death

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What title would be appropriate?

I’m writing this on my mini laptop computer, because I have a new backpack (the old one was really starting to fail, and has been for quite some time—I can relate, and I wish I could replace myself so easily) and it does a better job with the weight, however minor, of the little computer than the old one did.  Also, I just didn’t feel like dealing with the stupid little engine of distraction that is the “smartphone” today.

Ugh, it’s so stupidly muggy already here in south Florida at a quarter to five in the morning that the sweat around my eyes is fogging up my reading glasses while I just sit here and try to type.  Why do people live here?

Okay, well, I know why I live here, and it was because I was trying to accommodate others in the past—people I love, not just anyone—and so I was willing to go with their flow and go away from anywhere where I had long-term connections and such like.  So, I came here to America’s syphilitic dong, which harbors, or has harbored, such parasitic animalcules as Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, Dickless Scott, Michael McAuliffe, Ron DeSantis, and who knows how many others.  What a shit hole.

Mind you, the neighborhood in which I currently live is quite pleasant in many ways, though I cannot consider it home.  It’s extremely multi-ethnic and very community spirited, at least as far as I can see.  People keep out of each other’s business, they take care of their stuff, they take out their garbage, they mow their lawns, all that.  And the houses, though they and the yards tend to be quite small, were clearly built in a time when it was considered normal to construct dwellings that more or less laugh at hurricanes.  Full cinder-block walls on smallish scales make for structures that do not readily move in response to anything but a direct-hit nuclear attack.

I’m really exhausted, and it’s only just the beginning of the day.  I’ve been exhausted for so long now that I can’t readily remember a time when I did not feel exhausted.  I can remember that I have experienced times in the past when I was not exhausted, but I don’t remember what it feels like.  So often, it seems that I surely cannot endure much longer, that I surely must collapse at any moment, that I must just crumble to the ground, unconscious.

But biology is my enemy here.  Living organisms are selected to be prone to continue, since there’s very little natural selection based benefit in being able to choose to shut down at will.  Any being with such a capacity would be less likely to leave behind offspring than those whose bodies simply continued until there was no way for them to do so, or until something else killed them.

I hate it here.  And I don’t mean just where I am right now, though it does apply.  I hate it in south Florida, I hate it in America (a shocking and new realization to me), I hate it on Earth, I hate being in this stupid universe.  I cannot say that I hate everything about it, of course.  I love my children, I love my sister and brother, and I even have a few distant friends who matter to me.  But for the most part—the overwhelmingly “most” part—things here are nauseatingly pathetic.

I don’t just mean humans, by the way.  I’m not one of those idiots who romanticizes animals as innocent and pure and lovely, imagining that they would live in harmony with each other if not for humans.  That’s puerile nonsense.  Anyone who thinks that is mistaken and/or delusional.  This, to me, is the most annoying flaw in The Matrix:  the fact that Agent Smith says and seems to believe that other animals achieve some form of self-imposed equilibrium with their environments.  I think a sentient AI would not be prone to make such an idiotic mistake, but maybe I’m wrong.  It’s not as though I’m not an idiot, too.

But animals don’t choose to be in equilibrium with their ecosystems.  The equilibria are forced upon them (when they happen at all) by death, by disease, by starvation and predation, by famine, by pestilence.  They no more choose to be in equilibrium than the various atoms and molecules in a complex chemical chain reaction choose to be in their equilibria.

Humans are merely more competent than all other creatures (on Earth) have ever been, and so are capable of pushing their environments farther than any others.  That is, unless you count the earliest photosynthesizing organisms, which probably produced the greatest environmental catastrophe the world has ever known—the release of free oxygen in vast quantities, changing the atmosphere and the very crust of the very planet, killing off the majority of life forms until those that remained adapted and became addicted to this new atmospheric drug.

Okay, that last bit of that last sentence was highly melodramatic and judgmental.  I was trying to make a point about how non-innocent natural things are*, but I fell into rhetoric, and that actually cheapens one’s arguments if one is dealing with dispassionate interlocutors.  Then again, when does one ever actually deal with such creatures?

Anyway, life is dominated by suffering and by aggression of one kind or another, because nature overall does not tend to reward indiscriminate kindness.  Humans are, ironically, the only species that seems even capable of the “outside” view, of a compassion and thought for the future and for the suffering of others that goes beyond their local, personal, and even species-specific circumstances.  And they are also the only species that can be seen to vilify itself.

Weirdly enough, it is the “good guys”, or those who try to be good guys, those who consider that worthy of aspiration, who are most often subject to criticism, including self-criticism; certainly they are the only ones responsive to it.  If you criticize narcissistic assholes, they really don’t care.  They’re not trying to be “good” in anyone else’s eyes.  They are already great in their own minds.  They already love themselves.  Just imagine trying to get your average cat to do something by appealing to its guilt, and you will get an inkling of what I mean.

Self-esteem is overrated.  I’m not saying it’s valueless, but it is selling at a much higher price than it is worth, like a vastly overinflated stock for a corporation so leveraged that it could move the Earth if it could find a fulcrum and a place to stand.  A little self-criticism is good for everyone, at least if they want to be anything other than a force for destruction, decay, and patheticness**.

I don’t know.  Maybe destruction is the better way.  Creation, and creativity in general, certainly hasn’t served me very well.

Now, in closing:  I didn’t walk or bike to the station today.  I needed a physical rest.  Hopefully, if I can muster the energy, I will do one of the two things tomorrow.  But even thinking about it right now makes me feel out of breath.  I don’t feel short of breath; I’m not anxious, I’m not tremulous.  I’m just without vigor and cannot readily imagine having any.

Oh, well.  Life sucks.  Have a good day.

*Either everything and everyone is innocent, or nothing and no one is.  I mean this on a general scale, not regarding specific uses of the term relating to legal and criminal concepts.  I’m using the term from a fundamental, ethical/moral underpinning kind of way.  No one made themselves or their circumstances or their nature or their environments, and “free will” is a childish chimera.  As Eric Draven said, “Victims…aren’t we all?”

**Apparently that’s not a word, but “pathos” doesn’t carry the connotations I desired here.  Maybe “contemptibility” would be better?

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O, that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth! Then with a passion would I blog the world;

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and if I were still writing fiction, this would be the only day of the week on which I would write a blog post.  On every other workday, I would be either writing or editing my fiction.

I haven’t been doing that for a while.

Part of the issue is that I don’t think very many people had any interest in it.  Apart from my sister, I hardly got any feedback on my books, and very few “ratings” on Amazon.  I know of two people who have given reviews of my books on Amazon, and one of those people subsequently died.

I don’t know that liking my stories had anything to do with that, but I do have a weird history of a surprising number of people dying after expressing the fact that they really liked something I did‒in most prior cases, specifically, my singing.  No fewer than three people who expressed enthusiastic appreciation of my singing died shortly afterward.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to think that people suffered and/or died because they liked something creative that I had done.  It’s not just unscientific, it’s actually verging on frank delusion.  People just die, I know that.  It happens to us all at some point.  Sometimes, by chance, it coincides with certain other things, and that can seem spooky.

But what if…?

As a matter of principle, I cannot rule out with mathematical certainty the possibility that liking my books or my singing or my music or my other creative stuff might be dangerous.  It’s a pretty freaking low probability*.  But is it worth the risk?

I mean, sure, if I thought I had that power and it was reliable, there are certain political (and otherwise) figures I would try to get exposed to my music or writing in hopes that they would love it and so seal their doom.  But that’s a fantasy that’s not even good enough for one of my stories.

Coming back to that topic, even the stories I’ve started (or completed) and shared here** have gotten almost no feedback, and I doubt that anyone other than my sister has read any, let alone all, of them.  If I’m forgetting anyone’s feedback, I do apologize; I did not mean to insult you or dismiss your input.

I don’t know what I’m getting at, here today.  Obviously, I wish more people had read and responded to my stories and/or my songs‒though I no longer sing as well as I used to sing, I think.  But, as you may know, I am not good at promoting myself.  I don’t really like myself, and I certainly don’t love myself.

Anyway, this is all nonsense.  I don’t know what I would do even if I were an international best-selling author or beloved star musician or whatever.  I would probably still hate myself.  Nothing really brings me any durable joy or well-being, let alone anything deeper.  Even the foods that I like seem uninteresting, as do most of the books I could read or programs and videos I could watch.  I can’t sleep (much), and I’m always in pain.

Also, right now, I have a bruise on the inner surface of my right upper arm that looks horrific‒it’s about two inches across‒that just appeared yesterday morning (at least that’s when I noticed it), but I don’t know how it happened.  At least it doesn’t hurt much.  I think I’ve had bruises there before, so perhaps I’m in the habit of slamming things I pick up into that area from time to time.  Or, perhaps I have an AV*** malformation in that region that occasionally bleeds.

It’s almost certainly not a sign of any impending life-threatening illness, unfortunately.

Oh, I also haven’t worked any on either the new song or the last song (Native Alien) so far this week.  I haven’t played any music at all, nor have I listened to any.  And I certainly haven’t been singing.  I haven’t been doing any significant walking, and I haven’t been able to whip myself into a bike-riding habit.

Part of that latter fact is because it’s summer in south Florida, so it’s very hot and very humid.  It’s discouraging, though.

Anyway, sorry about being such a bummer and a downer and all that.  It’s not you; it’s definitely me.  I’ll let you all go and have a hopefully better day for now, I guess.  Meanwhile I’ll go play in traffic or something.

TTFN

*Though I think I would not give it as low an estimated likelihood as I gave the possibility of the Earth and Moon abruptly quantum tunneling to the Andromeda Galaxy.

**Outlaw’s Mind, The Dark Fairy and the Desperado, and of course Extra Body.

***Arterio-venous.

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“You’d say I’m puttin’ you on, but it’s no joke…”

I’m writing this on my smartphone today, a more or less deliberate choice, as much as anything we do is truly deliberate.  I was already very tired when I left work yesterday, but now it’s even worse, because I got very little sleep last night, even for me.  I’m quite worn out in general.  By rights, I ought to stay at the house, but Wednesday is payroll day, and anyway, I’m more comfortable at the office than I am in my room.  Or, at least, being at work is as good as my days get.

I may or may not go to work tomorrow depending on how I’m feeling.  Even if I go to work, I may or may not write a blog post.  I honestly barely have the gumption to write what I’m writing now.

I haven’t written any of the “Earth” song lyrics for my weekly (or whatever) song yet*, but I have been thinking about them and what approach to take.  I considered doing something that references the idea from Ann Rice’s vampire stories of going into the Earth to rest or escape, but I did a quick Google search and there are already several songs with the title Into the Earth (though I have no idea what the songs are about) which I guess isn’t surprising.  They were very popular books, and the notion of a vampire going “into the Earth” is evocative.

So, I’ll take another approach, perhaps discussing coming up from the Earth or some such.  We’ll see.  I guess I don’t really have to take it too seriously.

Boy, am I tired.  I was already worn out and stressed and tense at the end of the workday yesterday (there were reasons, but I won’t go into them), and now I feel worse.  A person really ought to feel better after having spent the evening and night in their private place in the house, but it’s not so with me in this case.  Honestly, I considered sending for an Uber and just going into the office at about 1:30 in the morning or so, but I decided that would seem too weird; I think the boss gets notifications when the alarm is turned on and when it is turned off.

I’ve been thinking back to when I had my kidney stone‒it’s only been two months‒and about how I sometimes wish it had been some more deadly affliction, or perhaps even that when they did the CT scan they might have found some lesion somewhere in my abdomen or pelvis that indicated some untreatable illness‒cancer or something similar.  Then everything would be taken out of my hands.  I could just find some doctor from whom I could get palliative care when necessary and then wait for the end.  I mean, in a way, that’s what I’m doing anyway‒it’s what everyone is doing‒but it’s vague and indefinite right now.

I’m sorry to be so morbid.  I know most people don’t like to think about death and dying, let alone to “speak” about it.  Then again, the Tao te Ching counsels us to embrace death with our whole being.  It’s pretty clear that it doesn’t mean that we should worship or love death, à la “we love death more than you love life”.  Quite the contrary.  I read it as saying that you will only be able to enjoy life fully and wisely if you internalize and accept the fact that you are going to die someday.

Once again, we find that Tyler Durden captured at least some ancient wisdom in his “teachings”.

Anyway, my own fanciful yearning for a terminal diagnosis has nothing to do with a healthy and wise attitude toward my own mortality.  No, my yearning is born of simple mental exhaustion, of chronic pain for more than two decades, of chronic insomnia for even longer than that, and of depression/dysthymia with concurrent “anxiety” that is only superseded in length by my recently diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder, which is congenital.

Unfortunately, I see no evidence that any of these things is likely to go away‒especially the latter one‒and I’m just puttering around here in south Florida, accompanied by various arthropods and reptiles and fungi and humidity and rain and heat and one of the most idiotic state governments the nation has ever seen.  And I am just so very tired.

So, anyway, that’s that.  If I write a post tomorrow, it will be here, of course.  If I don’t, it won’t.  If that’s not clear to anyone, please let me know in the comments (I’m kidding, I know you all understand, though you should certainly feel free to leave comments).  If I make any progress on writing a song, I’ll let you know about that when it happens.

I hope you have a good day.

*Addendum:  Between rounds of editing this post, I came up with a possible first verse of a song.  I won’t share it right now, but it’s a start.