#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 

#97

Thought I was starting the new year off strong, but in truth was merely ending a shit year well. "Merely" might be a bit too rough; it's best to finish a lost race with your eyes up. Just that I may have been aggressively prescriptive and excessively optimistic thereby regarding prospects for a shining new life. Disagreeable. 

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If all your life adds up to mundanity and mistake so that all you can do is hold one door, stand on one line, say one correct thing, that's okay, but you gotta see it through. That's the tough part. 

Another tough part is holding to what you know is right when no one would blame you for doing what only seems right. 

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You can't unknow your knowledge, and pretending that you can is a sin. I don't call a lot of things sins. Not a dogmatist by any means. I say fuck the Pope, rock premarital homosexual intercourse, listen to death metal and rap music real loud, throw up the horns and stick your pierced tongue out, do what you have to do in order to survive and thrive. God will look after you, and bring you home when you're ready.

But acting like you don't know what you do know absolutely is a sin. 


--JL

#89

Well, one more ellipsis round our mother star, people. Pat yourselves on the back.

Of course, this is a daily thing; every day the one-year anniversary of the last time we made it one, or ten, or two hundred and forty days of hurling nonstop through the aether, at the mercy of poorly-understood forces for a twenty-four hour period. Still. Stayed up till midnight and drank a champagne flute full of lime-flavored sparkling water, in thanks for three hundred and sixty-five days without Ragnarok, Cthulu, or instant and unexplained total oblivion, and may God grant us three hundred and sixty-five more before I have to stay up till midnight to strengthen a ward for another year.

Saw a video this morning of a huge firework landing on a penthouse fireworks party, taken from a nearby, taller building. The internet allows for me the very worst of myself.

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However, it also lets me look at stuff like this for as long as I need to. For a little while. Every age has its private pleasures and personal agonies, which people past and future could only ever guess at, misremember, or never think about or guess at. The internet has already changed so much, I can't guarantee anything. Someday the internet might be a place where you can't look at a single picture for free, or type whatever comes into your brain into a text field. Someday you might do your typing with your neurons alone. Someday the internet will no longer be a world wide web but you will have to jack into area-governed, locally-dominated  Nodes, "tiny" local hyperserver clusters running megaclouds which guard their own precious sets closely, but allow nomadic traffic in order to harvest fresh data and build up viral immunizations.

Indeed, I think it probable that one day, most of us will be no more than nomadic traffic; wandering dollars, rootless spirits. The very few, genetically-enhanced neo-persons in gilded cages of wealth and permanence so powerful and entrenched they are unto a glittering pantheon of anti-angels, immortal and ultramaterial, the whole wide world an unimportant, barely diverting game depending on their incomprehensible whims.

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Things to enjoy while we have them: Earth, air, water, and trees. A blue sky we can look at and stand under with a clean wind in our hair. Looking with our eyes into other people's eyes and seeing recognition, feeling recognition. Words spoken gently with a voice. The feel of a friendly animal's fur, feathers, chitin, scales, slime layer, or skin under our hands. Walking in the woods. Public art, freely available art, access to all manner of media with unprecedented ease and in unprecedented volume for an unprecedented many. Laughing at jokes. Eating real food, grown in soil, prepared by hand. Life-giving rain, clouds, and moisture. Biodiversity. The present lack of total war, multiplicity of wars notwithstanding. The present lack of catastrophic plagues. Money in your pocket and a semblance of freedom, if you're real lucky. A chance to get some, if you're not so much.

Finally, there's always worse luck out there.

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Cool. Let's have an interesting year. Let's see what we can make of it.


--JL