#419

Man, there is no pain at all like going through a box of keepsakes from past lives. It is the spiritual equivalent of what I imagine it is like to be fatally shot several times in the torso and limbs--a series of hammer blows so powerful they are numbing, followed by pain unlike anything that has ever spread through your system, the pain of pulverized bones and shredded organs, before a dizziness and lightness of being washes over you and you are gazing into an absence from which there is no return.

Except the spirit does not die, so you can open the box and feel it all again over and over again, lord knows how many times before death claims you.

Hey! Good morning! Happy Monday, as some say with their tongues in their cheeks and too-bright eyes.

*

The sky is a pure, sheer blue. It is a kindness on the vision, but I was reading about how the ocean waves areosolize more PFAS than like, human activity at this point, and how far the heat this year exceeds our frail projections--I mean, everyone should have seen this coming. A pot has fire under it for a long time. For a long time, nothing happens. Then you can kind of see some movement. Then it's like, okay, it's gonna boil, but it's not boiling. Suddenly, ferociously, it's rolling. Why did we think it would look any different? So I'm basically struggling with feelings of "there was hard evidence as far back as the 1960's that were were going to destroy this planet and every year it piled up and piled up as the little bubbles started floating up from the bottom of the pot, and now here we are. Decades before I was born you assholes knew and you did nothing. You delved deeper, greedier! You doubled and tripled down! You went all in and now the rest of the world needs to go all in, four billion more motherfuckers need a washer-dryer combo and a big TV! And still you scream for more power to fuel your twisted, useless dreams, to forge ever more numinous empires at the expense of all we hold dear! You are burning coal in West Virginia to power data centers in Virginia! What? What in the hell? Who are you people? Can't you see? Wake the fuck up!"

You can't change the past, of course, and there is no profit in indulging in resentment and bitterness about chances missed and etc. So it goes. And you can't stop a fool from swinging their pickaxe and spending their money how they like. Fuck it! Why get mad about it? Why even worry that your small life and its efforts are in no way an offset for these coked-out maniacs?

Sky is a pure, sheer blue. For now. For today. Focus on that. It'll be what it'll be, as it has been what it has been, for it is what it is and that's all it can be,

Trying to breathe more. Breathe better. Haven't hit my skill ceiling there. Anywhere, I hope.

*

Perhaps it is important to lift as much as you can, nice and early in the morning, and let it go. It is painful, but just putting your head down and one foot in front of the other seems to me tro be the way we got into and stay in this messy soup. 

We must give meaning and purpose to our lives ourselves, of our own volition, using our own materials and drives. An easy to thing to forget and leave in the hands of others, who would have us as their pawns.

Gonna make art out of trash today. Pretty excited. 

--JL

#395

Guess the point of inflection has come, and the truth of the matter has become clear to me at last: I have simply been dreading the end of civilization. Indeed, I have essentially been immature about it, but I'll cut myself some slack. The calculus around the end of the world and the feelings I'm able and obliged to have about that math had changed since last I came to terms with it, and instead of dealing with it, I just stewed and panicked and chainsmoked. Having a house and a spouse and two cats to watch out for instead of just myself is a lot more complicated and I didn't want to deal with it. 

But I'm done with that. WWIII, crossing the climate threshold, the collapse of the United States, nuclear holocaust, whatever. Yeerks and replicants and shadow government plants could be all around me and poised to strike, for all I care. For all that it matters. Demons writhing out of the gound like Hellboy. It is what it is. It changes nothing. I can only be myself and do what I'm able to bring about some measure of relief. Continually returning to the public library for more Star Wars books, for example. 

Just gotta roll with the punches. Just gotta keep breathing and do your best. It's like Aragorn tells Éomer: shit don't shuffle, right-and-wrong-wise, based on how scary the times got. Just gotta do what you gotta do.

*

Man, it's crazy to feel even reasonably, cautiously calm. For the first time in months! Wow.

*

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a manifesto to write. Then, back to the manifold solaces of fiction.

--JL

#367

A kind of madness I am well-used by has taken its familiar possessions. My mind is a ransacked fortress, the only feelings of safety found in raising Pocket Monsters with the only focus available to me that is quiet and warm, and that not unfailingly. 

Well, what are you gonna do? We are the piece of leather that we are, and have we have been shaped and marked indelibly by all that touches our surface and affects our texture, the irrestistible forces and the hard corners and edges of things. 

So it goes. The worst part is I'm not built to properly care about the problems, I am built to flow around them like water whenever possible and concentrate only on what I care about. My childhood shaped me for quiet acceptance of what befalls me, for the world is a beast not to be controlled, events are driven by the devil, and the only true release is in the infinite immanence of God, in radiance beyond the universe, in that which is that it is. My sense of victory comes with letting all pass through me and over me like a gravitational wave, leaving only the remnant on the very curve of spacetime, and a prayer that this remnant will be more free than the preceding form, less tied to the crude materials of this world. 

Yes, that part of me that longs to be destroyed. To be crucified, then ascend.

*

As anyone can see, deeply Catholic grandparents and a healthy chunk of early education administered by Jesuits really did a fucking number on this poor sinner. But how can I blame them, or anyone, for anything? The thing cannot be done in good conscience or honest thought. The thing cannot be done at all.

*

In the end, it's just us, alive, right this second, doing what we're doing. The past is dead. The next second could be anything. We have what we have in front of us, right now, and nothing else. Gettng the body to the next thing. 

There is no time or space for heavy shit in this life, for blame, or fear, or resentment, or anything except what is light to carry, what is uplifting, for hope and curiosity.

Love is heavy, but it's heavy as it needs to be to make you strong enough to fly.

--JL