#342

Should I just write about my desk? Describe the desk itself in detail, the contents of its drawers, the geography of objects upon its surface? Factually Pointless, the blog in which Joseph Lidd describes his immediate surroundings in laborious and unnecessary--yet to his own mind, vastly incomplete!--detail.

They say that the devil is in the details, while God is present in the sweeping picture. A revelatory piece of wisdom which I have not made up my mind on; my operating parameters for being-in-the-world tend to be very apt to oscillate between the coarse grain and the fine in all things, so my predilection for details is always tempered and sometimes hampered by my adoration of the sweeping picture, and vice versa. 

Maybe we all have this condition, to some degree. I have known men I thought to be careless in the extreme when it comes to the attention to detail required to possess what I think of as a nuanced understanding of the world and the self which navigates the world, and their big-picture thinking was none too inspired, either. Further exposure revealed their attention to detail broad, deep, and almost manic when it came to fixing up and tooling out their car, with impressive results. There are many dimensions to every life, varying in size, vibrancy, and gravitational presence. 

Anyway, my desk. Strap in.

*

Made of a darkish, heavy wood, stained deep brown, it's about five feet wide and not quite two feet deep. Not perfectly rectangular, the surface bulges smoothly towards the front, and bulges and curves at the front corners. The top stands on two thick pillars comprised of the cabinetry; three drawers on either side, the lowest the deepest, the highest the shallowest. There is a middle drawer in between them below the top, just above where the sitter's legs go, between the other drawers. The handles are wood with a metal core. There is an ornate symmetrical inset of a stoppered decanter of some kind framed in vines, leaves, and flowers in paler wood, very faded and darkened, on the front of the middle drawer. The surface is much scored and faded, though still quite smooth and some time away from splintering. 

The right-hand bottom drawer holds completed works of mine that exist in looseleaf or stapled form only due to format considerations, as well as collected laser-printed poems and short works I have been taught with or I have used to teach. Also, fully inscribed notebooks and composition books, every page filled or used to satisfaction. As recently as yesterday this drawer may have also come to house a gift I received from an old friend of mine, a gift of special dried fungi.

Above that, the drawer holds partially filled or new notebooks and composition books, waiting for their time in the sun and subsequently sequestration one level below. Above that is the pencil, eraser, and colored pencil drawer, grouped in a metal divider by category and level of use. New Wood Pencils, In Process Wood Pencils, Colored Pencils, Mechanical Pencils (lead no finer than .7 mm), Erases & Utility Razors & Retired Pencils. There is also a pencil sharpener tossed in with the New Pencils, and a high-quality pair of scissors (gray, Fiskars, titanium) in front of the divider.

On the opposite side, the top drawer is given to pens and sundry tools. A calligraphy pen set, many ballpoints, a brush pen, Sharpie markers, a dry-erase. A collection of paintbrushes, mostly very fine-sized. My old-ass iPod I don't have the heart to get rid of, a USB computer mouse, a wireless computer mouse, my collection of flash drives, several drafting compasses, some random stickers I haven't found a place for, and some Champion pins from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in a little pouch I got from a pipe case I once bought.

Below that, my collection of bookmarks, which contains examples of such variety as to satisfy any predilection I might have, to suit more or less any book that I might get my hands on. Pinky-sized to postcard-sized, in metal, plastic, leather, cloth, laminated cross-stitch, made from scratch, specially designed--I got a lot of 'em, folks. This drawer also contains wooden and plastic drafting and regular rulers, and drafting templated with like the shapes all in 'em. Think I described them pretty well last time I detailed my desk. 

Bottom drawer on the left side contains loose notes in a yellow mailer which comprise seed material for a lot of future or never-to-be projects. Basically it's an envelope containing chicken scratch on torn paper. This drawer also contains fully used-up notebooks; actually, the bulk of them. It always catches me off-guard, how much nonsense and babble I have actually set to paper in this life. And to be published, to be shown, only a light skimming of the cream off the top; the rest, between me, God, fire, dust, the digital aether, and the landfill.

Finally the middle drawer contains life documents, stuff the government needs, medical shit, whetever. That drawer bores the shit out of me and I actually hate it. This aspect of me is well-known and documented. 

Arrayed on the desktop, at my right hand on the edge sits a planter gifted to me by a friend in which I never planted anything, but which holds a currently full mason jar of water, a paper bag with some trash and part of an eighth of weed, and this silly pencil case, a big soft printed school bus riding around a bunch of Marvel superheroes who are very dangerously sticking their recognizable torsos out the windows, setting a hell of bad example. Next to the case is a thing that came with my bike locks for securing them to the bicycle (I do not do this; if I plan to stop somewhere on a ride or am conducting routine business travel I equip my small Osprey camping backpack I got from my dad with the locks and all other necessaries, like a bandanna for wiping off sweat and keys and stuff), the electronic key for our van, a black Bic lighter, my currently empty Field Museum Sue coffee mug from the nineties, a tube of black acrylic paint, a loose zipper bit from my Zelda messnger bag, a roll of scotch tape, a stud finder, recently decomissioned metal keys, a 5/8 angled shiny blue painbrush, a roll of mounting tape, a plastic tray which is actually part of the package for the tape I am repurposing as a painter's palette, and a fragment of a Japanese poem written in Chinese translated by Burton Watson I hand-transcribed in green marker pen, by Isonokamu no Yakatsugu, called The Small Hills:

*

"Hills beneath Heaven;

On the broad earth, trees--

These things that the small man spurns

The wise shall nourish.

Though I want in the states of distress

How should I decline the defenses of virtue?"

*

My laptop rests on a tower comprised of a Thumler's Tumbler Rock Polisher box, with everything in it--my younger brother's old workhorse. I tried to tumble some of my collection, given that my mom wanted the thing out of her basement and I had it around, but the belt that the tumbler needs to run snapped, rendering it all something of a pointless mess. I guess the rocks got a washing, which isn't all bad. On top of that is a thick red plastic tray used to contain the tumbler in operation, and on that I have a huge boxing book and book of myths and legends from around the world, both very large in surface area and not too thick, together adding a crucial inch while maintaining perfect stability. Then the heat tray on which I rest my laptop, which apart from dissipating heat puts the laptop at a slight angle, better for typing. My elbows are bent to the perfect angle, my forearms perfectly perpendicular to the ground. It works, basically. 

Left of the work tower, the partially-filled and empty notebooks I mean to make use of during this next semester. In front of them, a currently empty hot/cold thermos with a school bus print I got as an appreciation gift from a parent. To the left of all that, flush against the left-side edge, a barely-functioning typewriter not currently loaded with a roll, stored in its large faded tan case. The case provides an altar for my reference materials: Complete William Shakespeare, on which is perched my New American New Catholic Bible, and next to them, my three dictionaries. At the moment, on top of my dictionaries I have my current reading material and a little sheaf of art that I mean to hang up in the office soon. 

*

Well, that was illuminating, yes? I guess I could mention that the carpet is thick, gray speckled with brown and black, not really to my taste, and the walls are, annoyingly, sponge-painted. Say-lah-vee. 

Time to set the day in motion, motherfuckers, and may the Lord be with us all. 

--JL

#268

Well, it's the new year. 2022 is quite a number. I was born at the tail end of the eighties, almost 1990; to my parents, the year 2000 was the distant future, but I was eleven years old the year 2000. Now, and only now, have we reached year numbers that sound as space-agey to me as 2003 did to the author of Achewood on the morning of that year. It tracks; he was thirty-two or thirty-three at the time, and I am thirty-two now.

Yes, I think about Achewood literally all the fucking time, in all kinds of weird contexts applicable mostly or exclusively to myself. A friend of mine does the exact same thing with One Piece, and never you mind whether you know it as well as he does (placing you in a firm minority worldwide, by my lights), liked it but don't remember which pirate ate what devilfruit or uses only kicks in combat, or even know what One Piece the fuck is--my boy will explain at length, for as long as it takes, until you understand what he means and why he made the brain connection he just made or until you walk away from him. He is also like this about Dungeons and Dragons.

Me, I can be like that too. Specifically, about Lord of the Rings, Achewood, Star Wars, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Twin Peaks, Bleach, Animorphs, and Sopranos. Also, Mountain Goats lyrics. These are the fundamental pillars of my cultural being, and I can connect their payload to anything in the world, so far as I know. Deeply autistic about a lot more stuff than just those things, way more and very varied, but those are the things I can always thought-step over to at any given moment in a single effortless motion. Technically, also Jesus Christ plus the Word and Immanence of God, but that's like, superluminal and supraliminal and not really subject to what I'm talking about here. It might be more informative to discuss runners-up and materials which are very very nearly in that top-tier zone, such as Jurassic Park, the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gabriel García Márquez, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. LeGuin, James Baldwin, Haruki Murakami, and a dozen or twenty more, why not; bestiaries scientific and mythical and other books by naturalists, A Song of Ice and Fire, Halo, Dune (Frank Herbert books only, and also, other books by Frank Herbert), Unsounded, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese classics, fairy tales and myths worldwide (special mention to King Arthur), buncha superhero shit, the other works of David Lynch, and for fuck's sake all of this shit is too much and no one cares. I choose to end this paragraph here, and move on. I'm into a lot of shit. This barely touches comics, or nineties cartoons. 

An exhaustive list of the shit I could autistically and realistically talk about for hours could drive a regular person fucking insane. In ancient times I would be considered nothing short of a madman, a wizard, or an alien. That's just how brains are, mine and everybody else's. Some people's brains make them suitable only for statesmanship, or physically torturing other people, things which would drive regular people, to varying degrees, fucking insane. In modern times, we are all insane, and therefore suitable for a wider variety of roles with less meaning and durability than in properly organized societies.

There is no need for me to discuss any of the material extant in the preceding paragraphs with strangers for entertainment or clout, since such discussions rage in my subconscious eternally and satisfy me tremendously on a personal level. Don't need to win about it at anyone, though I'm of course happy to talk about it face-to-face with people who want to (never online, never, ever). The complete selves in me which have recorded every scrap of information I have ever been exposed to about the underlined material and related interpretative material constantly grow and give input to my ur-self about my life, other creative works, the world at large, memetic generation, everything. It would be fair to state that my opinions and ideas relating to these topics are, speaking concisely, developed. And, still developing. The process will end with my death, maybe. If it does not, I will be quite well-pleased to carry on indeterminately. 

*

Good digressions today, dear reader, good mental flexibility, but getting back to the fact that it is a new year, I have to go do life in it, and there's more than enough words in this post. Maybe I'll do that thing where I finish talking about what I started talking about in the next post, and maybe I won't.

All I know is that we are in another year and anything fuckin goes, baby. Who knows what'll happen. Only the Good Lord and the wargamers, know what I mean? 

PAT YOURSELVES ON THE BACK BITCHES WE DID ANOTHER LAP

ONE MORE LAP

ONE MORE LAP

UNTIL THE SUN EXPLOOOOOOOOODES

--JL

#156

Everything in life is just to help you get through it. You'll like how some stuff feels as it does this, and other stuff, you really won't. So you'll use some stuff and won't use the rest, avoid the rest if you can.

Eventually, this process comes to a halt. Won't have to get through anything anymore.

*

Because I got depression, I am very active in this clinging to flotsam. Books, games, jobs, relating with other people, smoking, it's all about fending off total dissolution. 

Sometimes you're sitting pretty on a raft in a calm lake. Sometimes you're clinging to a barrel as it races down a river. Sometimes it's a twisted piece of wreckage in a stormy ocean. Sometimes you are clinging to a dragon's back. Sometimes you don't have anything to hand and you just have to tread water, or fall through the air.

*

Getting thrown into existence isn't like being planted in anything solid or otherwise earthly. It's being thrown into a vortex, warped by incalculable forces as they drag you ever to the fixed and perfect center.


--JL

#105

Somehow it doesn't really strike me as tremendously eerie that when I am in my room, where tall stacks of books line each and every wall, more lined up in a booksnake longer than I am tall, more in little unobtrusive shrine-stacks in the floor space (my room contains, aside from books and not counting the closet: a little couch that I sleep on, my desk [sizable, white glass and titanium, the shape of an irregular bean, higher-end Ikea {on its surface; four stacks books, two stacks notebooks, one stack fresh new hard back writing pads, a clipboard with my collection of looseleaf materials | a printout of a short story by Chris Onstad | printouts of loose poems by various authors used in an extended poetry workshop I attended the summer I left high school, printouts of some of the poems I utilized in order to teach high school kids how to write poetry and in some cases pay attention for even one single dang second | a few scattered papers tossed behind the laptop of some kind of adult life importance I am and have been neglecting |, three CDs in their jewel cases, a little box of gray pastels, a little box of color pastels, a little box of artists' charcoal, and a fourteen-inch-by-eight-inch plain aluminum mesh tray with dividers, containing all my pens and pencils and mechanical pencils and brushes and erasers and markers and colored pencils and a kazoo} a rolled-up yoga mat behind the door, two nightstands at either end of the couch [on the surface of both: bookstacks and lamps, and respectively between them, some trumpet mouthpieces, three stainless steel dinner spoons, my copy in pamphlet version of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America, and a framed photograph of me at age six with my arms around my two-year-old brother's shoulders] a little wicker trash can under my desk, an unopened bag of Soylent I let my friend foist upon me next to the chair I am sitting on, a designated clothes-bearing chair, my one small bookshelf [which aside from books and three bookstacks piled atop, bears a third lamp, my sketchbooks and artist pads, a Boston-brand lead pointer in its box {New Metal Model! Simplified Design, More Lead Protection} a little bottle of tea tree oil, and a fistful of bookmarks], my acoustic bass in its soft case, my no-guard bokken in a corner, and a rug--so the floor space is quite ample), everywhere the eye looks, it is looking at the echoes of the dead, a plenitude of concrete ghosts; dead trees, souls gone on, echoes frozen, surrounding me.

I believe in ghosts, of course; they simply do not bother me in the slightest.

Anymore.

*

You know what I didn't feel like doing? Describing the lamps. I mean, who gives a fuck, anyway. 

Aw, I'll tell you all about my lamps someday, never fret. Maybe I will also reveal the two objects that hang on my walls. Describing my rug, well. It's a rug, and it is on the floor. There are colors and patterns in the weave. Boom. 

The desk has no drawers, but I have no idea how to fit a lack of something into the above. Ah, but if I have brushes, where are my paints, truly keen readers may have asked themselves*. A story for another day. I keep my horns in the basement. The mouthpieces are old sizes I don't use anymore and one of my small concessions to decoration, because that's what I think is a good decoration: small pieces of metal I used to blow a lot of air through.

Look. All that matters--all that matters--is I got to write, and will momentarily publish, "a fistful of bookmarks".

*

Man, you know so much about me now. This post has revealed me like none that preceded it, and I think I talked about my pissing habits and crying on my floor while the family dog licked me. No, I definitely did that. Being a freestyle diarist is a phenomenal, rewarding enterprise. Never know what you'll find about yourself as you expose it.

--JL

*no doubt truly keen readers are capable of noting many, many lacks, most I am probably blissfully unaware of, some of which I have my reasons for maintaining. Truly keen writers might look around their own rooms and try this for themselves; you might have fun, doubtlessly learn something, and hopefully generate something you don't hate. I know how it is, brethren. Godspeed always.