Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I’m fine
Just countin days till I die
Tryin to dredge up a will to survive
veggin on tv scenes
I’m fine
Wishin death would come
Permittin me to end this run
sleepin with my eyes open
I’m fine
Talkin to my machines
Because they’re the only ones who seem to seem
to care about what I say
So when you ask how r u? 🙂
I don’t care if you smile and walk away
Bcuz we both know what I’ll say
I’m fine
Words from the the spectrum’s dark side
I’m sliding along the spectrum of emotions today. The spectrum itself is on a fulcrum. The slightest shift tips it sliding one way or the other.
Some are wild slides. I slip from depression to elation to bitterness and frustration, zing zing zing. Exhausting, but I’m older, experienced in my mind and body’s ways, and have some sense this will pass. Last night and the early morning both had me sliding toward the spectrum’s darker end. Self-pity and regret stifled my breathing. Reading helped me out.
I’ve not been reading much, I thought, then corrected, I’ve been reading non-fiction and news, but not fiction. So I retreated into The Signature of All Things. I started reading it a month ago. I added new books to my tower of reading and realized I needed to finish Signature before permitting new reading. A book of a woman reaching understanding of herself and heartbreak, the novel enabled some quiet reflection and delivered new insights into me and my existence.
I believe this mood will pass, recognizing it for one of the more prolonged types of funks that sometimes shroud me. They’ve always passed before, prompting speculation about what sort of guarantees that provide (none), but it does give some expectations, and helps me stay upright as I slide along.
‘UNIMAGINABLE’
The newspaper headline is about the Orlando mass murder in a night club. Fifty people are dead, killed by one person with an automatic weapon designed and manufactured to kill people in mass. It’s disgusting that they print that this is ‘unimaginable’.  The proper headline is ‘INEVITABLE’.Â
Inhabitants of most of the modern world expected another mass murder record in the United States, another high count of victims gunned down by someone out to make a statement, someone who believes violence is the answer. If you carry that logic further, then you might think, more violence is a better answer. That’s apparently the NRA’s solution. More guns and more violence, and we’ll all be better.
It’s bullshit, but it’s not unimaginable. It was a matter of time. As racing cars go faster, as the wealthiest become wealthier, so will there be more and larger mass killings with automatic weapons in the United States. Why not? What policies have changed that would circumvent new bloody records from being set?
I’m a fiction writer. I can imagine killing and being a mass killer without actually being a killer, but just by being a cold, hard thinker. Learn from what other mass killers have done. Study the lessons learned. Decide on your course of action and put regrets aside. Segregate and compartmentalize your emotions. Rationalize your decision. Deal with the ramifications that you are going to kill and you will probably die. Pick your location, select your weapons, load up, block doors if you can, and go in and indiscriminately kill.
The headlines should be ‘SICKENING’. ‘DISGUSTING’. ‘REVOLTING’. ‘HEARTBREAKING’.
But never unimaginable, because, without making changes — and America is loathe to make changes about gun laws and automatic weapons, because there’s too much fear and profit in them, too much fraudulent machismo, too much shallow bravado and thin patriotism — more headlines  about mass killings will be published.
Unimaginable? No, the bar has been raised, 50 dead at this count, more critically wounded. Unimaginable? No, this will be another event that we’ll look back upon when the count goes higher again, another glance back to mourn the dead and increasing violence, all without doing a damn thing.
That’s what’s really ‘UNIMAGINABLE’.
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 