Hello, loyal and seemingly perpetually attractive reader.  It has been, as the kids would say, a minute.  I’ve been here, and I’ve certainly not forgotten about you.  I’ve just been going through what I guess is best called a period of intense growth.  Personally, professionally, psychologically…all of it.  Which was prefaced with a couple years’ worth of tectonic existential freakouts.  It’s been weird as hell, and could probably only be accurately described in very Jungian language, which would make it sound like I had slewn a dragon or escaped the Matrix.  Which I haven’t.  But I have seen that there is a Matrix to escape and that all dragons have fatal vulnerabilities.  In my quest to figure myself out, I unwittingly pierced the veil and ended up also figuring out quite a bit about others and the Nature of Things.  Suffice it to say, I have answered all the questions that needed answering.  Jesus…see?  This is already meandering into the metaphysical.  I think I’m supposed to be talking about writing.

Rewind to the previous century, when I started Writing (with a capital W…as both performance art and blood sport), I honestly thought I was prepared for anything.  Rejection, failure, starvation, depression, isolation, insanity…I had prepared for all of it (insomuch as someone can be said to prepare for that sort of thing without having actually experienced any of it).  Anyway, it all happened, some of it hit harder than some of the rest, and I managed, one way or another, to get through it.

But a couple of decades ago, very slowly, like the frog in the slowly heating pot, I started feeling increasingly separated from American culture.  When the divorce finally happened, it happened  so quickly, I was left blindsided: one minute, I was tossing back cocktails with the people who make the culture at the top of some high-rise on the Avenue of Americas and taking meetings with producers at Universal Studios, and maybe two years later being completely and acrimoniously split from the entire rotten culture, sitting behind locked doors with both middle fingers raised.  Which was awkward as some sort of artist, but still I thought somehow sustainable.

Pero no.  Over the course of the last 5-10 years, Americans and their insidious culture have changed for the unacceptably stupid and absurd, and now I’m left facing a bunch of challenges I honestly never saw coming.  This has left me in a very awkward position vis-à-vis my agenda and overall plan as a writer.

Continued tomorrow.

N.P.: “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” – 3TEETH

“I, who have also been betrayed, assassinated, and cast into a tomb, I have emerged from that tomb by the grace of God and I owe it to God to take my revenge.  He has sent me for that purpose.  Here I am.”
~ The Count of Monte Cristo

N.P.: “Dancing On Your Grave” – Motorhead

“Father, beware, our revenge will be terrible when we take it.”
~ The Count of Monte Cristo

N.P.: “Kicking and Screaming” – Blues Saraceno

“For all evils there are two remedies – time and silence.”
~ The Count of Monte Cristo

N.P.: “Trouble’s Coming” – Royal Blood

“Woman Laughing with Salad 2” by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

It kills the very brave and the very good and the very gentle indiscriminately.  If you are none of these, it will kill you too.  But there will be no special hurry. ~ Ernest Hemmingway

Hey, dearest reader…I’m back.  Where I’ve been I can’t say, as per our usual arrangement, but suffice it to say I’m glad to be back.  Wandering endlessly in the Darkness…felt like I was gone for ages.  Sorry about the lack of notice.  You know how it is, dear reader: when it’s time to Go Dark, it’s actually kind of rare that you get any notice.  Occupational hazard, I suppose.
Anyway, things have been Weird and I need a nap.  We’ll catch up soon.

N.P.: “Sho Been Worse” – Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown

Remembering the life and love of Mary Wallace and her family.  “Always and forever.”

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

To the other people in the waiting room…yes, I am looking at you.  Though you’ll never know.  I’d even admit to what I’m doing technically as watching you.  Not in a creepy way…not really.  And I’m told I have a subconscious tendency to stare.  I’d apologize, but even if I am unintentionally staring, you still will never know.  I’m just watching you not watch me.  Or anyone else.  I’m watching you and everyone else in this room stare at their screens.  Oblivious to everything else.  Obsessed not with observing life, but observing other people’s observations of life.  Free thinking is gone.  Critical thinking is gone.  No more active thought…just one-directional, unquestioning intake.  What the hell happened to you people?  I don’t want to know any of you.  I wouldn’t drink with you even if you were paying.  You actually volunteered for slavery.
I want to help you…I really do.  But first, you need to look up.  To make any change at all, you’re going to need to put away your phone, and just look up.

N.P.: “Until It Sleeps” – Metallica

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

For the last several weeks, California has been under both a drought emergency and a flood emergency.  Simultaneously.  In the same exact place.  Weird as tits on a bishop.  When asked about this ludicrous incongruity on the steps of the Capitol this morning, the governor grabbed a spokesperson from Water Resources and thrust her in front of the camera.  The chick from Water Resources blathered on about global warming for a bit…just long enough for the governor to climb into his motorcade and escape.  What the chick from Water meant to say was, “If this looks like egregious incompetence from the state’s executive branch, then that’s likely what it is: this state is run by absolute morons.”

N.P.: “It Serves You Right To Suffer – The Avener Rework” – John Lee Hooker