mea culpa

 I started reading again this week. It'd been at least a year since the last time I read something substantial. It seems so unimportant these days because we all read so much online, but reading memes and headlines means nothing. It's a passing idea and even when you get into something longer and more substantial, it's still only a little bit of curated information. This thing I do here seems longer on average than most of what I find elsewhere. It makes sense to get your information as quickly as possible so as to move on to the next whatever. However, it does something weird to my brain. Television has a similar effect, only horrifically worse. 

Our brain is a muscle, right? Or something. A cursory glance at the human brain wikipedia entry leads me to believe that it's made of white and grey matter which don't sound like muscle tissue but I think the analogy here is still apt. I refer not to the actual physical brain itself being a muscle, but to the act of using it to promote strength. The more you use any "muscle," the stronger it will get. Neuroplasticity, or something like that, is the brain's ability to "get stronger," in this scenario. It's important to explore the nuances of any topic for "mental strength" here, but when it comes to reading, I just pick up a book and it's a handheld nuanced story to occupy my thoughts for a time. 

Obviously, sometimes they're terrible and I want to throw it out or burn it or something equally dramatic. I don't, usually, but occasionally I do. It's harder to burn books when they're e-books but it's still possible. This particular book was all right. It was Kurt Vonnegut's Sucker's Portfolio, and it was just all right. That's not really important to me. I've read plenty of terrible books for different reasons and this was probably the worst reason I've ever had. Obviously, it was the realization of how long it'd been since I'd last read anything real. And if you check that out, it'll only take a few hours for the whole thing even if you don't read very fast, which is something I noticed had slowed since last year for me. I'm not sure if you'd call a collection of short stories something substantial but it was enough to get me started again. I tried to kill so many brain cells over the last two decades that it's well past time I try and grow some back.

The last year, if you've been following along here at all, has been a kind of busy one. At least in the sense that I've been working on myself and my health and everything. Cleaning out my spiritual closet, so to speak. It's like one of those Narnia closets where it's way bigger and there's all kinds of shit on the inside that shouldn't be there. In fact, it's a lot like a magical realm, but it's all blood magic and dark rituals. It's been a battle and the struggle has been very real, especially lately. I've been fighting real and imagined monsters and I didn't have the time to read, or the inclination. I've picked up other hobbies like starting fires and lock-picking, but I never circled back to the one thing that truly started everything about me... reading.

Obviously, a handful of short stories isn't much to jump for joy over. However, when I finished that, I picked up an old copy of Albert Camus's The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays. I've read it before but there's so much in the "selected essays" that I loved. The Myth of Sisyphus and An Absurd Reasoning really stood out to me as favorites so I dove back into them. I just hope my appetite for reading has returned because it's the one thing I've neglected. 

Briefly, because it is interesting, the absurd essay and Sisyphus story kind of follow the notion that there are really only two options in life: hope or suicide. Kind of, and the whole thing is about as long as the entirety of the Vonnegut stories together, but Camus gets into how those are essentially the two options for thinking, conscious creatures. I realize this here is a gross oversimplification of the subject, so I suggest you read the whole thing. However, that particular essay really helped me during some darker times. Nuance, remember?

Because at the end of the read, you know you're all right. There's also an interesting philosophical lineage he follows from the Stoicism of the greats like Diogenes and Marcus Aurelius all the way to what were more or less Camus's contemporaries like Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. I see these people as philosophers with a backbone because they all looked at the same absurdity of life and all the troubles we have in it and said "No, I'm a man and I'm gonna live!" Of course, they all said it in different ways and it manifests itself very differently for all of them, but they all faced life or death while standing up and that's bold as hell and that's all I want to do anymore.

Well, I'm a man and I want to live! And that's enough for anything that might come my way, but it's 2021 and I obviously mean human. These dudes were all men but that was a different time and that's sexist, maybe. I think so, but I also think I failed a feminist class I took one time. 

It's a lot of just being prepared for the world and the heinous shit it likes to throw in your face, like a monkey at the zoo who's all riled up and ate an extra couple servings of fiber and found a bunch of ice cream. The fall of 2016 found me in one such shit storm and I think it actually broke, at least in some ways. Up until then, I thought I was that guy who could weather the shit storm. I thought, "Hey, life has shoved so much shit my way up to this point that I'm ready for anything!" Pride comes before the fall, as we all know. It also makes for a dramatic story. Kurt Vonnegut said: "Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it."

Well, it took me almost half a decade to climb out of that fucking hole. Although, before I could, I had to rebuild myself. Sometimes when I get dressed in the dark I'll put a sock on inside out or something like that. Well, imagine that, but with pieces of your mind and your soul. Body parts strewn all about and all you have is willpower to get a hand together so you can start to feel around for everything else. The ground is covered in rusty nails and broken glass and yet, somehow, you fucking get it done. Alone, and in the dark, I rebuilt myself from scratch and I left behind the bits and pieces I didn't like. 

I'm the Doctor and the monster in Frankenstein. The lab is different though, it was a dark abyss filled with cancerous creatures and demons drunk on the vile, cruelness of it all. Constantly creeping around  and watching for any weakness, they would sweep in and destroy my efforts until almost nothing was recognizable. In the cold and the dark, I learned their ways and I beat them at their own games and finally I crawled from the pit and my eyes are adjusting to the blinding brightness of this big beautiful world. Life rife with real dangers, not imagined, and yet I have no fear of it. I'm here in this broken body, cobbled together in the dark and kept intact with duct tape and hope. Yet, it's more than functional, it's phenomenal right now and I've still more fine tuning. 

My mind and my spirit, on the other hand, well, I might have fucked them up irreparably. Recent events have shown me that I'm clearly not ready to make meaningful connections with people. Ocean like depth and breadth with cosmic scope type connections are currently not in the cards. However, I believe that with time I can annoy someone to no end once more. I've worn my heart on my sleeve, more or less, for most of my life. I've loved swiftly and passionately and I've been loved dispassionately and boringly, or vice versa, or both, or something.

It doesn't matter, that's in the past and I have no idea what's in the future. I just know that right now, I need to let myself heal before I cripple myself permanently in matters of the heart, or soul, or whatever. I'm weak in those matters right now, and vulnerable. And it's amazing because I'm actually aware of it instead of just feeling these things and ignoring them and drinking to excess and just seeing what shakes loose. I'm acknowledging the issue and I hope to address it. The acknowledgment here is a huge step for me. Addressing it will come with thought, action, and reflection. Which is a nice way of saying "I have no fucking idea."

All that being said, I do need an editor and a muse. Preferably both, if anyone believes they can fill that bill. The necessity is conspicuous, I think. I want to write, obviously, but it's terrible and the order is off and there are tense issues and spelling mistakes and all manner of sloppy shit. Interspersed amongst all that flotsam and jetsam are poetical musings mostly full of shit being served as gourmet truisms. Every once in a great while I hit upon some actual truth or another, by chance and not intent. Reading these words is like playing Russian roulette where all the chambers are loaded with nonsense, garbage, and decaying fecal matter but you pray for a real bullet the whole time. You still do it because even though it's gross and makes you need to shower afterwards, it's still kind of fun. At least, that's the vibe I get when I wade back through this trash.

The reading goes along with the writing, maybe? I've always done both, more or less. I remember taking books to places people shouldn't when I was a kid because I got bored easily. I also remember taking notes when I shouldn't as an adult because sometimes I need to write stuff down or it'll get away from me. Normal people take notes in class, I take notes during conversations about some errant thought I need to circle back to some day or another. I footnote real life and while I know it can be annoying and distracting to others, it's necessary for me. This thing I do here is a kind of footnote for my life, in a way. That might be a stretch, but I circle around here like a shark around a sinking ship. 

The point, the subject or title, is coming soon. I don't know if you could tell. These things all feed each other. My writing kind of got me back into reading and I hope the reading will help with my writing and instead of this being a confessional corner or some kind of metaphorical therapy tent, maybe I can get into actual writing. Things of interest like well researched history papers going on and on in depth about some shit that's basically already been talked about before and all you end up doing is arguing with other jerk-offs about pointless hit. Or, maybe, some more of the older way of the stylized blend of real events and memories peppered with plausible scenarios to cover all the black outs. I'm kind of hoping to shift into actual fiction though, because it's not bound by the dark reality of that last sentence. 

I know this isn't going to be the last mea culpa post I do here because that is excellent therapy and maybe even better practice for that which I've just now stated is my new hobby, or pursuit, or whatever. I've been compensated for writing before but it was not very genuine because it was also bound by reality and black outs. I "reported" on concerts and music shows and got free tickets and press passes and stuff like that as compensation. Free concerts made me think I needed to buy a drink or two to support the venue, or I was just an alcoholic. However, I don't consider that professional enough and that's maybe my goal, paid writing. Not necessarily as a vocation, because I don't know if I've enough to say for a lifetime, but something else because I want to tell stories and it seems like people only think stuff is good if there's some kind of pay-wall. I'm a reasonable man though, so I want to do the whole thing myself and only charge like a dollar or two. I want to charge just a dollar because I think that's a nice price but there's probably tax and stuff so it'll wind up being a bit more. I'll try and make it an even two dollars somehow, probably by using a calculator. Also, a two dollar book sounds inexpensive, not cheap, whereas a book confined to the digital dollar bin might be the other way around.

On the other hand, the last few weeks have all seen hints of the music reviews returning. Long winded drivel like this with barely a coherent point, then topped off with a little musical cherry like "this was all very normal, but here's a song to distract you from how crazy this whole thing was." 

I can tell I'm slowly healing, maybe it's apparent here too. This was all very normal, but here's a song to distract you from how crazy this whole thing was: