anchorings

in

As I paddle around across the shrinking pool in my little liferaft of me, plugging punctures and airholes as I go, I've come to understand that The Work – no matter how little time I get for it, no matter if it's now a minuscule part of my day – is my anchor which, I suppose, begs the question of whether it’s contributing to the sensation of drowning or if it’s what keeps me grounded for all the other things I have to do during the day – or feel threatened to have to do throughout the day.

(For purposes of sanity preservation, I’m going with the former until shown otherwise.)

What does contribute to the drowning is, however, any remnants of caring about a career, about reception, about anything outside my own control: all that’s in my control is showing up and being present with it and doing the best work with what little time I have and finishing it and throwing it to the world and starting something new because that rhythm, its pulse, its breath, that rhythm is my heartbeat through all of it and has been for the last 30 years. Lower the stakes / experiments / Rubin etc etc.

Related: never again will I underestimate the ability of the first movement of Gorecki's SYMPHONY NO. 3 to bring me a modicum of grounding and creative uplift but thenagain I've said this never again for the 20 years it's served that purpose so I won't hold my breath, especially when it comes to anything involving memory.

CYBERPUNK EDGERUNNERS (2022)

in

Bar none, the finest world expansion and exploration in recent memory.

Added an emotional depth to the world of Night City that was lacking in my playthrough – maybe I was going too fast? – through a deeply-felt exploration of the pain and agony of cyberpsychosis (a mini-game within the game itself) and the lengths one will go to to save a found family.

When I load up and replay 2077 for the 2.0 upgrade and PHANTOM LIBERTY expansion, I'll – thanks to these ten episodes, to these characters, to their story – be playing a wholly different game. Powerful, powerful stuff; recommended even if you haven't played the game.

"a dangerous ceding of ideological territory"

in

Enjoying Naomi Klein’s trip into the “Mirror World” and its implications. This passage particularly stood out:

"It is, moreover, extremely dangerous and troubling that corporate platforms can arbitrarily delete users and cut them off from the web of connections they built with their own words, images, and labor over years... Yet in North America, raising the alarm about the fact that we have outsourced the management of our critical information pathways to algorithms run by for-profit companies, working hand-in-glove with governments, somehow became the terrain of the Bannonite political right, which points to a dangerous ceding of ideological territory."

the unfuckening, day 19

in

Slowly acclimating to the (latest) new normal or, rather, finding way to one: everyone – nursing, family, me – learning the ropes and riding the waves of the embarrassing and enraging state of rural healthcare, a situation where I'm both too far away and too close (in distance and) to make anything resembling a useful availability. Moments of presence have to be balanced with moments of trust – ignoring nurse's orders and doing your own thing and falling as a result not conducive to formation of the latter – and I'm learning both.

It's been so long since my own discharge from the hospital that I forgot the shock to the system of going from professional competence to surviving on your own (when I left, a newly-minted T1D, hospital docs had forgotten to prescribe needles for my Novolog pens which made my first dinner outside of the hospital more than a bit vexing). Not quite in that situation, but it is similar but at least I've learned how to flush and drain nephrostomy bags.

Cancelled ink therapy appointment as the situation remains too fluid (ha) and in a state of flux for me to sit in a chair for hours and revel in the reinvigoration of my brain via conversation with friendly tattoo genius but thenagain here I am writing, so it seems that notion one won out so as Carl said in Caddyshack, I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Oh, day ahead, what surprises do you have in store?

happy / done?

in

Two notions duking it out across brainmatter battlefield:

One, that I'm happy writing what I'm writing and publishing it the way I do. No interest in aspiring to go beyond short things and experiments published to newsletters and zines. Aspiration pointed only towards increasing the quality of the work.

And yet:

Two, the emptiness I've felt around most aspects of my life and self at one point or another has, as of this pondering, consumed nearly all aspects and, for the first time since I left music school 20 years ago, seeped into the one area I didn't think it could: Am I writing now only because I haven't a clue what else to do with myself? Or because the alternative, not writing, is too scary to fathom? Is there something else I should be doing and if so, is the only way to find it to stop writing?

Synthesis(?): while I'm about 98% certain that writing will remain part of whatever the new normal shapes up to be (and that notion one will win out), that two percent is – or, rather, I'm in a state of mind where that two percent is – compelling, perhaps dangerously so. Likely cause: utter exhaustion.

Duly recorded here solely as a reflection of the current status of my process of processing.