This has felt as though it has been bordering the bare minimum, as of late. Surely, dear reader, you have been keen enough to notice. And since less than idealistic truths are on the evening’s menu, I might as well confess that I haven’t even been reading back or regarding any of the words that have been spewed out these last few weeks. I simply sit and vomit out the mind matter that arrives and cast it out to the vast world of overly connected computers with only the slightest reflection, or more likely, none at all.

Perhaps the apprehension arrives when I consider the action of reflection. All avoidant inward, in some fear themed around emerging as some modern Narcissus. So instead of upon myself, this literary mirror has turned outward, as though I were some observer and sage and not a part of the eons old social experiment. Which, of course, is some grand fallacy. I am located in the muck of civilization’s current embodiment, along with all the rest. Not above, nor below, or any other locale aside from immersion in all this human mire.

Yet, my mind finds itself so often fixated upon the constructed dichotomy of either resolution within myself, or something set to sway and save this world in part or whole, when being wooed by an extra egregious audacity. Playing the part of either victim or hero, knowing full well that neither is ever any kind of permanent state, if even ever truthfully occurring in any moment to begin with.

And so, I ponder the squander and metaphysical squalor while the world burns as though some uneven cosmic rotisserie.

That isn’t to say existence is without honest difficulties. It certainly seems harder to maintain our humanity these days. Not that it was ever easy, but the technological numbing running rampant reveals a uniqueness to the predicament the species faces in the current.

Still, this whole being human business is important. Might be more paramount now than ever before. Misinformation and mass disassociation, we seem so lost in digitized light that the more naturally occurring kind seems dim or damn near impossible to find. All exhausted from input and saturated in shallow and superficial storytelling, I wonder what it is I might even try and say. Seeking to be profound while hiding away from so much of the prominent mental activity that occupies much of my days.

So, anyway. While I haven’t been reading back the last few weeks before I toss them into the digital abyss, I have been skimming a few from years now passed. Interesting, if not self-felicitating and indulgent. And within reading the words of some former version that can almost seem a stranger, there is an ingredient missing where once was present, if not insultingly abundant.

There is an optimism that once was that now feels to be less or no longer. And though that is extreme sounding, and I am not certain is true- it is noticeably appearing absent where it once at least glimmered, if not being obnoxiously and blinding in its illumination. Could be that there used to be more time left in the past. Could also be that life has regularly kicked the shit out of me, and these last few solar circuits have been especially brutal. Likely why I have been avoiding gazing upon any still water I find in myself, for where once I might have grown addicted to my own adoration, today only ripples of something more remorseful or waves of the chaotic could be the result of that production.

And while I wish to force nothing in this regard, from within or without- I still wish to be coaxing of commentary and contemplations more correct with a contra-negative congeniality. Said as though that were some simple task, he laughed.

And yet, as quixotic as ever, we shall sally forth.

Because it is not a denial of there being benevolence about this sentience, but rather an inquiry as to how to best go about the maintenance of it. And while contrived optimism is something more likely to inspire ire in me than much else, I have lived enough life in both good and bad to know that the efforts are worthy to strike at the sometimes surreal sense of betterment. And while not that young, and a bit less dumb, I still desire to hold a hope that is so often incorrectly qualified as belonging exclusively to youth. And I know this not only because I am not as young as once was, but also any veracious reflection of my former knows that the sadness of a young man can swell and seem immense and inescapable. Yet even when I thought there was no way forward, I have always managed to find one. Not always leaps and lengthy plotted paths, so often it was nothing more than the next single step allowing the movement in space to better perceive how malleable I am within the dimensions of time.

But just as all these yesterdays were unpredictable even as they came to pass, so shall the tomorrows remain benevolently vague even upon their arrival into each and every today. That isn’t to suggest that each surprise is the kind I’d wish to welcome, but it would be equally dishonest to think that only tragedy remains just because tragedies have claimed portions and partitions of my slight sliver to sentient time.

And while claims of cultivation of optimistic occurrences and outlooks might be widely proclaimed and prescribed, I know there is no singular fix to any situation in life. As all that has led us from the mud to this collective consciousness, even technologically contaminated- there is a process to the evolutions on scales of micro, macro and mid.

How’s the saying go? ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’

This is a journey, whether we like it or not, and while the destination may always ultimately be oblivion- it has never been about getting there. It is about the going. Or at least that is how I choose to see it. Guilty as anyone of it, it is so simple to seek the endings to things. There is a far greater discipline in holding witness to the horrors and splendors we wade through as we go. Frustration is so often the sign of a working mind. And heartbreak is the most absolute proof that it isn’t just some stone resting in the cages of our chest cavities.

And please, I wish you to not perceive this as some lecture or sermon. Never would I ever wish any of these rambles to be something so arrogant. For as I write, I am figuring out all of this for myself, as well. Or at the very least, actively aiming to achieve recollection of belief that life and my own mind regularly seek to challenge. Often times out of deprecation or the like, but with properly applied effort these criticisms can work to reinforce ideas and emotions that serve a morality I have been grateful for whenever granted from outside source into the heart and mind of your humble narrator.

We could talk of the world and the permeating pessimism that seems to swell and swelter in accumulating antithesis. Or we could talk of my personal faults and failing and fears. But we won’t. Not here and not now. For this evening, I wish to leave you with something I was hoping to find myself.

And that is hope.

Not a fool’s brand, though, perhaps seasoned by that- but a real and realistic hope. Claiming not that there is some switch to be turned, or some elixir to remedy something in permanence, for that is the act of demagogues and snake-oil salesfolk. But in the process of hope. In the seeking of the next dawn, knowing full well that it too is inevitably sanctioned to set. Perfection in perpetuity only sounds like a sentence in hell, even when claiming an ironically short stay. It is the motion and commotion that allows me to know that finding life worth breaking your heart is the only quest I wish to keep on keeping on upon.

Or, so says I, in this otherwise silent evening.