Optimistically Pessimistic
Still sticking around, Gentle Reader? Lurking in the margins, reading my blog posts for a dose of gloom & doom?
That's the apparent paradox with me -- I'm generally affable and agreeable, gregarious, even. I'm certainly optimistic by nature, and find pessimists to be boring killjoys.
That said, it's difficult to be an optimist these days. I feel like humanity is careening toward extinction, and civilization as we've known it is headed toward collapse. I've read enough history over the decades to see how societies rise and fall.
It's ludicrously naive to assume that the society as we know it is in any way sustainable. It's not. We need true progress to have a chance at surviving. We need to become more civilized as a species. And I don't know if our species has it in us. Our primate origins come right out of us in our interactions.
I feel fundamentally at odds with the way of the world, and I think the world is at odds with me, too. That is to say, the things I detest thrive, and the things I value are nearly nonexistent. Existentially, how is one to react to that?
My younger self, when I was an innocent Romantic, young and full of life, hope, and energy, would see my 50-something self and be shocked that I ended up where I have, in many respects.
I look back on my life and can't sort out where I went wrong (beyond marrying too young -- that was a huge failure on my part).
To be an old Romantic is a difficult thing. William Blake pulled it off, but few do. Romanticism is not the flowers and moonbeams excursion people may think it is. It's a painful place, which is likely why there are far more practical souls than Romantics.
I don't know. I'm walking wounded in many ways, in the sense that a person with a limp is reminded of that limp with every step they take. I'm scarred, yet I strive to remain functional in a world that has little use for me (if it ever did).
That sense of anomie is profound. What I love and value is not loved and valued in this world. It's likely why I intend to write a few books that are willfully obtuse and confounding -- literary labyrinths for my amusement. I'll try to make the journey worth the reader's time (if the books find any readers), but they'll be unlike anything I've put out there before.
I've tried to make my catalog of fiction accessible to readers, but in a bit of literary vengeance, I suppose, I'm going to write a few books that are pure artistic exercises, and won't be like anything I've put out there before.
There are glimpses of it in the latter third of THE CURSED EARTH -- I went to places in that book that were invigorating to me, even though they're kind of trippy. I know I enjoyed that space, and would like to rekindle that enjoyment while the world burns.
You've been warned, Gentle Reader. Don't worry; these books won't appear anytime soon. I have to write them, first. And as they will be highly experimental, who knows if I'll successfully carry them through the way I envision them. That's the promise and peril of publishing. It's not like I have to worry about driving off readers, right? Ha.
But I'm in a place right now, and have been for the past year. I'll try to channel that into something readable, if not entirely comprehensible.
That's the apparent paradox with me -- I'm generally affable and agreeable, gregarious, even. I'm certainly optimistic by nature, and find pessimists to be boring killjoys.
That said, it's difficult to be an optimist these days. I feel like humanity is careening toward extinction, and civilization as we've known it is headed toward collapse. I've read enough history over the decades to see how societies rise and fall.
It's ludicrously naive to assume that the society as we know it is in any way sustainable. It's not. We need true progress to have a chance at surviving. We need to become more civilized as a species. And I don't know if our species has it in us. Our primate origins come right out of us in our interactions.
I feel fundamentally at odds with the way of the world, and I think the world is at odds with me, too. That is to say, the things I detest thrive, and the things I value are nearly nonexistent. Existentially, how is one to react to that?
My younger self, when I was an innocent Romantic, young and full of life, hope, and energy, would see my 50-something self and be shocked that I ended up where I have, in many respects.
I look back on my life and can't sort out where I went wrong (beyond marrying too young -- that was a huge failure on my part).
To be an old Romantic is a difficult thing. William Blake pulled it off, but few do. Romanticism is not the flowers and moonbeams excursion people may think it is. It's a painful place, which is likely why there are far more practical souls than Romantics.
I don't know. I'm walking wounded in many ways, in the sense that a person with a limp is reminded of that limp with every step they take. I'm scarred, yet I strive to remain functional in a world that has little use for me (if it ever did).
That sense of anomie is profound. What I love and value is not loved and valued in this world. It's likely why I intend to write a few books that are willfully obtuse and confounding -- literary labyrinths for my amusement. I'll try to make the journey worth the reader's time (if the books find any readers), but they'll be unlike anything I've put out there before.
I've tried to make my catalog of fiction accessible to readers, but in a bit of literary vengeance, I suppose, I'm going to write a few books that are pure artistic exercises, and won't be like anything I've put out there before.
There are glimpses of it in the latter third of THE CURSED EARTH -- I went to places in that book that were invigorating to me, even though they're kind of trippy. I know I enjoyed that space, and would like to rekindle that enjoyment while the world burns.
You've been warned, Gentle Reader. Don't worry; these books won't appear anytime soon. I have to write them, first. And as they will be highly experimental, who knows if I'll successfully carry them through the way I envision them. That's the promise and peril of publishing. It's not like I have to worry about driving off readers, right? Ha.
But I'm in a place right now, and have been for the past year. I'll try to channel that into something readable, if not entirely comprehensible.
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