Living with your hand open is a tough and pointless gig. I'm suspicious of the notion of true karmic balance; when I think of balance in universal terms I do not think of perfection but a raging chaos whose ever-churning median is roughly stable and subject to collapse. So I do not believe that everything that goes around comes back around the same, I do not believe that you get what you give, I do not think that "good" deeds "outweigh" "bad" deeds (context and valuation, muddied waters). Those equations are part of the mathematics and sometimes things happen that way.
However, guarantees are fake. There are no guarantees in reality. No givens.
Furthermore acting generously or being kind because you believe that you are certain of returns is insufficient. That betrays a readiness to oversimplify things. I have never believed that action which is materially beneficial undertaken for reasons based at root in self-interest or greed or pure posturing in order to be perceived a certain way as ethically valid. It's fine, of course. Not going to cry foul on philanthropy or charity merely because it is selfish. Hollow and venal action can have positive results.
I care more about motive because I care more about meaningful action. It seems gauche these days to be mindful of authenticity or even think that it is real, but there you have it. It also seems naive and stupid to suggest living an open-hearted life of positive sacrifice in the age of internet, and I get that. It is fucking rough out there and the current religion is the aggressive acquisition of securities and immortality.
But man, there is no use pretending that going through the motions is enough. If you are going to be generous, it can't be about skimming off the rounding errors. You have to be idiotic about it and let go of the security which allows you to be in a position to give without feeling. Everything you give needs to have weight to it because it ought to cost you something to let it go and you ought to be glad in the paying of the price, glad because you're strong enough to take it and it glad because the giving is enough and you don't have to give a thought to getting anything back.
Let everything drop from your hands. No hiding things in your fist. Open. Everything you own including your life is only borrowed; what the hell could it matter to hang on to it like that, clinging and grasping? Not to say that your things are somebody else's or that anyone can have whatever they want, but that what you own does not own you, that the pay not be more value than the work.
We are all going to die and maybe it would be cool if on the way we treated each other like human beings instead of capital, if we had the courage to let ourselves be seen for who we are and the courage to see others as themselves, that all we owe each other is everything and nothing. Yeah, it's impossible to be a human being on internet, it's impossible to escape performance, everything is tainted, yeah, yeah.
Generosity of spirit and a commitment to an open heart are more essential than ever now that they have been relegated to crude simplemindedness. Just gotta do it anyway, best you can, every opportunity you can catch, and fuck 'em off when they shame you.
Life is for giving as many gifts as possible, for becoming a great and skilled gift-giver. That there may be an oversimplification; but if so, one I can get behind.
--JL
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Saturday, March 9, 2019
#131
Pretty good number today. Robust little weirdo, very nice square to it. 17, 161. Now that is an excellent number.
*
Was yesterday a rad day? Doesn't matter. Today ain't over and tomorrow is another day. Rad it up, rad it up, let the rad grow all around you till you cannot move for radness.
Life is very difficult to get through.
*
Other texts beckon; that's the best relief I know. Let's all spit the blood into the bucket, roll out our necks and get back to the middle. Not beat down yet.
--JL
*
Was yesterday a rad day? Doesn't matter. Today ain't over and tomorrow is another day. Rad it up, rad it up, let the rad grow all around you till you cannot move for radness.
Life is very difficult to get through.
*
Other texts beckon; that's the best relief I know. Let's all spit the blood into the bucket, roll out our necks and get back to the middle. Not beat down yet.
--JL
Friday, March 8, 2019
#130
Basically how I feel about this particular moment in political history is that I am less troubled by the material actions of national officials than I am by their affect and their current entanglement with the public through the medium of online society; the people who call themselves our leaders are constantly up in our faces. This is because I am essentially less concerned with the consequence of policy--which, to simplify, is essentially consistent (princes be princes, and princes gonna prince, and all empires fall)--than with the behavior and rhetoric of policymakers and enforcers, which has a powerful mass psychological effect. The psychosocial condition of human beings is of more concern to me, and I think it's in a lot more danger than any political institution.
You might argue that I am lending undue credence to the notion that institutions are firm, but it is more that I consider the consequences of their disintegration in applied terms--increased public suffering in the short term--completely certain and inevitable, and so far something always springs up in place of what fell. Ecologies behave like ecologies. My interest lies in how people deal with these chaotic changes, whether they can be healthy and reasonable about it or allow themselves to be disrupted and destroyed.
Naturally this has a lot to do with the institutions that are available to them, or whose interest lies in their tractability, if nothing else.
But what do they feel? What do they come up with in order to survive and make sense of the world? What art do they make, what do they chatter about, who are they listening to?
The answers are usually horrifying, but never uninteresting, and sometimes life-affirming and beautiful beyond description.
*
Alright, no, sometimes I find people very boring. They like to listen to idiots and con artists and they love to blather about inanities beneath the purview of basic brain function, other people's business, made-up problems, advertising, and bad sex.
I mean, who doesn't like inanity and sex, though. So punk rock. So Dada.
*
It is a very beautiful day, and I cannot wait for my walk to work. Very excited to work my shift. March is warming up and turning sunny and we are gonna do this thing fucking alright, folks.
Have a rad day. Rad day, everybody. Get the paperwork in order and clear the launch pad. Let's do it.
--JL
You might argue that I am lending undue credence to the notion that institutions are firm, but it is more that I consider the consequences of their disintegration in applied terms--increased public suffering in the short term--completely certain and inevitable, and so far something always springs up in place of what fell. Ecologies behave like ecologies. My interest lies in how people deal with these chaotic changes, whether they can be healthy and reasonable about it or allow themselves to be disrupted and destroyed.
Naturally this has a lot to do with the institutions that are available to them, or whose interest lies in their tractability, if nothing else.
But what do they feel? What do they come up with in order to survive and make sense of the world? What art do they make, what do they chatter about, who are they listening to?
The answers are usually horrifying, but never uninteresting, and sometimes life-affirming and beautiful beyond description.
*
Alright, no, sometimes I find people very boring. They like to listen to idiots and con artists and they love to blather about inanities beneath the purview of basic brain function, other people's business, made-up problems, advertising, and bad sex.
I mean, who doesn't like inanity and sex, though. So punk rock. So Dada.
*
It is a very beautiful day, and I cannot wait for my walk to work. Very excited to work my shift. March is warming up and turning sunny and we are gonna do this thing fucking alright, folks.
Have a rad day. Rad day, everybody. Get the paperwork in order and clear the launch pad. Let's do it.
--JL
Thursday, March 7, 2019
#129
How we keep going is all the miraculous proof that I need. Serious talk.
That we as a species have not instigated total nuclear annihilation--that we did not blow ourselves to perdition the minute that was an option--on top of each individual shouldering their trauma and exhaustion and the innumerable burdens of existence and stepping forward to fight the battle that is life is so overwhelmingly outrageously laughably against the odds, even for one day, that it is mathematically a miracle.
Mathematics themselves count as a miracle too, though.
*
Drew three pictures last night. Did what I said I would do.
The miracles we make ourselves are valid, too. To approach blankness and fill it with yourself--the performance of miracles. Everyone has this within them; even a creature like Charles Manson can make art that earns its name. That is a miracle, like it or not.
Nobody said miracles are always good things however you frame them, or that they're ever simple.
Universe doesn't have to be good to be miraculous.
*
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said that he believed increasingly in spite of, and not because of, the miracles. I haven't read his books yet, just about him, some quotes, very superficial. Think about what I've seen quite a lot, though. Getting ready. Reading is a process I take seriously; my priorities and decisions may seem violently changeable and wildly chaotic, but this is misleading. I set myself a program, through which I allow a rich seam of chaos to run, so that I never stagnate, and to which time is subordinate, not determinate. Waiting for fruits to ripen while I ride the wind and account for what it brings me.
Discipline is not the same as control.
*
Anyhow, I am proud of everybody reading this for having survived to make it this far.
Fucking life! That shit is killing us, amirite?
*
Today I cooked some bomb scrambled eggs. Those fuckers got treated correctly every step of the way.
Let me tell you something: eggs are a miracle. Think about an egg for a minute. Remember that an egg is how you got your start, and that when you eat eggs you are eating giant versions of the cell that you once were.
Stirred up some big cells in a hot pan and ate 'em right up. Yum yum! Man, they were decent. I honored their sacrifice to the best of my ability.
--JL
That we as a species have not instigated total nuclear annihilation--that we did not blow ourselves to perdition the minute that was an option--on top of each individual shouldering their trauma and exhaustion and the innumerable burdens of existence and stepping forward to fight the battle that is life is so overwhelmingly outrageously laughably against the odds, even for one day, that it is mathematically a miracle.
Mathematics themselves count as a miracle too, though.
*
Drew three pictures last night. Did what I said I would do.
The miracles we make ourselves are valid, too. To approach blankness and fill it with yourself--the performance of miracles. Everyone has this within them; even a creature like Charles Manson can make art that earns its name. That is a miracle, like it or not.
Nobody said miracles are always good things however you frame them, or that they're ever simple.
Universe doesn't have to be good to be miraculous.
*
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said that he believed increasingly in spite of, and not because of, the miracles. I haven't read his books yet, just about him, some quotes, very superficial. Think about what I've seen quite a lot, though. Getting ready. Reading is a process I take seriously; my priorities and decisions may seem violently changeable and wildly chaotic, but this is misleading. I set myself a program, through which I allow a rich seam of chaos to run, so that I never stagnate, and to which time is subordinate, not determinate. Waiting for fruits to ripen while I ride the wind and account for what it brings me.
Discipline is not the same as control.
*
Anyhow, I am proud of everybody reading this for having survived to make it this far.
Fucking life! That shit is killing us, amirite?
*
Today I cooked some bomb scrambled eggs. Those fuckers got treated correctly every step of the way.
Let me tell you something: eggs are a miracle. Think about an egg for a minute. Remember that an egg is how you got your start, and that when you eat eggs you are eating giant versions of the cell that you once were.
Stirred up some big cells in a hot pan and ate 'em right up. Yum yum! Man, they were decent. I honored their sacrifice to the best of my ability.
--JL
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
#128
Experienced reading Patrick Kyle's short comics through the medium of the short comics of Patrick Kyle in Everything Disappeared: Short Comics by Patrick Kyle, which contains the short comics of Patrick Kyle.
These are some of the best god damn comics I have ever had the fortune and pleasure to run my eyes across. This motherfucker is a supergenius. The short comics of Patrick Kyle stand among equals on that narrow platform which makes up the highest pinnacle of humankind's cultural achievements. Rarely have I experienced such wonder and pleasure, and never in my life have I laughed out loud on a city bus.
For real, ridiculously Quality. I was lent these comics by a coworker and as soon as I finish this post I am going to order my own copy. Dunno what I can lend back that will even this situation out. This is one of my favorite feelings and favorite challenges.
Patrick fucking Kyle. This person has achieved something uncommon.
*
Also I ate a sandwich today. Let me tell you about this motherfucking sandwich.
This sandwich stepped up to home plate and sliced a thousand-mile-an-hour pitch in half with a sword. This sandwich punched the other boxer's head clean off like a dandelion. This sandwich dove into the pool with such force and technical prowess that in one clean three-second glide it laid its fingers on the far wall.
Dogg, this sandwich punished. This was one of the sandwiches worth the suffering that staying alive has put you through and makes your cells heal a little as your soul resonates one clear pure note of honest and uncomplicated sacred pleasure.
Rustic Italian with delicious and flawlessly executed chicken salad (clean local farm chicken and house-made mayo) minced fine, roasted red pepper spread, two big exactly correct crunch and texture peppered strips of Arkansas bacon, and a mess of delicious thin-sliced spicy tang pickles, toasted to the precise point in butter; bread seared and delicate to hold, red peppers married into chicken salad warmed just barely to dripping.
Holy jumping saints in heaven. That sandwich was confirmation of value itself. That was God saying "Hey baby, look, I'm here. I'm right here with you. And I love you more than I can say, so here is a sandwich. Bite into it. I made it just for you."
Daily bread, man. I'm almost crying over here.
*
By no means all the blessings that today has placed into my basket, but frankly, much more and I'd just be chattering about how wonderful my life is. While it certainly is that, it's best to keep it simple and not get all high on your luck, so it shall suffice to say that I was gifted more wonderful food and the company of an old friend.
Some days just roll straight twenties. Turn up sevens every hour on the hour. Days you gotta grow your thankfulness just to keep up.
*
Haven't drawn a picture in over a year! What the hell! This was once inconceivable to me. Have I mentioned this? Well I still haven't done it, but let me stand forsworn if that doesn't change right now, today, this instant.
After I, uh...eat another meal.
Peace, peace, a thousand time peace plus one strong and firm out, yo.
--JL
These are some of the best god damn comics I have ever had the fortune and pleasure to run my eyes across. This motherfucker is a supergenius. The short comics of Patrick Kyle stand among equals on that narrow platform which makes up the highest pinnacle of humankind's cultural achievements. Rarely have I experienced such wonder and pleasure, and never in my life have I laughed out loud on a city bus.
For real, ridiculously Quality. I was lent these comics by a coworker and as soon as I finish this post I am going to order my own copy. Dunno what I can lend back that will even this situation out. This is one of my favorite feelings and favorite challenges.
Patrick fucking Kyle. This person has achieved something uncommon.
*
Also I ate a sandwich today. Let me tell you about this motherfucking sandwich.
This sandwich stepped up to home plate and sliced a thousand-mile-an-hour pitch in half with a sword. This sandwich punched the other boxer's head clean off like a dandelion. This sandwich dove into the pool with such force and technical prowess that in one clean three-second glide it laid its fingers on the far wall.
Dogg, this sandwich punished. This was one of the sandwiches worth the suffering that staying alive has put you through and makes your cells heal a little as your soul resonates one clear pure note of honest and uncomplicated sacred pleasure.
Rustic Italian with delicious and flawlessly executed chicken salad (clean local farm chicken and house-made mayo) minced fine, roasted red pepper spread, two big exactly correct crunch and texture peppered strips of Arkansas bacon, and a mess of delicious thin-sliced spicy tang pickles, toasted to the precise point in butter; bread seared and delicate to hold, red peppers married into chicken salad warmed just barely to dripping.
Holy jumping saints in heaven. That sandwich was confirmation of value itself. That was God saying "Hey baby, look, I'm here. I'm right here with you. And I love you more than I can say, so here is a sandwich. Bite into it. I made it just for you."
Daily bread, man. I'm almost crying over here.
*
By no means all the blessings that today has placed into my basket, but frankly, much more and I'd just be chattering about how wonderful my life is. While it certainly is that, it's best to keep it simple and not get all high on your luck, so it shall suffice to say that I was gifted more wonderful food and the company of an old friend.
Some days just roll straight twenties. Turn up sevens every hour on the hour. Days you gotta grow your thankfulness just to keep up.
*
Haven't drawn a picture in over a year! What the hell! This was once inconceivable to me. Have I mentioned this? Well I still haven't done it, but let me stand forsworn if that doesn't change right now, today, this instant.
After I, uh...eat another meal.
Peace, peace, a thousand time peace plus one strong and firm out, yo.
--JL
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
#127
As a corollary to what I was talking about last time, I love objectionable, surreal, and non-improving works of art. White Ninja comics from back in the day are a great example, along with my abiding love of Charles Bukowski; not ashamed of reading and loving the dead and buried webcomic Hate Song, my approval of the monsters that created and the actual crime that is Wonder Showzen, so forth. Being away from the computer for a few days has gifted me for free with the single-panel wizardry of Sucko and Fucko. Absolutely hilarious. Don't know what I did to deserve this but I'm going to put a check in the "doing something correctly" column. Not sure know how long this creator can keep this up but it is not a waste of time.
Figure you'll know whether you want to explore it just from the name. I find it positively delightful, and the eight-to-thirteen-year-old that still lives in my head is howling with pure and total joy. Dildo jokes, pumpkinfucking, absolute nonsense, subtle and outrageously not subtle satirical edges. The only thing funnier to me than a naked man screaming at another man to look at his bared, stiff cock is dogfucking.
Dogfucking is the funniest thing in the world to me.
Yeah, yeah, judge it up. I'll stay laffin'.
*
Being away from the computer is an excellent thing. As I have stated, and it cannot be restated enough times, I detest computers, the internet, and everything that computers and the internet mean for society and the human animal; these are bad things, bad, unequivocally bad like virulent plagues and television commercials. However, I love comics, the unfettered dissemination of even the most completely lunatic and vile ideas (including, of course, my own), and raw data even more. Praise internet!
Also, I love you, dear reader. You. And here you are, on the internet! Wholly classin' the place up. Look at you! Keep on rockin'.
If you're not interested in the garbage I've been praising and promoting, perhaps one of these remarkable offerings will be more your speed, far from the gutter where I happily roister and feed. Haven't read each one but what I have sampled is exquisite, and all the art is stunning. I mean just look at it.
*
Took a break from J.M. Roberts' A History of Europe (fricking magnificent, makes me want to secure at least ten more history books and has already made me buy three) to read Fire and Blood, by G.R.R. Martin. So fucking good. I've read the Song of Ice and Fire books seven times, the stories in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms perhaps two to five times depending on the tale, and A World of Ice and Fire three times because I am not a well man.
As evidence, I present that I already want to read Fire and Blood a second time. Like, right now. I read it just this weekend.
Staring it at it hungrily, right now, even as I type, seriously considering it.
*
Dildo jokes, pumpkinfucking, and fantasy history. Man, life is hilarious!
--JL
Figure you'll know whether you want to explore it just from the name. I find it positively delightful, and the eight-to-thirteen-year-old that still lives in my head is howling with pure and total joy. Dildo jokes, pumpkinfucking, absolute nonsense, subtle and outrageously not subtle satirical edges. The only thing funnier to me than a naked man screaming at another man to look at his bared, stiff cock is dogfucking.
Dogfucking is the funniest thing in the world to me.
Yeah, yeah, judge it up. I'll stay laffin'.
*
Being away from the computer is an excellent thing. As I have stated, and it cannot be restated enough times, I detest computers, the internet, and everything that computers and the internet mean for society and the human animal; these are bad things, bad, unequivocally bad like virulent plagues and television commercials. However, I love comics, the unfettered dissemination of even the most completely lunatic and vile ideas (including, of course, my own), and raw data even more. Praise internet!
Also, I love you, dear reader. You. And here you are, on the internet! Wholly classin' the place up. Look at you! Keep on rockin'.
If you're not interested in the garbage I've been praising and promoting, perhaps one of these remarkable offerings will be more your speed, far from the gutter where I happily roister and feed. Haven't read each one but what I have sampled is exquisite, and all the art is stunning. I mean just look at it.
*
Took a break from J.M. Roberts' A History of Europe (fricking magnificent, makes me want to secure at least ten more history books and has already made me buy three) to read Fire and Blood, by G.R.R. Martin. So fucking good. I've read the Song of Ice and Fire books seven times, the stories in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms perhaps two to five times depending on the tale, and A World of Ice and Fire three times because I am not a well man.
As evidence, I present that I already want to read Fire and Blood a second time. Like, right now. I read it just this weekend.
Staring it at it hungrily, right now, even as I type, seriously considering it.
*
Dildo jokes, pumpkinfucking, and fantasy history. Man, life is hilarious!
--JL
Friday, March 1, 2019
#126
Added some more links to webcomics, the best webcomics. I thought carefully about adding more to the best webcomic. The best comic is of course Achewood, which is probably over, the second is Buttercup Festival, which is updating again after six years and has been the perfect thing since it started up way back in the early days of webcomic explosion and continued to be through all its revolutions and going on hiatus. The third is the bravest, funniest, smartest, most intense and well-executed piece of fantasy being written today and some of the best art ever produced by human hands. Just my opinion, but if you think I'm full of shit, I expect you have not read it. And if you have, and disagree, please tell me who is making something better than that because I want to read it very much.
Though should you point me to something I've already read, or am already reading, be warned that I will forever consider you simply addled. Ashley Cope is the foremost living creator of fantasy since the passing of Ursula K. LeGuin. Full stop, no further service on this line.
*
Should you present me with some argument that this cannot be so due to some violence the artist has perpetrated in life or work, be assured that sorry though it makes me, it is too late for me; I am one of those people that believes the work has a life and value outside of its creator and will not change my position based on hearing that an author did not lead the blameless life of a saint. I am not a saint either. And, sadly, you shall never convince me by word or deed that you are a saint, no matter how piously you assure me or how assiduously you forward that argument by calling the universe broken on the basis that it does not meet your personal criteria.
More likely to think of you as a censor and a person with a tendency to abuse other people. Not impressed by those qualities, though I concede they do not make you the devil. I know you're probably just trying to be a good person. That is what makes you dangerous, and forgivable.
See? We all draw our lines in different places. All sorts of different ways of interpreting things.
*
Think I'm wrong? Good. Keep asking questions. Fight me in your mind. I don't care who's wrong or right because those are almost always fake applications of narrow band of reasoning and ultimately it is almost impossible for me to hurt you by loving something that I read or see and you can't hurt me by hating the same thing.
I care only that we are both perceiving art and thinking.
--JL
Though should you point me to something I've already read, or am already reading, be warned that I will forever consider you simply addled. Ashley Cope is the foremost living creator of fantasy since the passing of Ursula K. LeGuin. Full stop, no further service on this line.
*
Should you present me with some argument that this cannot be so due to some violence the artist has perpetrated in life or work, be assured that sorry though it makes me, it is too late for me; I am one of those people that believes the work has a life and value outside of its creator and will not change my position based on hearing that an author did not lead the blameless life of a saint. I am not a saint either. And, sadly, you shall never convince me by word or deed that you are a saint, no matter how piously you assure me or how assiduously you forward that argument by calling the universe broken on the basis that it does not meet your personal criteria.
More likely to think of you as a censor and a person with a tendency to abuse other people. Not impressed by those qualities, though I concede they do not make you the devil. I know you're probably just trying to be a good person. That is what makes you dangerous, and forgivable.
See? We all draw our lines in different places. All sorts of different ways of interpreting things.
*
Think I'm wrong? Good. Keep asking questions. Fight me in your mind. I don't care who's wrong or right because those are almost always fake applications of narrow band of reasoning and ultimately it is almost impossible for me to hurt you by loving something that I read or see and you can't hurt me by hating the same thing.
I care only that we are both perceiving art and thinking.
--JL
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