AJ Dante's Inferno

Observational writing, photography and rants about all subjects with a touch of the poetic thrown in to boot... where I stop, nobody knows.

[deactivated-blog]

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. -Anaïs Nin

[ajeverywhere]

Failing Human Organs

I've long been kind of obsessed with the human body. It's an acute self awareness, something that goes beyond simply knowing oneself.

I "know" myself in a kind of unrelenting sight of my physical as well as mental self. I'm aware, in Christopher Hitchens' words, that I don't "have" a body but rather I am a body. It's a distinction that breaks down religiously inspired notions of the self but also a sort of self affirmation of physical placeness, I guess.

Yeah, that sounds good.

I'm this thing, aware that it's a thing, standing on a somewhat expansive thing that floats and flies at great, even incomprehensible speeds within an even greater expansive of NOthing.

And yet it's not nothing, it's just that we can't see it.

I feel my fragility as an easily destroyed thing is something to cherish, actually. Some, the children, would argue living forever is sick in a positive sense.

I say it's sick in a delusional sense.

And I say that somewhat mournfully. I've always had, well, as long as I can remember, a sort of ringing in my ears. I always thought it was just the sound of silence.

It's not.

Silence is the sound of silence.

The ringing in my ears is a loss of hearing, something I discovered in a doctor's office recently.

I'll be clear; I'm not going deaf, but the person who tested me told me I was right at the line of qualifying for a hearing aid.

A hearing aid.

Yeah.

I make no excuses. I went to a lot of metal concerts in my younger days. And I've been to tons of shows in support of my friends who are part of this Long Island music and art scene.

I just never protected myself. I left my body open to the destructive power of sound.

The way she described it, we have these sort of hairs inside our ears that register sound. They knock over to create a nerve sensation that sends a message we recognize as sound. This is as I understand it. I'm definitely paraphrasing here. Anyway, knock them over too violently and for two long and they don't recoil up.

And your sensitivity to sound dies a little.

I say mournfully because this represents a step in the inexorable breakdown of my body. Physically we can only stand so much of this world. Even art has it's brutalizing effects on our flesh, not just our minds. And our minds are our flesh. And vice versa.

I'm not sad I've destroyed some of my hearing. Mourning is always something that should be done temporarily. It's a reaction in the aftermath of a heaving moment.

It's my fault, totally. I don't even know if I'm comfortable calling it a "fault." It's the result of my choices. That's fine. I suppose I see it merely as another in a long line of beginnings heading toward the end.

Take comfort in your fragility, I suppose is my message here.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

Mad Max: Fury Road

So before I ran off to read all the text about how much of a feminist movie Mad Max: Fury Road is, I wanted to just write about what I noticed myself.

First of all, the movie was incredible. And it only gets better the more I think about it. George Miller clearly took real care in developing this film. It shows in the nature of the background situation, how that plays into the main conflict, the character design, dialogue (USED ONLY WHEN NEEDED); EVERYTHING. I wanna focus on one character in particular: Immortan Joe. He’s the primary antagonist, but also the reason I think this movie takes a step into the “great movie” category and not just a fun summer extravaganza. I mean, it clearly is. The action in this movie is insane. You’re not going to see anything like it anywhere else (looking at you, MCU).

SPOILERS AHEAD. By now we’ve all heard that the film has been regarded as very pro-woman and that’s definitely the truth. You might be wondering why I’m not focusing this on Charlize Theron’s character Imperator Furiosa then, but it’s more because there are certain things sticking out to me about Immortan Joe, despite the fact that now as I think about her Furiosa is kind of revealing herself to me too...

I may need another blog entry just on her!

So Immortan Joe. He’s a towering brute with white hair breathing on a ventilator whose voice booms and he doesn’t just consider but *knows* a group of young girls Furiosa takes from him to free from sexual slavery are “his property.” He has created a sort of cult in worship of him (pale skinned wild men known as War Boys) who are ready to die in battle for him to walk into Valhalla (the great hall of the afterlife for worthy warriors of the truly masculine Norse myth).

Got all that?

He keeps these women locked up in a safe (more wonderful visual imagery) and uses them to sire his children. Think about that for a second.

One of the reasons Mad Max: Fury Road is thought of as a feminist movie, in my opinion, is because it gives women more to do than just wait around and be rescued or act as love interests. Furiosa is the one whose choice drives the central conflict; she decides to take the women from Joe and so sets in motion the events that drag in Max.

However, it’s also a feminist critique of the white male power structure, our big western patriarchal society. Without getting too spoilerish, my interpretation of Joe using a ventilator to breathe is to say that this society represented by his domineering over women is quite literally running on fumes. So besides it looking cool and making him intimidating, it betrays his weakness.

The backdrop of the conflict is that water in this wasteland is extremely scarce, so Joe runs his society also but controlling how much water is given those that live in his Citadel. He tells them, almost mockingly at one point, not to “grow addicted” to water. When you juxtapose his control over the women (”his property”) in using them to birth his children and the fact that he deems when his Citadel will get “wet” so to speak, all of these metaphors about patriarchal control of women’s sexuality just spring to the surface. It’s brilliant.

There was one moment above all that made me truly sit back in appreciation for the film, though. Here’s another **SPOILER ALERT** comes in, although it won’t give away what ultimately happens, anything like that.

One of the women, known as Splendid (Joe’s favorite, it is said), is pregnant. During one chase sequence, she is killed in a horrific moment. Later, a dirty surgeon is enlisted to deliver the baby in hopes the child, Joe’s son, would make it. The surgeon (who clinks the knives together like he’s getting ready to dig into a meal, another astute visual cue as to how Joe’s cult sees women), fails to save the baby’s life. He says the boy was perfect, though.

Later we see Joe singing what I interpreted as a song of mourning. After that, there’s a shot of him staring out to nowhere, kind of longingly.

This is brilliant. What it does is turn Joe from some black and white evil into a real person, as monstrous as it is. And what it also does is establish just how psychologically locked in this view of women is to a guy like Immortan Joe and his cult. So the satirical element to it is clear; there’s a real embedded mania to the way the patriarchal order views women. It’s not just “men control women,” it’s fully ingrained, the idea is three dimensional. There’s a real pathos to that moment, and it shows just how sad Joe really is.

Of course you don’t need me to tell you, but there’s so much more to this story. The way Max is involved, how he views his place (just there to survive) and what he learns as the story progresses. Furiosa, of course, whose missing arm to me says as much as she can do all she can, she needs help. And that there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s really a tremendously well made film. I implore you to see it. The more we go to see movies like this, films that actually comment on the state of things while not getting caught up in editorializing, soap boxing or hamfisting ideas and creating a wild ride in the process, the better we’ll be in the long run.

Let’s ask more of our entertainment. Film, literature, music; all these things can act as telescopes and microscopes into our culture. Let’s up the ante, let’s raise our expectations.

Go see Mad Max: Fury Road.

- Adam

[ajeverywhere]

They Live Inside The Same Bodies

A kid read words at a church this morning.

"The man who fears The Lord is to be praised."

And I saw a man crying and whimpering before a monolith, faceless, unknowable.

Pleading through tears of his love and terror. His knees bloodied in deference. His eyes parched. Pale skin.

A beggar.

He begged for love.

While he cowered.

He begged for love.

And those around him cheered. Like it was black and white. And someone corrupted his cross.

And he could take no solace in their cheers.

He didn't know, after all.

The monolith stayed still. The breeze in the shadowed and aqua colored underground whispering along the stone floor.

The monolith stayed still.

And he had to wait for someone. Someone wearing a mask. Someone who could read the faceless unchanged.

And the man wallowed and cried and screamed for love, his larynx and throat and lungs all crushed between the weight of his tongue and his heart and he pleaded and bowed and...

The mask was there.

And it looked at the monolith. The silent, virtually imperceptible monolith.

The smiling mask turned to him.

And said yes.

The legion, the many, the innumerable. Their voices rose.

Higher and higher.

And the mask said yes said the smiling mask.

And the beggar's forehead, sweaty and strained with a vein, rested on the stone.

His tears and salty sweat a puddle. A pool. Growing.

They cheered and the laughed and he felt loved.

And the mask turned to the dark.

And they took the man away.

Scraping his knees again.

And they brought in the next one.

[ajeverywhere]

What Follows?

Someone I know has died.

Admittedly I didn't really know them that well, but this person was related to a close relative of mine. Therefore it still cuts. It's tough, death. I feel strange about it sometimes because I've gotten so used to it in my days.

Between 2005 and 2008 I lost seven or eight relatives of mine. Some were much closer than others. I can't even remember how many because it was just death after death. One funeral would end and then a month or two later someone else would get the call.

The Call, that is.

This isn't really about that, though. And by the title of this post I'm sure you may think it's about the afterlife or questions on it.

Nah, that's not it either.

I bring all this up because a certain horror movie, IT FOLLOWS, is coming out soon and I'm just in love with the premise.

I don't know if this comes off as callous, tying actual deaths into my thoughts on what a film could mean. I don't think it is. I can still mourn while considering the implications.

What I've heard about the film leads me to believe it's about a curse that is passed from person to person when they have sex. This particular story concerns young people, on the cusp of life, adulthood, all that stuff.

So what grasp my attention is the notion that once that innocence is lost, the innocence of virginity, life then begins to fade, like you've reached the point where biologically you can do what you're supposed to so. So do it and then get out of the way, you know?

Rough. But that's kind of what life is, stripped down, boiled.

Everything else, all this worrisome stuff about careers, things... It's all window dressing. Neocortex creativity blanketing the urgent limbic brain.

And so death is the curse that awaits us after we've reached banging point.

The "it" that follows, so to speak.

Umm... Yeah I can't wait to see that movie. And I don't have any fears about dying. Life is what it is. When it comes, that's something different. But death itself; try to remember what it felt like to be alive before your brain developed the capacity to remember things as a child.

Boom.

Adam

[zoomine]

[matthintsa]

Maho Beach.

[ajeverywhere]

Why Do I Write Things?

A good question.

I don't feel so "everywhere" anymore.

Strangely, though, I do feel adrift. I've struggled for years with the nature of belief.

Whether spiritual or not. I've wondered about its purpose. Like it doesn't seem organic to me. It seems tacked on. Within the sludgy, gooey physicality of every day experience it's hard for me to imagine "believing" anything about it.

It shoves itself in my face. It fills my nostrils with its schizophrenic joy and emptiness. I don't need to "believe" in the world.

But I feel like I'm running on cliches here.

The real reason I bring this up is because I watched a TED Talk today that got me thinking.

"People buy why you did it not what you do."

It jazzed up my confidence nubs. Because I've developed a life philosophy based on what I've seen and experienced.

Does it count for a belief?

I just sighed but not in the "oh cruel world" sense. More like a... "Huurrrmm I wonder" sense.

I guess it does. Because for all my confusion about "beliefs" which truthfully run the gamut. Beliefs could mean literally ANYTHING in someone's mind.

I like to think my beliefs can change, though. That's what I find detestable about religious belief in general. It's settled. There's no room for mutation. For growth. It is what it is. Forever.

Forever is a long fucking time.

So I took to calling what was in my head "ideas." Ideas can be altered. You can write a few different drafts of ideas. They are mutable.

But ideas don't constitute a core.

The core of the earth has been burning for 4.5 billion years. It's not going to stop either; the only way this planet is going to END end is when the sun dies in something like 6 billion years.

So what's the deal? What if I just hang on to some way of thinking for a while?

The truth is I sort of have figured out a way of understanding reality that at it's core doesn't change but is open to changing. It's something I feel an urge to communicate through whatever writing I do.

So there's the answer to the above question.

Ultimately, I suppose this counts for a belief. But I'm not sure. And I think not being sure is a hallmark of truly evolutionary thinking.

Not being sure and acting anyway. Humans have done it for millions of years as we've gotten to where we are.

I've got about 30-40 years left. It'd be good to start trying it a little more.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

Positive Vibes

People say this thinking it makes them mysterious.

They're not.

They think it offers something magical to their thoughts.

It doesn't.

I laugh at this shit. They're the elderly in the skin of young people disguise. Why not just come out and say what you're actually doing?

Maybe what you wish you were doing.

Why not just say...

"I'll pray for you."

You know you want to. You know every exhortation of "sending positive vibes" out, floating presumably, "to the universe" is just code for "I'll ask god to bless you."

The claim people make that they're "putting it out to the universe" is boring and, at worst, deceitful.

"If it happens, it happens."

"The Lord works in mysterious ways."

The universe does not give a flying fuck about anything we humans want or need.

It can't, because it doesn't have the capacity to give a fuck.

It simply IS.

And if you think cataclysmically enormous balls of floating, burning gas aeons away have anything to do with your sex drive, I got a cracker imbued with man god spirit ready for you too.

Chaos reigns all about us. We are feeble, we are weak.

Learn to revel in this.

This has been your somewhat angry post for the evening.

Smiles. And good "vibes." Durrrr.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

Spitting Words

There's a strain inside my physical form. I feel it often, within my eyes, stretching my muscles. Chipping at my spine with an ache.

It's actually quite incendiary. My limbs feel cascaded by fire. Tongues of flame tenderizing my torso.

Plasmatic. Pyrophoric.

The flesh becomes magma. The bone the heaving earth.

The ache of centuries. The decay of the physical form. The inevitability.

And the acceptance and the love.

For all the agony, there is a smile. Better to see the universe with disintegrating eye sight than to not be aware of it at all.

Better to leave something that touches someone, even if it submerges into the dark forever after it's time is over.

Better to stand tall under gravity's crush.

We wouldn't have gotten here otherwise.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

Future Presents

Late to the party, I suppose. But that's only a testament to its relevance.

I watched David Fincher's THE SOCIAL NETWORK today. All the way through. I had seen bits and pieces over the years.

It got me thinking about how we live today. I'm not a Luddite. In fact I'd describe myself as having an almost perverse interest in where we go "next."

All we are is all we are. Evolution has gotten us to this/these moments and nowhere else, so we have no one to blame but ourselves for not gutting those who would destroy our capacity to exist in good health and as freely as we could. I think plenty is still in our hands regarding opportunities to change things.

It's just a matter of how bad we want it.

Tirade. Rant. Back to the point.

Maybe that is partly the point. I know a lot of people who talk shit about what Mark Zuckerberg had accomplished. Invariably they're of the tree people, back to the land, "we weren't meant to be this."

We weren't meant to be anything. We've decided all along what we would be.

I don't have a problem with hippie ideals. I agree with a lot of them. I guess I'm just not interested in going off and living in a forest. We ran out of the forests for a reason. We were terrified and tired of being hunted. So we figured out how to live without relying so totally on our primal instincts.

But then again perhaps civilization is among out primal instincts. We search for a way to better our chances of survival. The irony is that in doing so we've probably doomed ourselves. It's not surprising; all of reality is a deeply embedded paradox.

To think it's all clear is creationist thought.

I read on Wikipedia before the neurological effects Facebook can have on a person. Drawing out envy, jealousy in a person. Becoming more physically addicting than drugs and alcohol (with a more intense withdrawal).

Less involved in "the real world."

But what are we if we are not survivors? Adaptors?

Reading Ray Kurzweil and having a more than tepid interest in the notion of Singularity leads me to believe Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker was right.

"We lived on farms, then we lived in cities and in the future we'll live in the internet."

Paraphrased. But the point stands.

And the future is already here.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

Burning Eyes

I read a lot on the internet. I've been watching some more TV as of late. I study a lot of films to help me learn about screenwriting and other aspects of filmmaking.

So?

For all this mental stimulation, my body does not take it without no effect.

My eyes suffer the wrath of electronic information transfer more than any other part of me. I've never had good eyes. I've worn glasses since I was a child. You could say the closeness of these plastic, metal and glass pieces to my flesh make me in some ways cybernetic.

The phone in my pocket does that too. For everyone, really.

In any case, I've found myself saying lately...

"I have free time because I work so sporadically. I should spend more of it consuming information."

It's an addiction, admittedly.

Nonetheless I find it funny that, like eating too much, it has it's downsides. My brain is fried, but it's interesting to me how I don't stop.

I need more. And more can only augment my output.

Who says you need reality to come up with a story worth telling? I feel like electronics says more about the current state of humanity than anything else anyway.

The Matrix indeed.

In any case, this is what winter is for if you're in the northeast. Outside time is right around the corner.

I'll still be plugged in. My eyes aren't thanking me.

But my brain is.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

Human Animal

...is redundant.

Why do people think they aren't animals?

I feel like there's more hesitance to acknowledging this than outright fear. Like it's something people shy away from talking about, like your drunken aunt yammering away at your wedding.

It's a constant, something that will always be and something everyone knows. And yet...

There's nothing at all wrong with it, with being and recognizing one's animal-ness.

I remember having a discussion with a relative once. This person found my completely banal observations about humans being animals as almost blasphemous. Soon You-Know-Who showed up in the conversation and at that point it becomes an exercise in futility.

A drinking game where whenever the word "primate" is spoken you take a certain kind of shot based on the two most likely reactions from those people I was speaking with; is it gonna be complete and antagonistic disbelief or no acknowledgment whatsoever?

I like the fact that I'm an animal. I like that my cognitive abilities are just as naturally occurring as a bear's likelihood of trapping prey. It's inborn within us all.

We hold the capacity to work our worlds into something sustainable and beautiful.

I think a lot of people just want to avoid the scaries that come with accepting our primal side. They want to think we've grown beyond it.

Not only have we not outgrown it, but we never will.

And when I say "we" I mean the we as we understand ourselves right now

The day may yet come where we find ourselves putting aside our most bestial genetic idiosyncrasies with the aid of technology.

Nonetheless, as long as we are flesh, we will always be animal in some form.

Cherish and relish it, folks.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

My Crooked Finger

One day I'll post a picture.

I've been somewhat obsessed with the physical form the last few years. How we're basically brains processing reality through an extension of fleshy nerves.

We are plugged into reality through our bodies. We are reality plugged into itself.

Our imaginations are a paradoxical intertwining of yes and no, real and unreal, thought cataloging and manufacturing. Though those last two aren't opposites.

Understanding what we are is a uniquely human attribute. Other animals can feel emotions, but they're not aware like we humans are aware.

The exist, perhaps somewhat passively, linked to a kind of ebb and flow they possess no capacity to escape. Humans are different; we are aware of this tide.

And, should we not kill ourselves, we can learn to work with it in progressively more unimaginable ways.

So what does my crooked finger have to do with it?

My left pinkie is a tad crooked. Like it's hooked. There's too little skin or flesh on it, so the bones inside can't straighten like my other fingers. Plus I broke it a few years ago and now it's permanently swollen.

It poses no issue for me. I have no trouble maintaining grips, for example. I'm not sure what else pinkies are for. I'll have to look that up one day.

When I think about my pinkie, I wonder why we have standards of beauty. I wonder why some things are perceived to be more aesthetically pleasing than others. Especially when one considers the raging chaos, albeit somewhat unseen, that we exist within.

I feel like we're constantly trying to avoid acknowledging the chaos. That crossing the street where a car may shatter your spine upon un expecting impact is the kind of chaos rogue asteroids provide planet surfaces.

That beautiful face... You can lose yourself within it.

You can forget the sweat leaking out of its pores, the leftover shit hissing and rashing inside their assholes, the torn up cuticles on their fingers. The steady decay, the children bred to replace them, in love of course but only after the animal takes control or loses it.

That what we've agreed is perfect obfuscates the world killing radiation held just slightly back. That our extermination is seconds away at every moment if the conditions are right.

I laugh at this stuff, but I can see why some don't. After all, my crooked finger isn't so crooked to me.

Or maybe it is and crooked is beauty to me.

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

Political

I don't identify as conservative.

Honestly, I think conservatives are an evolutionary dead end. That can be extrapolated out beyond politics too. When I say conservative, I mean anyone who takes a cautious view of things.

There, of course, is room for this. There wouldn't be a human race if it were made up only of outliers and progressive minded individuals. At one time in our development as a species it was advantageous to be conservative.

I would argue the development of agriculture is definitely a progressive achievement, but also something that stems from a human need for stability, a conservative notion in my opinion.

We are the sum totaling of paradoxical achievements. This will continue as long as humanity is alive and thriving.

In any case, allow me to get back to the political. Twice tonight on Facebook I saw threads posted by friends which bothered me from a liberal, humanist, feminist perspective.

One of them was an opinion about Kanye West's moronic comments about Beck and the other was a clickbait article on a feminist who allegedly announced she had had an abortion simply because she discovered the baby was going to be a male.

The opinion started off innocently enough but eventually mutated into a ridiculous screed on the reality of "reverse racism" and how racism today is so much worse than during the 19th century, i.e. Slavery.

The article was an opinion masquerading as news, a Russian doll of links to nonsense website after nonsense website ultimately reaching the story on which the piece was based. Basically, a woman (not giving her full name) described a scenario on an (unnamed) airline involving a male passenger insulting her for (predictably) going to an Occupy Wall Street rally in San Francisco. Ultimately in total non sequitur fashion she ends the article by stating she was pregnant and decided once she found out it was a male that she couldn't bring another "monster" into the world.

It was as poorly written as you think, made to feed the base its two minutes hate, couching an anti-abortion agenda in plain sight amid ripping the feminist movement as predictable fascist. It's the same old crap. I'm not linking it here because I'm not giving it any more clicks.

It's just so easy to get people angry. Anger fuels the economy of shock journalism. I'm not wary of being shocked, but I know what grabs eyes. I pointed out how silly this article was, how clearly it materialized out of someone's imagination. My thoughts weren't exactly engaged with. The guy who posted it just kind of shrugged them off. He said, initially, he hoped it was a joke. Yeah...

And the West/slavery opinion? I had a tense but respectful conversation with a person about it. Respectful in that it did not turn into a shouting match. I still can't believe people hold such ideas in their heads. I fully accept the truth that we, humans, are still a bunch of dumb animals that don't know much. Nonetheless I just find it incredible that we struggle so mightily to see through these non issues.

Skin pigmentation should not be an issue in 2015, but it is. Not because black people or Hispanics or any other non-white make it an issue. But because white people continue to pretend there's no problem.

This isn't white guilt. This isn't me saying I feel bad for being white.

This is me saying white people need to nut the fuck up, stop being such a bunch of babies and admit they're capable of hideous things, actions and feelings.

White privilege does not mean white people have more money than other races (which they do), but rather that white people aren't assumed to be up to anything other than living their lives.

When the day comes where all races are simply recognized as just trying to live, then we can say we've made some headway.

Ultimately, this gets back to my main point. These perspectives, among others, the dream monster feminist/aborter-murderer and the "all blacks are bitchy and whiny reverse racists," do more to stunt our continued evolution than anything else.

In 50-100 years I hope we've grown beyond such ignorance. Since we are what we are, though, I'm sure we'll have something else to replace them.

Adam

[chadbourn]

Somebody’s got to want something, something’s got to be standing in their way of getting it. You do that and you’ll have a scene.

Aaron Sorkin (via chadbourn)

[ajeverywhere]

Shitty First Draft

Everyone says it. Friends say it. Screenwriting “gurus” say it. Hemingway said it.

The first draft of anything is shit.

There’s wisdom to this, of course. The idea that it’s better to get something out than nothing, to begin with.

Yes! Absolutely. Many writers struggle with thinking everything needs to be perfect on one go. It can cause major anxiety in a person. Ultimately, it could even snuff out a potentially great writer’s artistic spirit.

So I have no quarrel with this idea.

I’ve even adhered to it pretty strongly.

When you write a novel, for example, it’s purely the best course of action. The kinds of layers you go for in prose writing compared with screenwriting; let’s just say it’s a different animal.

You may need a few tries to get it right. I know I have (draft number four on the way this spring!).

The same can indeed be said of screenwriting. Depending on how you’re writing it, crafting the visual elements of the story takes patience. You have to really put some thought into it.

Why write this then? It sort of feels like I was leading toward ripping this idea.

Well, I’m not going to tear it apart. I’m just gonna ask: what if you’ve done so much preparation that you feel the first draft is more right than wrong?

Obviously you gotta get some other opinions. And clearly there will be some things you missed.

But does that make it shitty? I’m not saying this as a cerebral crank yank. I’m saying what if you feel, and then it’s borne out by others, that the draft is workable.

I know “workable” has some rotten implications.

I suppose I’m just saying I’ve done a lot of writing these last few months. I feel I’ve gotten into a groove.

And I don’t think my first drafts are as shitty as they could be.

By all means I’m open to people telling me they are. But I feel I’m beginning to get a real handle on this.

Werner Herzog, in A Guide For the Perplexed, said writing a screenplay should take no more than five days.

Five.

Could actually be three now that I think about it.

I’m not there nor will I ever be. Nor do I want to be. I have an appreciation for the structural aspect of it. But I’ve heard from some writers about this stuff the primary goal is to first have a story you can follow and make sure it’s not boring.

How you get there… Depends in who you’re dealing with when they talk about your work.

In any case, I’m just glad I’ve been so consistent lately. All the best!

Adam

[ajeverywhere]

The Impressive Brutality of Nature

No complaints here.

Just admiration.

I used to get upset when snow came around. It was such a pain to deal with. It just seemed like an ultimate in the realm of banal labor.

Pick snow up, put snow down.

The accompanying cutting wind, skin tenderizing cold and balance poisoning ice also provide many a reason why I can understand beating paths to the equator.

Nonetheless, I went outside three times today to attempt to stave off the inexorable accumulation.

Pick snow up, put snow down.

People die from these efforts. My grandfather, when I was 13, died of a heart attack after shoveling snow after a particularly brutal blizzard.

The weather is literally so lethal it KILLS people.

This is what we deal with as human beings.

This stuff harmlessly flutters out of the sky and within its myriad frozen forms and designs lies the power to paralyze modern civilization to a stunning degree, nullifying technology and downright snuffing out human lives.

This is wonderful, to me. This is no tragedy.

Would you rather die of cancer? The nebulous "natural causes?"

Fragile people die for all sorts of reasons. It's an inescapable aspect of existence. Even stars die, albeit in spectacularly lonely fashion so deep into the dark that we only see distant recollections.

Pick snow up, put snow down.

Strain against gravity. Make your throat raw with iced air.

But don't kneel before nature. You can't be a slave to yourself.

Respect it. Be in awe of it. Be in awe of what you/we are.

Adam