The 2021 Check-In: A Ramble, A Monologue, A Shatter

Time is the strangest construct; the older I get, the easier it is for me to lose myself in its hours, to feel untethered and without firm footing. A minute passes and a family member is no longer an infant, but a fully-grown adult. An hour passes and I am caught drowning in thoughts of nearly a decade's worth of living that looks so much different on this side of 40. Not bad, not good, just...different and alien. A decade's worth of decisions and their impacts upon this moment in this life and this moment in this life and that moment in this life. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum. 

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A year into this pandemic and I crave human contact as equally as I crave total solitude and escape from the same contact. Again, untethered and without firm footing. I am normally very firm in my belief system and, whether right or wrong, in my actions. At the moment, I find myself caught in slipstreams and incorrect placements and streaks of starshine just out of reach. This is fine for now, but I'm expecting (and prepared) for some god or some universe or some something to knock me off my axis. I'm prepared for my version of the constellations to appear askew in the sky above, though I am probably very ill-prepared for what comes after that.  

I am fascinated by the constant pattern of role-reversal, the shifting of roles. It is a strange synchronicity. 

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I enjoy the darker side of artistic expression. I like the grotesque and the skin-crawling. I like to see what sits hidden in the shadows. But that's art. Put me in the face of the true dark and I might wilt, might fall to my knees and scramble across the ground looking for something to light my way. Maybe the art is just a necessary distraction. If that is the case now, it certainly didn't use to be. 

I've completed writing a single story in the 16 months since my father passed. Before, I would've had this entire book done by now with another book already started and well on its way to being half-way done. I don't know how to fully explain what this drought of creativity is like other than saying it's like someone took a spoon and scooped one of the most important parts out of you and left the shell of you to handle the trauma of that scooping. It is profoundly bizarre and uncomfortable. 

I keep trying to convince myself that my blockage in the constant pumping out of new stories and books since 2012 is my muse telling me to slow down, to take time for all the other things happening around me, but that just feels like so much nonsense. That feels like a very weak excuse - something from my undergrad days. Some bullshit emotion from long before I understood the phrasing of "sacrificing for the art." 

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Having said all this, it's probably not surprising that I've delved deeper into role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu. The former being built upon one thinking themself the hero; the latter understanding that death and potential loss of sanity are the norm rather than the exception. There is a solid blend of escapism and truism built into both. That they both also involve storytelling to a great extent (albeit a different form of storytelling) is not lost on me in the least. Perhaps I AM creating, just not in the way I'd like. 

I am 15 or 19 stories shy of being done with the next collection and I absolutely LOVE each and every story so far. I want to birth this book into the world immediately, but I also want it to be right. I want it to be a fat dose of dark surrealism served up in the most inevitable of ways. I badly wish to finish it for you. 

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I've been listening to a lot of music containing high tension and low resolve. There is something about the constant pulling of sound into something tightly wound that feels perfectly right at the moment (apt, even), whether it be metal or ambient. To pull a note taut, from beauty into terror due to its length of play, is a fascinating bit of musical constitution.  Kudos to whoever did it first and laid the groundwork for audible suspense. Intentionally having your brain metaphorically torn apart at the seams every so often can lead to a fuller appreciation of its actual durability and connectivity. 

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All this tension, this rubberband of time, feels like it's ready to snap back and leave a welt somewhere along this body. 

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