It’s Tuesday now, and I’m writing this blog post on my laptop computer (the little one, not the regular sized one). The laptop is slightly more awkward for typing on when there are bumps and shakes in a vehicle, but the vastly greater speed with which I’m able to type on it more than makes up for that—though it does not assuage the frustration.
I’m already exhausted (mentally) after only one day of work. I don’t think it’s the work per se that’s so exhausting, it’s the environment, the people, the noise, the frustrations, the fact that other people arrive late or not at all, so many little frustrations. There’s so little predictability in their behavior, and what there is is so often illogical.
I have, in general, identified more with Melkor than with Sauron in Tolkien’s universe—largely because he’s the Big Boss—but sometimes I can understand Sauron’s desire for order, and for forcing other creatures to be more orderly. Of course, the way he goes about that is pretty stupid, but whataya gonna do? As Gandalf said, he is a “wise fool” (a great expression).
Anyway, I like Lord Foul better than either of those two, and I like Doctor Doom most of all. Doctor Doom is the sort of character about whom Christopher Nolan could make a movie trilogy, presenting him in a more down-to-earth fashion in a nearly realistic story, as he did with Batman, because Doom is not the product of radioactive spider bites, nor is he the last survivor of a star faring people with powers because of his alien nature, nor is he otherwise enhanced. He is a human, but with a brilliant, inventive intellect and an obsessive drive.
Why am I writing about this stuff right now? I have now idea. This is all stream of consciousness, and that stream flows faster when I’m typing. I’ve written all this so far in less than ten minutes (first draft), and I’m already almost halfway to my target word count. I have to set a target, not so that I don’t go below it, but so that I don’t go too far over it. I could probably gabble on here interminably.
But I want it to end. I’m so very, very tired, and I have very little joy in my life. I mean, I’m pleased that The Chasm and the Collision is still an enjoyable read even now. But of course, I’m probably one of two people in the world who has actually read it. My mother died just days after it was published—I tried to read some of it to her in her hospice bed, from her own miniature Kindle, but it was clear she wasn’t even following. That’s too bad. I think she really would have liked it. I think she had been looking forward to reading it.
It’s such a me fact that my most wholesome, family-friendly story involves a threat of destruction to two universes and a villain who is unknowingly in the thrall of a much greater, larger scale “villain” or destructive force that threatens all universes, potentially. That’s my meta-level villain; its influence is felt in many of my other stories, though I don’t always make that explicit. I have so many ideas for my large-scale omniverse (formerly thought of as a “metaverse” before Schmuckerberg stole my term), so much backstory and intersections and connections and so on, but none of that is ever going to happen or be revealed or anything. It’s sad, but, as a character in my darkest ever story says, “Life’s like that, I suppose.”
I wish I could sleep for a really long time, just to rest and recreate myself, but that’s not an available option. I don’t simply long for “suspended animation” because that’s just like pausing a game; you wake up in the same state you were in when you laid down. The only point to that would be living to see a future you wouldn’t otherwise have seen. It’s not any kind of a cocoon, a chrysalis, an Adam Warlock kind of thing, where you change and grow and heal.
I don’t know why I’m writing about comic books and other wildly fictional characters. Perhaps it’s because the real world is not only so stressful but is also so stupid. This emergent system that is the whole human race interacting with itself is just an astonishing example of idiocy on performance enhancers. I really am sick of them.
If I were Doom, I would decide to commit myself to saving them, correcting them, trying to make the world as good as I know it could be. But of course, that leads Doom to be thought of as a villain (he has other psychopathology that contributes to that, of course).
Okay, well, I’m approaching my target, and obviously I have nothing to say, but that doesn’t stop me. I’m really tired and depressed and discouraged. I cannot go on like this for long. Right now, I’m trying to hold on until at least next Friday, when I’m finally getting an autism assessment, but I don’t even know if that’s enough to cling to even for so short a time.
We shall see.
Robert Elessar 