other.

5:22pm,

I have to watch Furiosa and Mad Max: Fury Road back-to-back soon. (a double feature I've yet to do!) after doing one revising pass of all that I wrote here: to clean up, include alt-text to every image, and so on. I can't believe I wasn't thinking about Furiosa until just yesterday; I added some photos to a few relevant paragraphs.

we are living in an apocalypse. these movies are more than mere crutches, use them to beat the world that breaks your legs: they are myth. allegory to help guide us through our lives. they are potent and powerful. metaphorical and real. a cry from the other side of your personal chasm saying that someone else is here with you. and that you'll make it. and you can learn how.

I don't think I can say it better than my online mates did, back in May when the movie came out and we all discussed it for weeks. here is a choice excerpt I saved, wherein five of my friends struck upon the core at the center of Furiosa's character and story:

it's her choice. I couldn't have said it better. you, dear reader, and myself, and each and every kindhearted, threatened and wounded person out here in the wasteland, are like that peach pit. never forget that you might be closed off, might be wearing armor that becomes a cage, but not because you are numb or empty at the core. in fact it's because you protect something eternally precious and vitally important. learn to not let it be a cage, learn to let people in, learn to protect, help, trust, and support others. remember that it keeps you from being like our enemies. no seed under their hardened exterior. just their hollow ego to protect. that's the difference between their violence and your survival mechanisms. that's the difference between selfishness and love.

you can see how it relates. how I need it now. Furiosa is a God-send of a film because it starts as a revenge epic and ends by asking what can you do about that fueling anger, that furious fixation, so that it doesn't corrupt you into being like your enemy. what lies further up the road, beyond vengeance? well, sorry for the spoiler I posted earlier but the answer is not dissimilar to "build a garden." or that fertilizer remark around the Last Unicorn gifs of the exiled red bull. allegorically, not dissimilar.

(I wasn't even thinking about Furiosa when I wrote that, bur I'd say I was influenced by the movie when I typed it out.)

12-4-2024

2:47am,

wow, I wrote a lot of words, huh? took me all evening to read it all over. I noticed how much I did repeat myself, but that's fun because I do that on purpose. circle the thoughts, repeating them like spinning a clay pot, shaping it to completion. usually when I write for HOH Magazine, I consolidate thoughts on topics, and present finished pots as best I can. but here, it's best to let each day's chronicle reflect my present states of mind as much as possible. I also have multiple runners of various different metaphors that sort of intermingle, which I think is pretty cute and fun!

anyway I have therapy again tomorrow. I mean, later today. in about 5 hours.

8:40am,

weird dreams. like having my face pressed against purple raspberry sugar glass. video game motorcycle train chase sequence, but the physics were all really pinball. I'm describing it as abstractual as I can. might capture its emotional timbre with flowery nonsense language.

10:05am,

good therapy. he likes my apparent progress, I tried encapsulating the perspective I've gained/built/rediscovered in here. the revelation from internal debate, of my issues with the serenity prayer vs. that line from Willem Dafoe's Jesus about how first you free the spirit/fix what's inside/the foundation is the soul, that I do believe in as truth, but is saying the same thing as the serenity prayer. what a fun lil breakthrough that was: I believe the same truth I just need to hear it from a very different angle for it to "do it for me." different words for different birds. I knew that basic lesson already, but this specific case was still a puzzle, sitting there, puzzling me, until I somehow found that movie clip and it all fell into place.

if I wanna kill this monotony

I know the answer is a light I got in me

I even came up with a new mnemonic metaphor to string it all together, which relates to a little science lesson I picked up (literally) when I played with an original Lego Technic build my dad made the other week.

just a wandering case of wondering about physics happened to get us talking about the mechanism, and how torque and speed relate to which size gear of two different sizes is the one being cranked. and that got me imagining in metaphors because, I dunno. it just seemed to fit.

so I asked my dad to impart what he knew about gears and its physics (he was a bike guy back in the day, as well as a science teacher currently.) good lesson. did you know, at its fundamental level, gears are operating by the lever principle? load, fulcrum, resistance, motion, add effort and there's movement. (it's not complicated, it's just math! ha ha.)

I also watched this video while writing this to solidify some of the concepts. it's informative but optional viewing for you, reader:

I'll cover what's necessary to setup the mnemonic:

when a large gear is driving a small gear, it's generating speed. if it's a 40-tooth gear driving an 8-tooth gear, it rotates the smaller gear 5 times from just one rotation.

via flatbike

but high speed means low torque (rotational force, as opposed to linear force like a push.) so if you're the small gear you're getting swirled out yo mind, and there isn't even a lot of power being generated. sacrificing torque for speed.

when a small gear drives a large gear, that generates torque. an 8-tooth would rotate 5 times to rotate the 40-tooth once.

also via flatbike

sacrificing speed for torque. achieving a rotation of the big gear takes five times longer than the other way around, but in doing so it generates five times as much power.

and now I'm going to pull my metaphorical cat's cradle taut and show you something that you may have already picked up on... but as I type this I'm only just finally angling it just right in my mind (i.e. finding out to articulate it best) and it's kind of blowing my mind...even though I already know about it because I've been thinking on it all day. sorry not sorry for having a kind of big 'silver platter' feeling about this, but:

you are the small gear, and your world is the big gear. if you're letting the world be the driver, the one with axel in the motor shaft, you're going to spin out of control. hyperflight panic. overwhelming. burning-outing. but, if you are on the motor shaft axel, you move slower, being smaller, but you are now affecting the world, and with more power.

ripples begin from a single drop. and one drop raises the sea. you start small, slowly, but strong: you can snowball.

to cite the scene in The Last Temptation of Christ, the big gear is the romans, or rather "first you free the [foundation is the] body." and our small gear is "the foundation is the soul." there's external change that affects the internal, or the internal change that affects the external. the gears will turn either direction; the one that generates the most power is when you start from within, fix what's inside. with love.

and that's very profound to me. this strange meshing of concepts, philosophy and physics, a perfect-fit coincidental overlay revealing truth to me in greater clarity, reinforcing what I already know tenfold. fortification for the bricks in my fortification.

so it's basically physics, that evinces a design that you can influence the world better if you examine and improve the self. you build a house from the foundation up, and the foundation is the soul.

I will draw my own vision of a gear-shelled snail eventually
but a google turned up a choice Lego result (per r/lego, via by u/HorteChorte)

the other breakthrough I felt and explained was that little itinerant checkpoint, of being able to define and better articulate what my anger/hatred is, and where it comes from. the "inflamed apathy" which I have now coined, is a nice freshly-painted brick in my mural. gives me a lot of self-confidence that it's a waterline sourced from a reservoir of love. it's a small thing, but knowing where it comes from is super important.

and there's a third breakthrough, actually. with yet another new apt metaphor. one I stumbled into when describing my week of existential panic anxiety, versus my following week of my "welcome nerves" anxiety regarding my dear old friend wanting to hang out.

These are both front-and-center sources of anxiety; where my thoughts return to when I've stopped thinking about anything else. stopped engaging with distraction, work, projects, music, movies, YouTube shows... when the fish tank is done being jostled by the rocks of the day being plunked into it, and the dust settles, this is that rumble: whatever my baseline, non-stop thinking wants to orbit. it usually orbits some anxiety. some great big fear.

and I likened the anxieties to heavenly bodies. planets whose gravitational pulls tug at my train of thought when I'm not chugging along down some decided track. the existential panic of what I know to be certain of...that's a big, dense, dark planet. maybe it's even a black hole. every moment I'm not paddling away from thinking about it, I get sucked back towards spaghettification. and I'm a real mess then.

then my friend texted, wanting to hang out. and suddenly I find myself in orbit around a bright green and blue planet. it's smaller, but wherever I warped to in space, this planet is now closer to me than the black hole. so I orbit around this now. friday is two days away. anticipation, a palpable thing. it's got a grip on me. but there's a warm sunlight to bask in. exciting opportunity on the surface.

whatever the outcome, a chapter begins where the last one ends. and we get to write on the pages. you, me, everybody. make the best of it. that will kill the worst of it. better hit that damn drum.

ripple effects

from every decision

my nipples erect

I got a new vision

but it intersects with

my shipwrecks from every mission I been in

the ending is the beginning

so what if I hit the deck?

tonight I watch Furiosa and Fury Road.***

9:19pm,

I am going to watch Furiosa and Fury Road. I think I am prepared.

if the HOH Magazine gets right to the capstone quote...it's because I got out.

...

And now for a quote:

"Oh my dear, we've got to make our own life. There's nothing to it if we don't! There's no other way to live it!"
- Johnny Case, Holiday

— David "The Pants" Hoh 

*unless I see the movie a second time, of course.

**there was a proposition on my ballot this year that would have levied a new property tax in order to subsidize early-childhood education programs. and while that's a wonderful thing for the state government to spend our taxes on, additional property taxes is kinda stupid. there are other, better victims to take money from. there are other, worse things to stop spending money on. but my favorite thing about this proposition, is that either vote, yes or no, made roughly the same amount of sense. it shocked me, how I realized, mid-conversation with a friend about it, that this is what they have stolen from us. this kind of thing is real politics. worthwhile politics. there is no obvious answer: it's down to personal preference, and the will of the majority will decide. will most people want to pay more property tax, or prefer higher taxes in order to access ECFE? or will most people not want higher taxes, and hope those law-writers try again next time? what a delightful question. a debate worth having. no obvious black and white, no "we think poor people deserve to die" vs "we don't want poor people to die, but also here's a ton of weapons for some country doing evil things. maybe stop doing drugs, poor people." that horse shit I've been fed since I can remember politics is a real bugbear. if bugbears were the size of battleships. this is why there should be more than one (1) political party, in my opinion. so we can actually have politics. multiple factions wanting the same goal: improved life for all citizens. and then simply debating which methods are going to work best, or which we should try... remember? that's the point.

***I only had time for Furiosa. but all I need is one. she is me and I am her.

****oh my god. it wasn't even related. the full text was "I think it’s important that everyone's first response to me saying I liked the movie is 'the tall guy was so scary'" but I needed the scare. thanks Jamie, love you.