Yeesh... Lots of problems outside our doors today. News Media is very happy. They're finding it easy to fill their time. Hopefully, there are a lot of people ready to invest in the stock market, who recognize an anomalous blip in market trends when they see one. Doesn't matter if you plan to live forever. Doesn't matter if you pat yourself on the back because you have all the handgel. You will not hold out until the vaccine is ready. This is an election year. Everyone in the US will be pressing the same touch screens and grabbing the same No2 pencils, Lysol and Hand Sanitizer be damned. Let me make this clear for you: You! The one reading this blog! You along with practically everyone else, will get this virus eventually. I am sorry. But it's not all bad news! This isn't Ebola or Malaria. This isn't even really as bad as a lot of Influenzas. I realize it's causing a lot of tension, though. People are hoarding...toilet paper...because that makes sense, I guess. A lot of festivals and things we look to for relaxation are being canceled. Admittedly, that is tragic. Things will prolly get even worse, given enough time, too. There's no shortage of Doomsayers and Fear Prophets... Like the Center for Disease Control... https://fanfest.com/cdc-requests-people-watch-the-walking-dead-in-preparation-of-coronavirus/ REALLY!? Tell people to stay home and watch Walking Dead so they know what to expect!? What the fuck is the matter with you? I bet CNN and FOX love you guys. You're never boring. But hey! Hey... No worries. Pretty soon people will be remembering this shit with Y2K and the Mayan Apocalypse and all the other potential catastrophes that bored impulsive people wish actually happened. So don't try to make bad out of the good. Bad and good aren't peanut butter and chocolate. You'll just get bad good things...gross. Don't make lemonade; it won't be enough anyway. Shut down. Switch off. Zone out. Veg out. Avoid life. Did you know it was okay to do that? Sure it is. See life is like the stock market. It has ups and downs and anomalies. Thank God... You can inure yourself, like us. You can avoid it, like us. Or you can let yourself be swamped, like us. I'm not saying any of these are right or wrong. Play life how you want. But if you struggle upstream in a rapid, you'll drown. But there's help on the way... In the meantime, I'm glad to say that this month offers Mental Health aids in, not one, but TWO different flavors. The Red Pill and the Blue Pill: I recommend both. -SIN
Every morning we wake up new people. This morning, I decided to blend all my different coffees and grind them up to make a medium dark blend pour-over. Letting the grind bloom with a little bit of hot water and a few seconds to get that nice smell in the air. The taste was meh. I'll stick to the Yirgacheffe and the Costa Rican from now on. Started coughing again, so I took some Delsym, which tastes more like someone flavored mucus with baby aspirin. Took two Benadryl on top of it, to breathe. At about 2 PM, I'm wondering how feasible it is to drink alcohol on top of all of that. I decide against it and take a Flexeril instead. Every now and then, I take a Tums to manage the heartburn. Round out my late lunch with an Abilify. Most people who read this are probably either in awe, shaking their head, don't give a fuck or terribly worried. Think that covered most everyone... But the truth of it is. We're afraid. We're afraid of vaccinations, medications, red meat, our chakras out of alignment...etc. Or let me be real. We're afraid of cancer. That's all anyone talks about is cancer. But we can control that, just like we do global warming. Pay a carbon tax, take some essential oils, rub crystals on our sphincters, do a deep toxin cleanse, sort our recyclables into separate bins and fucking die in the end anyway. We're afraid. I'm afraid of a lot. I don't have common phobias. I'm not scared of heights, I don't mind spiders or snakes. I can swim well and I'm on good terms with the Ocean and deep water. I don't find clowns funny or scary. I'm not even that terrified of death. But I do have a lot of fear. I'm afraid of being too terrified to live. I suffer from it daily and it's its own cruel joke. I'm not terrified of cancer or overdoses. I'm terrified of you. Any of you. All of you. If you're reading this, I mean you too. I'm terrified of failing in public view, of ridicule, of being found to have no real worth. That's why I don't fear death so much. All that, is just the final curtain. But until then I need my poisons, I need my apothecary, pharmacists and alchemy. Not necessarily because they help, but because I get routinely tricked into thinking they do and even that is worth the risk to me. -SIN
The last few blog posts have been so pretentious and full of shit that they've given me a burning desire to torch some false respectability. And since I intend even more pretension and bullshit in this post, it becomes necessary. Nothing is ever quite so shameful as the truth. But once the truth is out and everyone knows it, there's a happy sense of freedom. I have no intention of making you read about me, since it's come to my attention that some people read these. But if I need a humbling in your eyes, this is free and this one is on me: Spoiler Having NOTHING in the works for today, I start my day off alone. I do not have a significant other. I do not want one. That's fine by me. Some people truly are better off alone, and all the better for those people to recognize that fact, themselves. I start the day by perverting a cup of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe with bottom bitch E&J brandy. From there, cue the cold pizza eating with accompaniments of Rum and Coke. I'm currently flying the equivalent of three drinks high. I only drink alone. I will not drink around people I do not know. I do have some Latakia & Burley left for my pipe, before I'm reduced to smoking dottle and ashes. I can barely breathe these days. Only a year ago I didn't smoke and could comfortably run 4 miles in a given gym session. Outside my job as a greenhouse manager(greenhouse manager is an exaggeration for my benefit, but you may interpret it however you wish.), I have no contact with people. I do own a phone I don't use. I refuse to allow it to record my position, so I cannot even add contacts. I'm not on Facebook. You can't find me on Twitter. My social life consists of youtube videos I watch. I have zero people that live up to the title of friends. My death would be mourned by five family members at maximum. I'm in effect, an invisible person. Do not feel sorry for me, that would defeat the purpose of this. I am quite happy living the life I lead. Now to move on to the topic. Many people assume myths are fake. Like so many things in life, this is an oversimplification, in my eyes. Anyone who has ever read a "_____ for Idiots" book or ever explained anything to a child, you should know intimately the purpose of a myth. God is a bearded white man who created everything. Love is a uniting force of humanity. Pure Evil. Heroism. Santa Claus. These are all myths. Nothing untrue about them...and yet... If you were to embark on a mission to "disprove" them, you would have little trouble and encounter only frangible resistance. They're deceptive that way. Meretricious to a fault, and yet, for all their hidden truths, they're perishable in the extreme. There are truths behind the sins and lies, life may have no afterlife; but you can't count on the unknowable to back you up every single time. At this point we're digging into semiotics (the study of symbols, their origin and meanings.) We have things like the Designata and the Denotata. The sign which denotes and the thing which is denoted. It's a type of intellectual shorthand. The menu, the map, the dollar bill, the roadsign, the religious image and even a political party. Themselves, they mean nothing. But our brains cannot conceive of everything; especially of things greater than themselves. They are amazing tools, but physically limited. Try, for instance to picture 50,000 ping pong balls. Picture them exactly; to the individual ping pong ball. It's fine. You cannot do it. It's not vital, anyway. No one need picture exactly that many things; so our brain does a wonderful shorthand and pictures...just...a lot of ping pong balls. That is a myth. Not provably false, but not accurate in any way. -SIN
I think we've made a mess of it all. The following isn't an attack on anyone in particular, but rather a criticism on how we treat ourselves. Let me assure you that whatever you or I believe, it's a long way down to the truth from the platitudes, those plateau attitudes, we've set ourselves on. Looking around me now, I can't help think that those who know beyond certainty, the truth, have no idea what they're talking about. Those who crow loudest, I imagine, feel the worst when day comes to end and they think about those questions we ask ourselves at odd hours. The same smug sermon they sell, to their spiritual friends, on Facebook and to the poor fools they feel just don't know any better, has too loud a sound and echo to not be hollow. But eaten with doubt, we try to drown it out. Purge the non-believers or perhaps those who believe too freely. So many ignorant people to set right that it must be exhausting to all our high hopes. What's the secret of the universe? What is the one true religion? How can anyone with a brain believe in any religion? Who has time to care at all? The only thing certain to all these questions, is that each and every person knows the exact truth to each one. That and the small fact that no answer is the same. Oh sure, they all fit nicely into categories, dragged by the gravity of necessary consensus. But alone, our inner tide pulled by outer forces reminds us, that only we know the true answer. But it's fine? We will eventually know all, surely. All will be revealed or it won't matter. Only... I'm not convinced either of those results are likely. But in the meantime, would it harm anyone to feel a little brotherhood or sisterhood with their fellow human? They are on the same journey. Their answers about the unknowable, informed or not, are likely to be as valid as yours so long as you have both have thought about them. For humanity's sake, feel some ecumenical love, when you look at your Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Sikh, Jainist, Taoist, Athiest, Shinto, Hindu and Agnostic siblings. That means taking a vacation from looking down on them, judging or censoring them. Can't be too hard? If anything, I would think it would bring all just a measure of relief. My valediction on this may sound specific and hypocritical for this rant. But I challenge you to look past the words and wonder what I really mean when I type: God Bless, -SIN
One day I was wandering across the Slaughters railroad tracks that ran parallel past the old Sebree station and I saw a head, come uncoupled from it's neck. My Mom gave me special medicine and I was told to forget it. "Only focus on happy thoughts. They're the only thing worth focusing on. The happy things are the only things that shape us. Besides, if we stop talking about horrible things, if we bury them deep in society, block them out of thought. Outlaw them out of discussion, repress all incidents of pain and misery, terror and horror... If we shield ourselves from all things that might offend, upset, trigger or horrify, then they will all go away." I thought about this. And I realized she was right. We deny power to those nightmarish unpleasant feelings if we simply deny their existence. If we keep doing this...they will disappear forever and no one will ever talk about them again. After all, to focus on terrible things, shame for shame, is considered by the word of God to be a... -SIN
I sit now in a room layered in greasy strings of floating smoke. The smell of burning latakia mixed with barley roll cake is stained into the paint, ceiling and curtains. Empty coca cola cans lay out in pairs on the living room table in front of me. The light is dim, outside as well. It's cool, not cold. Inside, my energy-efficient heater is softly humming. "Se Pieta" is playing from Giulio Cesare. My dogs start at the sound of the rare passing car. They are unsettled and occasionally whine with boredom. The TV is flashing in silence, rolling through some godforsaken rerun of TruTV's "World's Dumbest" that I have recorded. I'm back from work for the first time since my week off. There is no food. The house is not clean. I'm high as a kite from that horrible fucking cough syrup. I'm contemplating a blazing hot bath. Nothing today reached it's potential as it seldom has. Things were left unaccomplished, goals went unchallenged. I'm trying to round out the evening in a way that make sense to me. I don't want to spend it hunched over a keyboard, or listening to music, or playing a video game, not reading Japanese. I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with dill pickles and a glass of milk. Judge away. It's my favorite end-of-day snack. If I had a heroic fibre of fucking resolve in my soul I would turn the music off, turn the TV off, turn this laptop off and clean the house. Maybe make a healthy meal. You know what? This is all I can stand. I'm turning this crap off. I can't relapse into depression or relaxation when I haven't earned it. Forget that this sad disgusting page was even typed out. Time to do right. -SIN
I have soot all along my hands as I type this. I have no idea where it came from. I cooked. I cleaned. I drank. Now I'm writing. But I don't think it came from any of those. My right hand looks like it held a firework when it went off. I smoke, but I haven't. Sometimes I wonder if I don't go on amazing adventures and just not remember it. That would be par for the course, for life to only leave me with boring tidbits. I spent most of the day listening to hostile winds and herding Chihuahuas and a Black Lab in and out of the cold. I admit, I drank Wine. I admit, I drank Tequila. I didn't trust the sounds of approaching cars, today. My paranoia is pretty healthy, I water it daily, it seems. Things that happen these days, I don't trust my dreams. There's a certain sort of synchronicity that I think the universe speaks through. It's just a simple repetition of a constant theme. Things that happen and I don't trust the news. Winter started in KY with a cold snap that's still echoing. That was a handful of days ago, now, my mouth, throat and lips are all parched lands and a little bit of water goes a long way. Debating a hot bath while listening to some jazz and another glass of wine. Just one more is perfectly natural no matter how many you've had. Writing and doing productive things...all that nonsense seems worlds away now. Falling down where you lose all that you are. I think I need that. I need a vacation. Thinking of going to Jupiter. No, dumbass... Jupiter, Florida. There's a Condo down there. I don't own it, but so far as I know...no one would arrest me if I crashed there for a week or two. Gonna settle with that hot bath, some beach sound effects and a cup of coffee instead of wine. That'll be my Beach Vacation, I guess. I'm good at settling and the monsters stay outside. -SIN