SINCE THEN ︎
WORK IN PROGRESS ~~~~~
Alright alright, the fluctuations of the creative process and my own bizarre compulsive need to archive my life. I did the Japan Zine, I finally finished the last post on here (Chapter End, from the corporate days), and now I’m working on THE BIG BRAND. So, currently, I’ve had enough with the painstaking organization and clean coherent-ish linear storytelling. TIME FOR FUN! Or something like that...
btw tonight, starting this post, it’s monday october 21, 2024... there’s no fukn dates on this site
btw tonight, starting this post, it’s monday october 21, 2024... there’s no fukn dates on this site
5/20, Monday
Gray days. The sun retreats for four, five, seven days. There is rain but really no impressive storm, no clash of thunder or flash of lightning or howl of wind. Just a steady drizzle with spurts of heavier drops. And then there are the times of bright sky, you know, where you step outside and still feel the need for sunglasses despite the total hiding of the sun behind the blanket of clouds. Just a blanket of gray for days on end. Inevitably, the mood recedes from the high water mark. This can happen in varying degrees - sometimes it’s outright depressing after becoming a fat oozing slug trapped inside a dark dank cave for so many days, staying in prime slug condition with the small spurts outside for some little chore or errand when the rainwater can be absorbed through the gray slimy skin, just enough to keep the slug systems running. And sometimes it’s only a slight check on the spirits, reasons often unknowable, but perhaps there’s enough of the bright gray sky for a walk in the park, or perhaps you’re overdue for some extended time with the television and the couch and you don’t have to transform completely into a slime, or perhaps you’re just lucky and for the usual fluke cosmic reasons your mood doesn’t morph to match the amorphous gray blanket across the sky and you can continue on only slightly subconsciously stunted.
Gray days. The sun retreats for four, five, seven days. There is rain but really no impressive storm, no clash of thunder or flash of lightning or howl of wind. Just a steady drizzle with spurts of heavier drops. And then there are the times of bright sky, you know, where you step outside and still feel the need for sunglasses despite the total hiding of the sun behind the blanket of clouds. Just a blanket of gray for days on end. Inevitably, the mood recedes from the high water mark. This can happen in varying degrees - sometimes it’s outright depressing after becoming a fat oozing slug trapped inside a dark dank cave for so many days, staying in prime slug condition with the small spurts outside for some little chore or errand when the rainwater can be absorbed through the gray slimy skin, just enough to keep the slug systems running. And sometimes it’s only a slight check on the spirits, reasons often unknowable, but perhaps there’s enough of the bright gray sky for a walk in the park, or perhaps you’re overdue for some extended time with the television and the couch and you don’t have to transform completely into a slime, or perhaps you’re just lucky and for the usual fluke cosmic reasons your mood doesn’t morph to match the amorphous gray blanket across the sky and you can continue on only slightly subconsciously stunted.
Yeah, however slightly or severely the effects are felt for that particular stint, they are present. That’s just part of the gray days. There are moments of awareness throughout, but often, the gray blanket simply becomes the standard state of being, as if the maximum possible level of feeling has been reduced and so the lack of the upper ranges isn’t even noticed - those levels simply do not exist. And it goes on like that, mundanely so, until one big morning all of the sudden and all at once the gray blanket has dissipated, has been ripped back and off and the big bright blue is everywhere, and the sun shines down warm and truly bright, not that half-brightness of the reflective gray ceiling, but a shining shimmering thing that touches the skin sweetly, and the high sky and maybe clean distant wind reset the scale, and the upper levels are suddenly there and possible again, and almost instantly the dull gray days are a strange notion of the past, and the life of a wet lethargic slug seems like an impossibility, an absurdity, something comical even though it was something just lived and not so amusing while it happened… The gray days are there and they become the norm and then they are gone suddenly and completely, and it is not until then that the realization of just how abnormal that normal was can dawn. Life can become small, when the truth is it is always vast. Emerging from the dark cave, from under the heavy rock, a slug smiling in the sunlight under the big blue sky - it’s something sweet.
CAMP PHOTOS
Here we have a series of photographs taken on my Fujifilm Instax, scanned in, blown up, and lightly edited for digital viewing pleasure.
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10/20, Sunday
SHEESH - I’ve been busy, I’ve been on the go, but it’s been overarchingly good. Surfing, camping, diving, maintaining some level of general momentum on my large scale pursuit. Of course, there are still the stumbles and the downs all along the way, but when I crack open an archive - a journal from a year or three ago say - it grants me perspective. Yes, questions still abound, but by comparison to where I was, great progress has been made, and the path is not so… repulsive. Perhaps still daunting, but not repulsive.
A little benzodiazepine on a Sunday, duties all done, a strange canned drink to sip on, some combination of black tea and kava and kratom. Keep the blinds closed for the time being, set the lamps to blue and low, let Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground play, try to wind down, down, down slow, slow, slow…
I don’t want any big questions to stalk me at a time like this so I have to keep my tracks covered, even from myself, lest I unknowingly leave some clue they can detect but I can’t even notice is there, and then next thing I know they’re leaping out of the shadowy brush snarling and clawing and gnashing great white dagger teeth thirsting for BLOOD - no, let’s take it easy, bud. Not worth the risk at a time like this. Ignorance is indeed bliss. Shut it all down for the time being - save it for tomorrow. I am no longer bound to the standard 9-5 schedule, but tomorrow is in fact Monday, and at this juncture it suits me to play along with the trope. IT ALL BEGINS MONDAY.
SHEESH - I’ve been busy, I’ve been on the go, but it’s been overarchingly good. Surfing, camping, diving, maintaining some level of general momentum on my large scale pursuit. Of course, there are still the stumbles and the downs all along the way, but when I crack open an archive - a journal from a year or three ago say - it grants me perspective. Yes, questions still abound, but by comparison to where I was, great progress has been made, and the path is not so… repulsive. Perhaps still daunting, but not repulsive.
A little benzodiazepine on a Sunday, duties all done, a strange canned drink to sip on, some combination of black tea and kava and kratom. Keep the blinds closed for the time being, set the lamps to blue and low, let Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground play, try to wind down, down, down slow, slow, slow…
I don’t want any big questions to stalk me at a time like this so I have to keep my tracks covered, even from myself, lest I unknowingly leave some clue they can detect but I can’t even notice is there, and then next thing I know they’re leaping out of the shadowy brush snarling and clawing and gnashing great white dagger teeth thirsting for BLOOD - no, let’s take it easy, bud. Not worth the risk at a time like this. Ignorance is indeed bliss. Shut it all down for the time being - save it for tomorrow. I am no longer bound to the standard 9-5 schedule, but tomorrow is in fact Monday, and at this juncture it suits me to play along with the trope. IT ALL BEGINS MONDAY.
Yes… and the times remain strange and turbulent. We’re coming up on the Presidential Election now, and it’s a big one. THE FATE OF THE NATION! Meanwhile, the State of the Nation remains a strange combination of happy idiocy and general malaise - the American Way. Superficially superb, comforts and conveniences abound, all wrapped into our daily lives and so taken for granted and not seen as the immense luxuries they would have been just a few generations ago. And underneath that outer level, just a SMIDGE down into the ether, we’re wretched and ragged and near collapse, or perhaps not collapse, but something more explosive or implosive - something more dramatic and full of deep personal failings. A fresh layer of pavement over a sinkhole of unknown depth and breadth. That new Ford F-150 King Ranch looks DAZZLING as it passes over, dad being an American MAN, mom smiling in the sun, kids laughing in the backseat, small hairline fractures running and splaying out across the clean black tar beneath, but not tearing wide and breaking through and opening the gateway into oblivion just yet - and that’s all that matters. That new sparkling truck and happy happy family will pass by unscathed, and it won’t be until the next truck and family, or the next, or the next passes over that the great black hole appears and swallows them up and then lets no one pass at all for a great and unknown quantity of time. Yes, it’s inevitable that it will happen, and probably soon, but it’s not happening right now at this moment so it doesn’t matter, and even though maybe it does matter, it’s so hard to care when everything is new and shiny and smiling, and so who cares, really, who really has the time or the energy to care… THE AMERICAN WAY.
Yeah, true, but what the fuck do I know about it? I’m a little high on the couch gearing up to watch some fine fine TELEVISION for the evening. I’ve got leftover pizza in the fridge, pizza that took two hours to be delivered from six minutes away, from a pizza company whose anonymous corporate system politely told me to go fuck myself when I complained. Good pizza! Although they were also out of ranch. But I’ll eat the pizza and I’ll watch the television and I’ll lay on the couch next to my mold-laden wall that my leasing company will not fix or compensate me for in any way, and I’ll think to myself, hey, hey, not bad man, not a bad little life you’ve got here. Superficially superb, but just a smiiiiiidge down underneath, into the ether, where the big questions prowl around… Eh, what do I know? I’m not looking. Ignorance is bliss and I’m a blissful American Man.
