#359

God damn. It's 2024. Who the fuck are you now, dear reader? More to the wellspring, who in the fuck am I. Who have I become.

Since last I wrote, my younger brother and I traveled far north to the town where he has been living for the past year and a half, a place where the rocks are as old as any you will find anywhere along the face of this planet. More time with each other than we have been granted in many years. I have reached deep into the clear waters at the root of my hills and I have stood at their crown and looked down upon the leafless branches of my winter forests. I have learned and taught, perceived and been perceived, and long and rich were the miles and the processes of the days. 

Then, it was new year's fuckin eve, and all that goes with that at the family home, with the family dogs, and two triumphant and reasonably recentered yet exhausted men and their parents.

The important thing about my family, the big thing--every family has their Big Thing--is we talk a lot, about a lot of stuff, and we bring a lot of stuff into a lot of other stuff. I mean on top of reminiscing and basic logistics and comparative sensorium stuff, all manner of practicalities and daydreams, admonitions and rebuttals, jokes and quotations and fripperies, any and all of which can be embroidered and interwoven into each other and the following: we talk about world history, cinema, philosophy, bullshit, sex, morality, politics, books, science, sports, fitness, nutrition, art, food, race, religious and spiritual matters, drugs, I dunno, literally fuckin everything, if it occurs to us and we can find a way to express it we say it and either talk about it or fight about why we do or don't want to talk about it and table it and bring it up later and come at it from a different angle. We are not a family of prolonged silences or areas of discussion that stay closed for inviolable spans of time. We just say stuff and react to each other constantly. 

This information may or may not surprise you, dear reader, but it generally surprises friends and acquaintances who hear of it or witness it firsthand. I don't really say all that much, out there in the world, unless called upon--a question hanging in the air, a vacant space where somene needs to step up, when at last the fools and talkers have talked themselves out and I can speak, preferably with the concision--brutal or careful--which I exercise so rarely in this blog. Generally if I allow myself to talk too long, people start to get angry.

Of course, some friends have heard me talk and even ramble at length, and they are as such more familiar with the man as you know him, dear reader. 

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Wow, that was so baring. I feel like I do this on occasion, pretty close to the new year--throw aside a cloak or a curtain to reveal a very personal little trinket or secret room in my fortress. You sly dog, you perfect, blank listener! How you draw me out into the open, on internet of all places!

Ah, well. Ting-a-ling.

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May we find the wisdom and courage to avoid cruelty this year, if we can. May we not give in to its temptations and may we not suffer its trespasses. It will make an important difference.

--JL