Why (And How) I Write

I write the same way I move my bowels. Because I have to, and for very similar reasons. Things build up and have to be eliminated. It's just Nature.

I am not regular. Sometimes things get slow. I get literary constipation from time to time, but when The Muse hits me with a laxative, life is good.

Of course, life is still bad. Writing makes life good because life is bad. It transforms shit into shinola. That is what art does, at least when it's real.

"I" never really write or speak anything but crap. Only Nature speaks/writes decently, through me, when I am fortunate enough to be in touch with it.

I myself am an egotist, a basket case, and a boring prick. "I" am not a good writer; "my" skills are weak. Happily "I myself" do not actually exist. 

Dedicated to Mike - A Thinker's Confessions

A post from an online group I have met with over the years, shared for your perusal.
Warning: Not entirely uplifting. Contains complexity of thought. Reader beware. :)

Hi all,

I'm in a funk lately myself. It's draining, but I'm not sure it's ultimately "bad." The well-written header at this site now says "We do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious," and I think there's a lot of truth to that.

I have to be in a funk to even be here, really. This place can be so intensely truthful, honest, and deeply challenging that I find I no longer have the intestinal fortitude for it a lot of the time. This place is dangerous to my ability to get out of bed and plaster on a happy-ass face to face the new shitty-ass day.

I never forget Mike or the little band of people who surround him online, though. Mike is always at the center of it and rightfully so, because he's one of the most interesting and authentic people alive today. I've said so before and I'll say so again. Mike is incredible. He has psychological struggles, but who doesn't? Good question, and the answer is "the gorts." They paper over their struggles with "mainstream" thinking and thus avoid encountering the raw truth of themselves. But Mike faces the madness of real life juxtaposed with fake life more bravely than anyone I know. He is basically a martyr. He has gone crazy for the truth.

I've gradually come to learn that I don't have Mike's backbone. I'm no weakling and I've gone pretty crazy for the sake of authenticity myself, but not on Mike's level. Mike will always be at the center of all things real - dramatically, problematically, ineffably, and painfully real. It's who he is and he has gone everywhere it has taken him - even to jail. Where truth leads, Mike goes. Where fools rush in, angels fear to tread, which is why a man like Mike will often be found in jail but never at a job.

I post a lot of places and I do a lot of things online. Never have I found a place which inspires me to be who I am unapologetically to the extent this one does. Everywhere else, I have to play Buddha, or play leftist, or play whatever the audience expects. But here, I don't have to play anything. I don't have "an image" other than admittedly crazy radical shit-talker. I can just be the proudly lazy counterculture asshole that I am, for better or worse, warts and all.

I don't know why I am the way I am. Fetal alcohol, or I hit my head too many times, or I'm an enlightened sage, or my brain is wired funky, or all of the above, or none of the above, or no reason at all. Here, it doesn't matter. I am what I am and that's it. Lazy, proudly "irresponsible" and unwilling to accept or consider ANY job.

Society? In the most loving and compassionate way I can manage, I say fuck them all and fuck everything they think about the issue. I'll inevitably be thought of (elsewhere than here) are a 16 year-old for saying so, but their "thoughts" are to be written on a roll of Charmin and deposited accordingly, just like they'd relish doing with mine. No matter, because like a caged animal, I remain both hostile and hungry. Young people with ideals and uncorrupted innocence are wonderful, but contrary to the stereotype of anti-mainstream thinkers, I'm NOT some shitty-assed 16 year old kid listening to emo in my room - and people do eventually discover this much to their horror. To feed me or let me starve is the choice of the zookeepers, but I'd prefer food and will make that clear... quite strongly if necessary.

Piss on everything, I say. I am a piss-and-vinegar cynic on principle. There are good things in this world, and good people, but if I have to piss on them in the process of pissing on the rest, then so be it. There will be times when I piss all over everything indiscriminately. We can call these "manic episodes" or what have you if it helps, but it doesn't really help ME. I remain hostile and hungry, even when labeled. We can drug these states into submission if it helps, but it doesn't really help ME. I remain hostile and hungry, even when drugged into despondency. There are even times when I drug myself. This doesn't matter either.

I am no Mike, but I am the new Wilhelm Reich. Hey, I made a rhyme.

I'm the guy who wrote some of the shit that's inspiring the new generation of alienated 16 year-olds. And of course, I had to take pity on myself and finally prevent them from contacting me, because it's too sad. So many will "grow out of it." I can see mainstream "maturity" lying in wait to waylay them by the roadside, sure as sunrise. It's painful to see them "getting it" and to know that in 10 years or less, they will be among the mainstream mob telling the young people of their day to avoid ideas like mine. It's too painful. And so I remain alone, having just turned 36 and showing no signs of having "grown up" yet, nor any inkling of a desire to do so.

This world is shit. Now, don't get me wrong, I meditate and read my Zen and often see sublime beauty in the simplest thing, and it's wonderful. But this world is shit nonetheless, because it is full of people and I am one of them. Don't mistake this as simple misanthropy. I love everyone, and that's exactly why it's heartbreaking. Sartre said "Hell is other people." I'd take out "other" and leave it at that. Hell is people. Me and everybody else. All of us, because even if we catch sight of the most beautiful moonlit night, we remain without a clue of what the fuck we're doing here or what it all means, if anything. The moonlit beauty is perhaps no more than a certain arrangement of nerves and chemicals in a brain that evolved from mud in a puddle. My most profound thoughts are perhaps nothing more, and maybe even less, because it seems questionable whether there is even a "self" to whom any thoughts belong. I am a figment of my own imagination.

This is what can happen when people do that most dangerous and deadly of all things - think. Once you think that first fatal thought - the one that sets you on an irreversible course, your doom is sealed. Everything will dissolve; evaporate. Nothing will be left standing. The mind will demolish all things, starting with the weakest edifices such as religion and country, moving outward through society as a whole, and finally up to and including one's very sense of self. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Speaking of which, I am running out of steam and I have been "stream-of-consciousness" rambling anyway. This is basically just a smattering of selections from the artful/vulgar mess that is my mind. Yes, artful/vulgar is a paradox of sorts. The interesting things always are.

Although it might be depressing, I just want to close with a brief epitaph:

Authentic life, as lived and experienced in a sacred and intrinsically meaningful way by the aboriginals, was stolen from this Earth and replaced with a crazy-making, over-rationalized, insane mess which we call "normal society." This blue orb was robbed of all inward-generated meaning and became a stage for an addle-brained pantomime show masquerading as "life." "The end of living and the beginning of survival," as Chief Seattle called it, if memory serves. But he was wrong - we did not survive. Nothing survived. All life on Earth is dead, dying, or being killed. And "humanity" was the first thing to go. There probably hasn't been a real man or women alive for decades.

Chief Seattle might have been set straight by the Stephen King move The Stand, in which a character declares "we are dead and this is hell." But we aren't physically deceased, we are only spiritually so. And that, of course, is by far the more important thing. Physical death is a triviality if we have actually lived. But we haven't and now we can't, try as we might, because hell is not a place we went, it's something we ourselves installed right here on Earth. We had the opportunity for heaven and we replaced it with hell, because we just knew that we knew so much more. Fruit of the tree of knowledge, indeed. Ignorance and arrogance go hand in hand... with destruction.

And yet the body stubbornly demands breath, food, and water. It resists extinction because there was a time when life was worth living, even if those days are now gone from the Earth. Life goes on, with all the tiresome day-to-day bullshit which should never have existed. And so the caged animals carry on in their cages, hungry and hostile, and occasionally finding each other in the darkness to share a few moments under the stars, lamenting what might have been.

Until next time. :)

"Personal Responsibility" - Mantra of Evil

Just a quick thought:

Ever notice that the "personal responsibility" mantra is ALWAYS excreted from the mouths of victim-blamers and apologists for sociopathy? Always. Every time. Without exception.

It's time to wake up and realize the MASSIVE brainwashing job that's been done on us with these two magic words - "personal responsibility." Whenever you hear those words, be SURE that something sinister is going on somewhere. These words do not represent anything good and wholesome. They represent an attempt to abolish altruism and compassion and replace our common humanity with a malignant form of egotism.

Five Reasons You Should Not Laugh at Charlie Sheen

So, as we all know, the latest celebrity whack-a-mole game centers around Charlie Sheen's manic behavior in the press. Yes, Charlie is off the rails and swinging wild in every direction, but before we give in to the instinct to point and laugh, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) He's human. Remember the line from my "Actual Sanity" page? Yeah, the bit about "irreplaceable, unique, wonderful beings." Well, guess what? That goes for Charlie, too. He may be rich, arrogant, and obnoxious, but let he who is without character flaws cast the first stone.

2) He's suffering. Look, I'm as skeptical of "mental health" diagnoses as anyone could be, but sometimes, the shoe fits. If Charlie isn't bipolar, then I'd hate to see someone who is. And he's also an addict. Last time I checked, these were serious health problems, not jokes. Compassion?

3) Jealousy is embarrassing. Sure, maybe you're not jealous of Charlie's money, fame, and unapologetic lifestyle, but you know damn well that a lot of people are. We live in a society that loves to devour its idols. We make them, and then we break them down. It's totally insane.

4) You're no better. Okay, so maybe you're not prone to manic behavior, and maybe you're not an addict. But you're something. What negative labels can be (and have been) slapped on you? How did it feel? Now, multiply that by about 50 million. That's what we're putting on Charlie.

5) You ARE better. No, I didn't just contradict myself. You're not better than Charlie, but you're better than the urge to jump on the bandwagon. You're not one of Pavlov's dogs, so don't act like one. You don't have to mock and ridicule another human being when the media rings the bell.

Fact is, I don't even watch much TV, and I'm not a big Charlie Sheen fan. I am, however, a big fan of compassion, and not smacking people with pre-packaged judgments. When we throw stones at Stone at Charlie Sheen or any other person who is struggling in life, we only hit ourselves.

And if you think that picture is inappropriate, then you don't know anything about what the Dalai Lama teaches.

Well yippie ki-yay!

Yes. Actual Sanity now has a blog. Look out, crazy world.

Can't say there's much in it yet, but it's 5 minutes old. Give me some time.

If you've read the site, you know my style, and what to expect.

And if you haven't, what's keeping you?