The Unsettling
In which an exorcism by writing is attempted:
Facing down yet another seemingly uncrackable piece (on politics because I do love torturing myself), The Unsettling festers anew: the notion that, by spending time writing these pieces, I am neglecting my other work, The Work, that mythic third book, and wasting my time in the delivery of useless content into the ether of indifference, an Unsettling that cohabitates with a shitflinging, cokehead roomate called perceived obligation (Percy) who says I must produce new content for this little unweeded garden of thought and that if I don’t deliver said content into the ether, I will, since I’ve all but abandoned the anxious picayune of social media (excepting requisite dog pictures at Instagram and brief exasperations with a social rebirth at Mastodon and a return to Twitter) for the self-owned and long-winded status updates contained herein, slide into obsolesence and be forgotten (which begs the question of whether I am actually “known” at all – or if it matters one bit; on my good days, I want to believe that it doesn’t).
However, from the swampdepths of this Unsettling, a glimmer of light as I recall Montaigne’s words on practice – words first discovered via one of the inspirations for this iteration of my digital self, Warren Ellis’s MORNING, COMPUTER, and words that have since brought me the joy of reading, bit by bit, all of Montaigne’s work – immortalized at the top of this category page…
“What I write here is not my teaching, but my study; it is not a lesson for others, but for me. And yet it should not be held against me if I publish what I write. What is useful to me may also by accident be useful to another. Moreover, I am not spoiling anything, I am only using what is mine. And if I play the fool, it is at my expense and without harm to anyone. For it is a folly that will die with me, and will have no consequences.”
… – and recognize anew that the value of these maunderings is not in being of use to you but in being of use to me; they are my practice, my study, and my exorcism – of myself and of the world – and that’s it. Nothing more.
The Unsettling has ebbed; back to The Work.
Reading: THE MARS ROOM, by Rachel Kushner.
Listening: THE PARIS CONCERT, EDITION 2, by Bill Evans; DJARIMIRRI, by Gurrumul.
