Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Knowing someone was about to die, and not knowing, but having someone die unexpectedly, made little difference to him, he discovered. The death was a loss he felt, regardless of how much the other’s death was anticipated.
Nor did the quantity of tears shed reflect the pain he felt.
Have you ever exploding with anger without understanding why you were so angry, and then walk away and wonder, what happened?
No, me neither.
I try to stay emotionally balanced and optimistic, but with my personality and worldviews, balancing on a paring knife is almost as easy as it for me to keep my balance.
I fell off within the last few days. As usual, I crashed into angry, bitter darkness. I felt lost and alone. It’s not fun. It’s exhausting. Walking and writing both help me climb back out of the dark canyon. It was a long climb this time. Today’s walk definitely helped.
So did conscious efforts to release my anger, bitterness, frustration, sadness, despair, hopelessness…name a negative emotion or reaction, and I probably had it in the mix. Each step on the walk was punctuated with me hissing to myself, “Release my anger, release my bitterness, release my frustration,” and so on. Eventually, feeling stronger and cleaner, and enjoying a sense that those negative energies were evaporating, I turned it into a more positive urging, “No anger, no bitterness, no frustration.”
This plunge felt deeper and darker. I don’t know why this one was so deep and dark. I don’t know why that was so. Outwardly, all was well. I’m editing a novel. Other novel concepts swirl through me head. Projects are established.
I was having issues with Amazon KDP and their paperback process. It took longer than expected. Of course, I’d been set up for disappointment with claims about how fast – five minutes – and easy it’s supposed to be. It was not that easy, which might just be me, and nothing else. I found their support process short of expectations, too. When I contacted them with a problem using their Cover Creator, they kicked back something nonsensical and suggested I use their Cover Creator.
Eventually, with stubbornness and persistence, I overcame the issues. Then the darkness hit.
So I walked today. I hadn’t planned to go so far. Sometimes I intuitively know what’s needed. Today, my mind and body requested a hard, fast, long walk.
After a mile, I was striding fast. Sweat soaked my Tilly hat and shirt, and tickled my neck as drops dripped off my hair and ears. I breathed hard and my heart thundered in my ears. Still, I pressed on until I realized that I was out of the shadow of darkness. The world seemed better, then, and my hope and optimism were restored.
Still, in the aftermath, I wonder what it is in me that causes these regular, recurring crashes. I know my wife hates them. I’m not fond of them, either. I imagine others experience them, too. If they’re like me, it’s probably only those closest to them who are aware that they’re going through. If they’re like me, others probably aren’t aware of the depths of despair, bitterness and frustration encountered.
My outward signs are that I become almost a mute. I’m often truculent when I do respond to others. It’s not deliberate, or a choice, but something I endure, and try to overcome. I’m probably okay for another twenty to thirty days.
Then it will come again. I’ll try to be ready, and I’ll resist it. Sometimes, I’m more successful than other times, but it’s not at all predictable.
I’ll take it on when it comes.
What a night of dreams. Given scales of one to ten, where ten is the highest, these dreams were around eights on the vividness and intensity scales. They left me feeling emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted. Dreams of these types trigger speculation that I’m living in the dreams, and the dreams are the reality. So while I’ve been here, living with all of its entanglements and needs, I’ve actually been asleep there. Once I awaken there, I experience that life through my dreams.
Makes sense. In the dreams, I was bewildered about what was going on and expectations for me. Everyone liked me. Nobody was concerned about me. I was just there, part of the landscape. It was an incoherent landscape. Some others and I were in the back interior of a giant parked 1982 Camaro. It was so large, we were standing and moving around without being encumbered. Things were sometimes written on the car’s immense rear hatch window. But I knew I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. Fueled by guilt, anxiety burned through me. I was going to be found out at any moment.
Leaving the Camaro, I raced around in a covert frenzy, attempting to cover my tracks and do what I was supposed to be doing all along. The office made no sense. Everything had been moved outside. Meanwhile, new instructions were being introduced. I struggled to stay abreast of the new ideas. I was supposed to be understanding this stuff, using it and explaining it to others. I had little idea of what was going on.
I sought out the people in charge and the files. The files were supposed to be locked up. I didn’t know the combination. One of those in charge confessed to me that the locks didn’t work. They were a facade. She laughed as she explained this. As I tried catching up on my tasks and correct everything, I began learning through intimate encounters with others, nobody else knew what was going on. It was chaos with a veneer of normalcy and knowledge. Nobody else was doing it correctly. Most barely understood what I talked about and laughed when I mentioned it. A series of giggling confessions were shared with me to that end.
Understanding that I wasn’t going to be discovered because I was an inept fraud, I began relaxing. My errors and shortcomings weren’t going to be discovered because everyone else had shortcomings and were making errors. None of them cared about it.
Writing about them, I chortle with insight. Ah, yes, the classic dreams of inadequacy and our latent, perpetual fears of being exposed as a fraud. Do writers ever experience anything like this? I suppose not. Most writers are powerhouses of security and self-confidence.
I should just move on. I would, but I feel too tired. I need to sleep to recover from my dreams.
Now there’s a metaphor if I’ve ever read one.
Some days, you know?
You feel like asking all the gods of time and existence, when the hell will this all end? When will lasting change come?
You think of the fights you’ve been in and the efforts you’ve made. You think about the deeper, darker, harsher sacrifices that others endured to achieve their dreams.
You wonder, what needs to be done differently? You examine your life, actions and motives and question yourself about your direction and activities.
Questions bubble up again through the stew of thoughts, emotions, time and observation about who you are, what you’re done and what you’re trying to achieve. You seek your vision and wonder if you’ll ever accomplish anything close to what you see.
Doubts cause you to think, maybe this isn’t working. Maybe I need to change what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.
Because there doesn’t seem to be progress. No light at the tunnel’s end is starting to become noticeable. There’s no sign of dawn. Despite efforts to be confident and hopeful, you feel like you’re wilting under the pressure. Despair becomes your regular companion.
You look for signs and omens, and search for the keys to success and victory. You think, God, others have made it. What does it take? What does it take?
Intellectually, emotionally, physically, you understand what it takes.
Some days, it seems like the reservoirs are empty. There’s nothing left in the tank. Sucking on fumes, you vow to stop and change, because this sure as hell ain’t working.
But you know no other way and grasp the conundrum of your existence. And you sort of smile because these thoughts are so familiar, they have their own place in your brain. And you know there’s so many others exactly like you. Somehow, there should be a measure of solace in that, but this is always so personal.
This song, and the album it was on, blasted in on us in the summer of 1995.
I was stationed at Onizuka Air Station (a place also once called Sunnyvale Air Station and Onizuka Air Base), working as Director, QAF for the 750th Space Group. A young airman was working at his desk, radio on, as I walked by; this song was playing. I stopped down to listen, and then laughed and said, “Holy shit.” It was one of those songs that shocked me into instant memory. I listened for it on the radio as I was driving arrive the bay, and cranked it up whenever it came on.
The song starts out so gently, confessional and non-confrontational, but then it rises with unmasked, almost uncontrolled rage and contempt, a thematic approach repeated several times in the song. Listening, it feels like an emotional stream of consciousness that zigzags between confrontation, reconciliation and coping, someone trying to release their pain and bitterness even as they search for understanding.
This is Alanis Morissette with ‘You Oughta Know’ from ‘Jagged Little Pill’.
Everything’s so blurry
And everyone’s so fake
And everybody’s empty
And everything is so messed up
Pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl
You could be my someone
You could be my scene
You know that I’ll protect you
From all of the obscene
I wonder what you’re doing
Imagine where you are
There’s oceans in between us
But that’s not very far
~ ‘Blurry’, by Puddle of Mudd, 2001
I have a good life when you consider everything but it sometimes still gets all blurry about how good things — and how bad it could be. ‘Blurry’, though, is about emotions. Emotions care little about a situation logic, something often forgotten during passionate discussions and angry debates.
‘Blurry’ also show us that emotions can help us overcome ‘logic’:
There’s oceans in between us
But that’s not very far
I might be adding layers and insights. They’re clearly writing about love and a tumultuous relationship. I see more. That’s the point of art, including literature and music, isn’t it? The composer, writer and artist are drawing their vision. Their vision, though, remains unique to them because it must be shared with others through the filters the viewer brings upon the scene. And these individual, personalized interpretations of words and intentions can make it all seem very ‘Blurry’.
Hope this all comes out properly. It’s relatively colder than usual outside (17 F). Google Chrome apparently has some problems when it’s cold.
Hello.
I am the middle person.
The average dude.
Ah, to clarify, the white, late fifties middle income liberal average guy. Black guys, young guys, white guys, females, Libertarians, Conservatives, Jews, et cetera, are all also average guys, the middle person, a consumer, partner/spouse/atheist.
Whoever I am, I’m stuck in the middle of the mud. Facts are being sucked into a heavy, gluey, clinging muddiness that traps light and squeezes out air. For example, search for results about the recent Board of Trustees annual report about the state of Medicare and Social Security in the United States. Refine your search to determine how solvent the system is, and even what is meant by the system. It’s surprising how the report’s points are spun.
Muddiness exists around any subject where facts can be distorted, dis-proven or disregarded. Politics are catalysts to create hyper states of distortion and disregard. It’s a sweet place for writing because this is where creativity ferments. Too often, I try to logically explain a fictional situation, or characters’ positions and actions, trying to establish that they do this because of this, ergo, they will do this next. That’s essentially how I think. I keep trying to break out of that for myself; I over-analyze information. Vacuums are the worse, generating a need to create information that makes sense in the vacuum, and then over-analyzing that information that I created.
But I want characters who are different from me, and different from most, characters (and situations) with a WTF aura that entices readers to press on turning pages. Sometimes that means abandoning ‘my’ logic while establishing ‘their’ logic. To me, their logic is frequently mired in emotions, how they feel about matters, rather than what they think about it.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t have emotions about things, but that I temper, stifle and throttle those emotions (most times) so that I can react intelligently and rationally (all the while reminding myself not to over-intellectualize and compartmentalize). But yes, I have angry, frustrated and bitter WTF!? reactions to too, too many issues and items. Some of them, like other drivers, are enormously petty. I call this ‘drivism’, the tendency to look down upon other drivers because they don’t drive like me, which automatically means they’re not as good as drivers.
This is exactly where such logic lies. Brexit, Trumpism, even racism, sexism and about a dozen categories of other -isms are reminders that sometimes, to create a character’s narrative, I need to step out of my zone. First, think about what I would do. Next, think about what the normal person and the average person would do. These may all be the same, or not. Then decide to have the character do something perhaps by doing the opposite, and then explore those results. It can be head-spinning but it may also be liberating. After a time, I become sufficiently immersed in the character and situation that less and less of these exercises are required.
Okay, that was the fruit of my meditating and walking today. Time to write like crazy, one more time.
Let’s take it from the top.
My cycles ebb and flow, pushing my moods, diluting my motivation, diverting my willpower.
I seek the balance. It’s not sufficient to state what I won’t be. Nor is it great enough to say what I will be. There’s the balance of each, what I won’t be and what I am not, what I am and what I will be. Reassurances, tiny ego strokes.
Sometimes, when seeking the balance, bitterness, weariness, frustration, anger, despair, or many other negative energies, rise up like a revolting population. My fingers grow heavy just typing. Sometimes just thinking of those negative energies lash me with aches and make me tired. I want to curl up and sleep, or go have a drink and forget it all.
I know neither works. If I sleep when such darkness comes, I’ll wake up more tired and sour. Drinking under the influence of darkness leads to obnoxious, sneering drunkeness, shameful and pathetic.
So I seek the balance. White, male, decently intelligent and attractive, living on a military pension, with all the ‘good things’ people want, like a house and a car and no bills, I have enjoyed and still enjoy a comfortable life. Yet there are days when it feels like colossal wheels roll over me. I’m part of the pavement and they just keep coming, crushing me. That’s emotion, and has nothing to do with logic. But I try to treat it logically.
Or I used to. I rarely succumb to that urge any more. I sit and bare it, reminding myself, breath in…release.
Michael Seidel, writer 