#306

Made mention yesterday of how yard work is perhaps not my preferred task; not really my thing. Did some yesterday and even more today, and this served as a reminder that often, at least when under your own steam as opposed to under coercion--and if one can do it under coercion, more power to one--the trick to activity is to just bear with it till the endorphins kick in and you can lose yourself in it, do philosophy, listen to the voice of God. This can take a lot of time, but I believe there's a knack for it one can foster and encourage within themselves. Some people are probably born with it, but growing up, I had to force myself to do anything I didn't immediately enjoy and demonstrate a talent for.

If you are like this yourself, I recommend sticking with stuff--the payoff's pretty good even if the thing is bullshit and doesn't really matter. One of the great significances of life is giving meaning of yourself to whatever lies before you. Also in raising your skill ceiling whenever possible, gaining cross-class skills, just generally increasing your capacity. There is joy in watching your own numbers go up before they inevitably roll back to zero. The question of where we put our points is the question of who we are as people, which, personally, is a vital question indeed.

*

Plip ploop! These posts sure are a lot of nothing. Well, I'm finding my way back to it. Though pointlessness is the name of this game, so, I really can't lose, except when I make a point, which is still an ironic win. Tasting nothing but pure victory, time after time, baby. Love it.

Will tomorrow be the day my words catch fire and I give this space something more real, brighter, harder, alive? Something to chew on and come into? Strap in. Maybe for nothing. Who knows! Uncertainty rules this chaotic existence with an wavering, unsteady scepter.

PEACE, MUTHAFUX

--JL

#305

Gotta chop some lawn. The city says so! Absolutely fucking hate that, but hate will not deter fees and civic action, so, gotta chop some lawn. Haven't had to deal with that need in some years, so my calluses ain't built, which is annoying. Don't make use of gas-powered implements, so things are harder and more time-consuming than they might otherwise be, but overall, this is worth it. Nice to burn calories and harden the body, nice to have a bit of relative quiet and more intentionality about the task. If I am personally swinging a tool and seeing and hearing and smelling the grass cut and fall without the interposition of a motor and fumes, I'm relatively happier, though I don't enjoy yard work all that much in any case.

Picked up a few books from a bookstore, which I haven't done in a long time. Money, you know. Still wasn't really trying to spend a lot of dough, but figured whatever, though. Whatever! I really fuckin wanted some new books that didn't come in the mail. The mail is nice, but it's not the same. So, books acquired since I mentioned it last:

Mail Books:

World Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984-2019, ed. David C. Krakauer

History, Big History, & Metahistory, ed. David C. Krakauer, John Lewis Gaddis, Kenneth Pomeranz

Store Books: 

1Q84, Murakami Haruki

I and Thou, Martin Buber, transl. Walter Kaufmann

Musth, Ashwini Bhasi 

*

It's a very beautiful day. Beautiful enough to chop lawn without too much grousing about it. Think I'll do outside stuff now, and if I approach this keyboard again today, it will be to write in other text fields. However, I said I'd be here today yesterday, and I say today that I will be here tomorrow--praying that it is the start of a renewed period of productivity. The harrowing silence of non-production has been bothering my mind, and a stand must be took.

Peace, universal lovers

--JL

#304

We're going to blame the seeking of neurochemical stability and balance on the lack of posts and creative output in general. Guess also I should admit to myself that my office is not a super great place to write in yet, but making it better seems like too much hard work at a time when there's lots of other hard and necessary work to choose from and also I just want to chill a bit.

Back to to the brain chemistry: it's not strange being off everything, which is the strange part. I mean, because I'm the type of person who invests a lot of energy into the types and forms of bodily, psychic, and spiritual consumption they're undertaking in particular, I am concentrating on vitamin intake, nutritional supplements, and the timing of hydration and exercise with more zeal then when I smoked and drank--weed, tobacco; caffeine, alcohol. Once was a time I would eat a big spoonful of wheat germ for breakfast, have a small lunch at the Chinese place I worked at, and take the rest of my calories as brown liquor and foamy beers, smoking all the day and night. Occasionally, eggs, or a peanut butter sandwich. Didn't drink coffee back then. Started with the coffee in earnest when I quit drinking the first time. I would also drink cans of flavored sparkling water by the case, and smoke my cigs, though I'd left weed at that point as well. Even at points when I'd quit the rest, I'd stick with one; caffeine and nothing else at one point, weed and nothing else at another. But I haven't used nothing, nothing at all on the daily, since schoolboy days, basically.

Feeling fine, but at the same time, there are things I have to figure out how to do and carve the space for again. Writing is the main thing. A better chair, a lower desk, time, better organizing the writing space. In truth, I've done a great bulk of my writing recumbent, which is part of why my laptops tend to fall apart, but that's my most habitual zone. The most important ingredient will be time.

Truly, I am exhausted from merely this small effort. But I will nail myself to the duty of getting another one out tomorrow, The discipline must begin again. 

--JL

#303

Been avoiding writing about much that is topical in terms of world events in the blog for quite some time. Admittedly, been avoiding the blog itself for a little while, which always happens when I move. It is more difficult for me to be productive with writing when my books are not in some form of organized shape, and they are not right now, but there's lots to do each day--and I'm not the best at prioritizing my most private inner needs, even though they're essentially the most important ones. For me. But like, dishes gotta get done. Kids gotta get bussed to school, and bussed home--at least, if I want a paycheck they do. Shit needs cleaning. Etc. All that is more vital to me, these days, than virtual spaces and distant lands. Also I feel driven to record more lush memories in this space, to make it more autobiographical, though this is hard and time-consuming work.

However, I care deeply about virtual spaces and distant lands, and I do read stuff and have my considered opinions. Six years back, in the truly dark times of 2016, my addiction to information and news media of many varieties reached critical mass and I collapsed in on myself. In the time this blog has run I have practiced dipping my toes in, commenting occasionally, largely because while I was not ON twotter, I was still using. Since I quit that mess completely, it has been easier to just get the essentials and move on with my life.

This business in Ukraine is in its third month, though, and I have so many high-concept notions around it, and Russian policy in general, and multipolarity & globalization, the furthered sagas of covid, the further sagas of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, and this new Chinese autonomous ship class that went from announcement to reality in a year, business news in all its great variety--all these are things I take careful note of, and think about commensurately. So many conflicts! So much progress, and so much backwards thinking and commentary about it from so many quarters, while the real game runs faster and harder and smarter than ever before! I just drooled a tiny bit.

Whatever it is in me that cares about the big picture, about history in the distant past and history carving itself out in blood right now today and where the twain intermix in ferocious, glorious alchemy--I mean, it's an unbelievably exciting time to be alive. All that really happens in life materially, though, is gas prices are up and I have to put away some laundry. So who really cares, really, truly? I shouldn't. But I do. Is the blog better or more useful when I am writing about the complexities of the now that we share virtually, or when I am waxing philosophical and reporting on the mundane intricacies of my own quiet life?

Anyway, sometime in the next series of days I'll try to strike a balance; post something autobiographical, post something about current events, those wicked, heady current events. Past and present. Innerworld and outerworld. 

Today, I dunno. Think this is all I got today. Felt good to type it, though. 

--JL

#302

Better. Feeling, that is. A little better. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be something approaching the new 100% fitness, sans caffeine, sans anything resembling a vice except a touch of sugar once a day. Suppose some consider video games a vice, but I don't know what to say to those people except most of what you can say about video games, positive and negative, can be said about books and paintings and music and basically art in general. If, in your worldview, art is a negative, your confusion is so total that we won't be able to communicate very effectively at all. I mean, you have to suspend your morals just to use language.

Well, anyhow, I also choose to retain the right to smoke a fine cigar on occasions. 

There's a decent chance that rather than waking up fine tomorrow, I will be awoken by an awful headache which is only tolerable in one single precisely upright sitting position, with my head held at one single precise angle; any deviation from this stasis will cause stabbing, otherworldly pain. It should go away in time for me to start work, but it's not a great way to pop the cork on a day. This happened a few times last time I quit drinking coffee.

Point of quitting caffeine is to give me more time and focus in the early mornings to exercise and maybe write a little. Making coffee takes a long time, being as we hand-grind beans and use a chemex-style coffeemaker. This makes for superior coffee. However, I'm also always torn between looking for more independence and imbibing chemicals as a ritual, but right now, I'm in independence mode, and I'm sick of needing coffee, from having to make it to having to sit and drink it. Rather be doing stuff. It's just not time I want to give to a thing anymore. And the contingencies of dependency always bother me. It's the best way for me to motivate myself to stop doing something--the strategic vulnerability, the weakness of need. Can't rely on cigs for sanity buffering; can't afford it in any sense. Can't rely on caffeine for anything; gotta be able to get up and go without aid, without guaranteeing painful incapacitation if I can't for any reason get it.

Yes, the less need the better. For example, it is time to end this post, because my need for nutrition is interfering with my drive to create. And needs must, dear reader.

--JL

#301

Quit drinking coffee today. Been planning to for awhile, and now it's happening. The attendant headache has been more or less held at bay throughout the waking hours by naps, careful hydration, and pills. 

Don't have much more beyond that, because my brain is behaving more or less like a poorly fried egg. We'll try again tomorrow.

Suppose the only things of value or interest to say today are as follows:

• Was gonna buy a bicycle today, any whatever Huffy or Mongoose off the wall at the box store would have fit the bill. I didn't, though, because petition-signature-seekers in the parking lot made me so upset that I couldn't concentrate on anything. Maybe it's for the best, I don't know. 
• The Shield of Achilles is a good book so far.
• Speaking of books, I ordered a couple, published by the Santa Fe Institute. I'm excited for them. They come tomorrow. They are also concerned with history. Other stuff, too.

Alright! I'll try to do better than that tomorrow, but that was a monumental effort considering how I feel today.

Peace!

--JL

#300

Man! Dude! Dear, dear reader! The time do slip away from a man, and there can be little doubt about that, generally, I bet. Definitely for me, the only time I really felt time moved too slow, as opposed to galloping away, was during high school. High school, such torrid microwaved bull shit that nothing in my life, no matter how difficult or tragic, has ever seemed really as bad. Have worse traumas inflicted themselves upon me, before and since? Yes. Would I rather experience them again three times each than go through high school again even once? Yes. With hesitation, but yes, yes, firmly yes. 

Finished rereading Animorphs, naturally, crying by the end. Now reading The Shield of Achilles, by Philip Bobbitt. 

And that, beloved friends, is all I have time for today! More...TOMORROW!!!

Peace and war and war and peace, beautiful strangers, soldier on in the name of love.

--JL