Despite the often ramshackle appearance, these thoughts are not unadulterated. Even if unconsciously, there is hold back being had here. Refinement. Some premeditated, or unknowingly mediated editing. For even if no one reads this (statistically, more likely than not), there be readers aside myself in mind.

But in a week or so of having that typewriter resting upon my bedroom desk, I know there are thoughts I’ll have before a set of keys that emerge differently. Raw and never to be read by anyone but the writer, not while this heart beats and lungs fill with breath. Let the archeologists rifle through all that when I’m dead.

Yet, even without a word of those ideas pressed in metal and ribbon ink upon paper ever seeing the light of day, I feel the immense value in their occurrence. The honesty revealed to your humble narrator at the end of all that clack, clank, clack, ding, press the lever until the left margin emerges anew- it seems to be stoking a change. Now, what that change might be, is yet to reveal itself. And no promises that it will be got at by the end of this modern interpretation of that recent ancient method I’ve been incorporating, but let’s find out for ourselves, shall we?

I’ve been manipulating emotion, as of late. My own, exclusively as far as I’ve noticed and intended, but manipulated just the same. Harvesting the raw feeling and sculpting something new. Something, I believe, more useful. Sometimes art, or other such creative tries. Sometimes in a physical push to reach some new height. Or even just the ambition to break and bend behaviors, so as to better fit the wants and needs I perceive as more paramount.

Which is good, for if left to their own and uninfluenced or persuaded, my emotional faculties often veer towards behaviors and minds less helpful, less kind. Spirals and wallows and doubts, oh my.

I’ve been pondering ideas of impact, and my failures and potential within that. And whether benevolence can emerge as mightier as its antithesis. Is thoughtful patience to be punished, while egregious confidence is set to gain all the rewards? No matter how self-centered the intention may be?

There is a tension in the air, and a feeling of powerlessness to ever affect the tides of human history. These times are likely among those moments to be remembered, for better or for not better, granted that we still have humans left to do any remembering. It is a visceral reminder, whether helpful or not, that there is no empirical data to guarantee the perpetuation of this species of which ol’ Bruce and yourself are members. Assuming that you who consume these words are not a machine. Something, I suppose, is less certain with each passing day. Attempting to make sense of this ever-changing present, with all the abundance of misleading ideas and misguided beings. I know for myself, and likely you as well, dear reader, we have at some point in personal history been unaware of the inaccuracy of self-held ideas, whether conjured within or out. It seems rampant in these times, and occurs in all angles, both in philosophical and political spectrums. As has been, throughout the length of the human race from its dawning until today, and beyond. Liars of all kinds, from the intentional and greedily deceptive, out to gain and gain and gain, no matter the cost to others, all the way to the willfully ignorant, set to pay no mind to the dishonesties they hand out like veracities.  

Reminds me of an ancient story I read earlier today. From a book I likely bought for my daughter, though I can never keep track of all those that I’ve gotten her. This is a bibliophilic household, after all. Stacks and shelves and tables, always strewn with some sort of literature. She had asked, after reading the tale lasting only a paragraph, about a word that ended the summed-up morality stance that was the ultimate purpose the tale intended.

The Shepard and the Young Wolf, being the story, having been allegedly told by some Mediterranean slave two and a half millennia ago. The word was enmity, the one that the young one asked the meaning of. So I told her, and added that it is likely from the same root as the word enemy. Not sure if that’s true, but I’d be willing to bet it is.

The moral is, as follows:

‘Double-dealing is worse than open enmity.’

Go ahead and work on that one for yourself a bit. I’m sure most folks can find it applicable, either in the personal or in some broader societal sense. Hell, I bet you can even find the story and read it yourself. Don’t imagine there is much copyright in the way with the words of dead Greeks, but hey, you never know.

But to lighten the mood, I’ll add this. The story that the young one read before the one mentioned, prompted the doozy of an innocent question.

‘Dad, what’s a cock?’

Naturally, I laughed, fought it back, and told her it is a rooster, a male chicken. And also, a word that in modern tense meaning something else, and that she probably shouldn’t say it in school, or the like. I didn’t ask what the moral of that particular fable was.

But despite the seeming efforts at seeking the ever-elusive truth, we so often find ourselves mucked about in less than that. Sometimes misconceptions or poor interpretations, and sometimes straight-up, bold faced fibs by those who would benefit much more were the truth to never reveal itself. I’m sure each of us can pull examples from either the headlines or our own stories of life unfolding from a personal perspective.

Here, let me go first. I vividly remember the first conspiracy theory video I’d ever seen. I was away on a school trip, for a business club that by my last year in high school would be the leader of.

(I know, right? Seems far from my character of today, but I swear it is true. President of the business club. Remind me to tell you how as a young teen, the catholic priesthood was one of the options I believed a possibility for my future. No, nothing like those horrors occurred to me. Just the idea of pious study and serving a purpose greater than myself very much appealed to my idiotically innocent mind, of the time.)

But, anyway.

This video, shown to me by a slightly older peer, who I very much wished to emulate, despite the truth within its telling, which I took at the time as absolute, changed my mind. Not that I still believe it as I once had, but that the very perspectives I held as certain could be shook. Could be changed.

The setting even stands out to me. The coloring of a late-night hotel room, in winter near the border with Canada. The decaying yellow streetlight and the laptop screen the only sense of anything resembling vivid, in the otherwise grey and brown and black and white of a city formerly holding industry. At the time, I believed every word, and took pride in that I was on the in, while so many others were on the out.

But I was something like sixteen, so in other words, a total dumbass. But for the first time, or at least consciously for the first time, the beliefs that I held were substantially challenged. And since then, ideas and sense of self have been challenged over and over, and over again. Sometimes it feels as though there might be nothing left by the end. But in my moments of better clarity, I realize that the challenges only help to reenforce what is left after the erosions and blasting away of exteriors. That was falls away didn’t have the legs or legitimacy to stand on. And what remains is something, more resolute. Something, I’d reckon, is closer to the truth. Something simple. Which to the more theatrical among us (myself occasionally included), might seem disappointing.

But, what the fuck do I know?

Anyway.

Onward go the attempts at betterment for ya boy, i.e., me. Taking better care of body and mind, without being some hyper-focused self-sycophant, and therefore, a rather dull puritan. And with that, I find my dreams fall back to the vividness they once had in younger, non-substance and exhaustion fueled days. This is difficult, with a mind like mine. Maybe your nocturnal visions are simple and non-threatening, and all drawn in crayons and such. Mine are not. They bounce around from some sepia shaded nostalgias I’d probably be better off forgetting, to unavoidable conflict that my waking life finds so easy to dodge. To ideas more vast and apocalyptic. Last night being a prime example. Going from the thoughts of some former unreachable infatuation, you know the kind, the obsessive type that young romantic men as I used to be like to make into something resembling a mantra- right into doomsday visions, a fallout breaking an otherwise grim and lightless horizon, all nuclear and ashen and red.

Only to awake, and find myself in this flesh and mind again, wondering if the truth is out here, or in here, this skull I cannot escape. If I get an answer, maybe I’ll let you know.

I told a friend earlier that I feel to be on the verge of something. A change, or the like. Perhaps it is nothing aside my impending doom. Or, something else. A paradigm alteration, or altercation. Some new phase upon the horizon of my sentience, just about to emerge. The next level of self. Might be in this era that my greatest works emerge. Or my greatest manias.

I’ll just keep going and find out. Maybe it is all hiding in that typewriter upstairs. Or in that guitar across the room. Or in the heart of some soul I already know or haven’t met yet. Stay tuned. Or don’t. I’ll be going on, all the same. Always, or until I can’t any longer. And then I’ll probably go a few steps beyond that.