I've Got A Feeling

Reading this morning, slipping into the protective world - peace-filled and worry-free - that reading offers me.

The story revolves around monks living in isolated seclusion in a very private monastery. The thought occurred to me that I could dig that. A life stripped bare. A bed, a table, a lamp. Books. Simple chores. Living with people who are forbidden to talk.

I don't engage well with life. I was not meant to live in the 20th and 21st centuries. I was not meant to be around people. I am not built to be decisive. I just want to live. I just want to feel.

As the fantasy formulated in my embattled brain, a thought exploded into my head - if that was my life I would not have my family. It was the kind of thought that jolts you - it doesn't just get thought - it surges through your body like electricity with the full power of your brain, your heart, and your soul behind it.

It screamed "You could not live without your family. It could never happen. You would shrivel up and die."

Been talking to a shrink, talking to my family, talking to myself - my brain is making creaking noises like doors in haunted houses make. My brain is evolving.

My entire adult life has been spent in warped perspectives, strangeness that prevents me from fully experiencing the joy I should experience in the way it should be experienced. Which is a big thing to say because I worship my family, I appreciate and love my family, but my diseased mind has kept me one step removed from the nirvana that I seek. The nirvana I am actually living.

What I experienced this morning, the visceral reflex that refuted the possibility of monastic living, is proof to me of change. I am realizing what I have. Fueled by 72, by thoughts of mortality, by fear, by thinking and questioning everything about myself - my whole being spontaneously rose up to say "You have exactly what you need, buddy - don't taint it with illusion."

It was a feeling much more than a thought.

Which makes it exponentially more powerful.

Those Who Oppose You

Howl, you sick beast. 

Make your mark. Break the bones of the ones who mock you, silence the voices, destroy their descendants.

You are here for a reason; justification or clarification is unnecessary - you can do as you wish. Those who oppose you must be crushed in excruciating pain. Make them suffer so others will learn. 

Your road is the only road, your dreams and desires override all others. Get what you want. Fashion your life exactly as you always dreamed it to be.

Howl, you sick beast.

Make your mark.

An Irish Prayer

 "Dear Lord, give me a few friends who will love me for what I am, and keep ever-burning before my vagrant steps the kindly light of hope. And though I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me to be thankful for life, and for time's olden memories that are good and sweet. And may the evening's twilight find me gentle, still. Amen"

Your Mind Is A War Zone

Very few of us ever have clarity.

At some point in your life you cross the Rubicon into a life you can't understand. It becomes bewildering. But your mind won't let go. It just won't let go. That voice, that voice rips you to shreds. The real you belittles compromised you. You can't stand it and you can't silence it.

Booze and drugs are required, whether it's a once in a while escape or a lifelong passion, you got to silence that annoying voice. There is nothing wrong with that.

Brief aside: Do you think the War on Drugs is real? It became "official" in 1971 thanks to that paragon of virtue, Nixon. You can't stop drugs. People need drugs, they need booze. In large part because of the nasty things the government, the rich, and big business do to control your life, to limit it, to keep you in your place. Which is a place you never wanted to be, a tiny place, a suffocating space with shit jobs, shit pay and a whole lot of "yes sir no sir."

The war on drugs is just another dance, another way to misdirect the attention of the little people from what's really going on. It is a way for those in power to control who benefits from all that delightful drug money, who directs it, funnels it, controls it. The power elites (the scumbags) preach about evil publicly, and then spend the weekend in a $25 million second home to snort coke off their mistresses' sweet asses.

Ah, what a world.

Most people adopt a cynical world view about life and wear it on their sleeve. That cold-hearted, "that's life, baby - deal with it" type of attitude. But they don't really accept that because they can't accept that, and that's where the torture comes in. The War. You can see it on their faces. It shoots out of their eyes like fire.

Wonder how many people show up to work with hangovers every day.

A majority, for sure.

That's life, baby - deal with it.

Will I Ever Find Out?

 "I'd rather die at the hand of a friend, than that of an enemy."

Winston Scott in John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

I wonder which of my friends would be willing to kill me.

It Is Time

I would like to be either Harvey Keitel or Michael Madsen.

Madsen exudes an over the top, tough guy cool, but in a restrained way. Keitel exudes an understated, tough guy cool in a sophisticated way. Either one of those would work beautifully for me.

I gotta decide soon.

It is time for the transformation.

Working The Odds

 "Picking one up he marvelled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives."

From The Brutal Telling, by Louise Penny

This is my only hope at this stage of my life.

I am counting on it.

I am betting on it.