How self-indulgent can one man get? Well, tune in and sit tight. You’re about to find out.

I promised a friend that I was out to remedy the world’s woes. Which is hilarious considering that I can hardly get a grip upon my own personal existence. All selfish ache and unawake from long dead dreams. The hubris thinking someone so small might have a planetary impact.

Laughable, really.

This damaged man, damaging as much as he can with every slip and breath. All apologetic in altruism, knowing better and doing worse anyway.

But a promise is a promise, so I’d best get at it.

A confession. The most alive I’ve felt in recent days was writing out a story idea, by hand, in my illegible, yet strangely aesthetic style of penmanship. Some analyst would probably be able to pick out the narcissism with ease from that chicken scratch, along with a few other afflictions as well.

But there is something to the mechanics of mind that comes from writing out thoughts by hand. Some near ancient connection between mind and paper that occurs in that tactile format in ways that the digital always falls short of. Much of this evening’s blabbering was jotted out upon yellow legal pad today, leading, I believe to a further potency of idea than what might be conjured from the appearance of words upon computer screen.

Or maybe it is but my brand of madness. Another habit I mistake for benevolence. To inspire some life I’d otherwise get to ignoring. Some ego-based ascendancy that serves little more than my own catharsis. Writing out the ramblings of mind. Throw this in the evidence pile for that self-indulgence we opened with. All for myself, the thrill of insane behaviors, like practicing the signature of all these pseudonyms I’ve crafted for myself. Acting as though impact might be sought and caught enough to change the standings of our societies and species at large.

So, what? Am I to stave off our self-elimination with some songs and clever lines? Implausible seems a descriptor too kind for such arrogance. But the proof of words is still alive and apparent in the movings of our world today. Need not be in a positive light to still be impactful, after all.

Yet still, I feel compelled to stand up for others when I seem otherwise unable to stand up for myself. Some self-righteous retaliation for wrongs so universal that I demand to take them personal. One would think you would attempt to get a handle on one’s own sentience before marching out into the rest of the world. But hey, I am what I am.

And that is far from some perfect being. Subpar and nearly average, when my optimism wanes. But the aim at betterment still stirs within me, despite the failures at getting there, it seems. But betterment still, she is sought.

I’ve been attempting to behave more a monk than a drunk, though I confess I see the merits and romance in both. Hell, I’m convinced the two not need be mutually exclusive. That the best of either has a bit of both. Not specific to monasteries and public houses, but the vaguer duality of stoicism and belligerent unabated emotion.  Each their own obsessive in their own right. You know, like falling asleep surrounded by empty cans, pen in hand, using a tear and ink-stained page for a pillow.

I have been avoiding direct political conversation in these, for quite a while. Seeming a strange endeavor for these times. But I have been this way since becoming a parent, now near a decade ago. Which is a wild prospect, especially considering that I have not gotten any older in such a span of time. Old souls staying young forever, or some such shit.

But while others cast direct blame for the planet’s troubles upon this individual or that group, I hesitate at being so specific. For I believe our woes are not so finite in origin, but are broader, sweeping evolutions and envelopments of the civilizational path we’ve tread thus far. That this all has to do with rapid industrialization and the rise and fall of globalism over decades and centuries more that it has to do with specific persons or peoples, no matter what the oversaturation of media might suggest. That a shortsighted political cycle that seems insane, might make more sense if put in a longer context of time. That what seems shocking and instantaneous, is but the next step in a general march occurring in a general direction set out on many lifetimes ago. Glacial style movements, that holds might enough to mold earth, though our short attention spans fail to see it as such.

Or maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway.

Been voraciously consuming, to stave away the void of my heart and mind. Residing in my vinyl and bookshelves at home, and whatever equivalent I can find abroad, all curating, many times unsuccessfully, the progress of this particular man. A cinematic attempt at making bad habits good, or, at least, making them a bit less devastating to the day-to-day operations. One cannot help but think of themselves, I assume. Even when thinking of others, it is within the context of self that we arrive at any thought or feeling at all.

I wonder what sins I am still paying for. Something old and scab crusted, or something fresh, still dripping with blood hotter than air? As ignorant as I may be, I know there is plenty fault I can find in myself for the hurt of others. Historically and within more recent events. Damaged man, out there damaging, as mentioned earlier.

Perhaps, even you, dear reader, have some gripe with your humble narrator. Some plight I’ve inspired by means of non-intention, or just plain oblivious ignorance. Or it might just be that the who and how and what I am fails to click and connect with everyone after all. But I’ll keep trying to right all these transgressions, certain that there will be more made along the way. Perhaps a preemptive apology, for what it’s worth. Which is likely little to nothing.

Finished a book today. Something mixed between sociological thought and compelling graphic design, with visual beauty and intrigue while dancing about ideas of paradigm shift in the overall patterns of human thought and experience. Worth a read, if that’s what you’re into. I wrote out one of the lines from its pages, for consideration here. It is-

“Art is anything you can get away with.”

Good line. We can talk about it when I see you next, if we remember. From a sixty-year-old text, a century, at least, ahead of its time. Poor bastard, McLuhan, was only warning us of the television. Something seeming now to be an almost relic. But perhaps, this is part of the path his foresight had been getting at prophesizing. I see plenty of corollary in the ideas, even as technology has progressed at seemingly stupefying speeds.

Here’s another.

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous.”

Another one, we can discuss. But not now. It was on the yellow legal pad, so it got transcribed here. It will be left at that, for now. Just a thing for thinking about.

But onward, I wonder.

Is what I’m supposed to be doing in direct opposition to that which I truly want? Or at least what I feel and think that I want. Or is want just a symptom of inaccessibility? That desire can only be got from what is not had, and once achieved, would that itch just fade away? Is desire the driver, or some more selfless sense of duty? Honor or hubris? And is the design intention for yours truly a path away from the more personal wants and geared towards the needs of the great big group of others out there? If there even is such a maddening thing as intended design. Cute, isn’t it? Trying to think that all is not just chaos, a fluctuating web we are ever stuck in, in rearranging positions.

That book, written by that Canadian professor, about media, had a new word for me. Love it when that happens.

Eschatology.

The study of the end of the world. Or better phrased, the doctrine of the last things.

Seems an idea in vogue as of late. Though, any reasonable, even amateur student of history knows that folks have been worried about the end of the world since its beginning. And perhaps all the worry from age to age has to do with the personal connection. That were it to be in our time, wouldn’t that make us special?

Annihilation of the condemned, but aren’t we all?

I seek not the end times. In my more insane moments, occurring not infrequently, I believe I must do something towards the prevention of such occurrences.

It’s the how, though, isn’t it? One of the most cosmic and confounding questions.  

How does one go about changing the world?

Beats the hell out of me. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.