There are always worse things you could do.

Bad, bad man.

[vitl0k]

Albert Camus wrote

”the literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that prevents you from killing yourself”. Delicious and morose, surely, but I take exception.

it implies two things: firstly, that the default state must be self-eradication, and secondly, that everything one does is conscious enough to establish purpose.

I am breathing, I am wasting time, I am driving down the road. Is my purpose to evade an impending realization? The one that’s true for us all? No. That seems like more a consequence of life.

So maybe my personal philolosophy is that life may not have a purpose, but it certainly has consequences. Only slightly less morose, the gloom humor exchanged for saturnine nihilism. Maybe that won’t be my personal philosophy, after all. Then, I suppose, Camus would say my purpose in life is to express free will.

A selfish, absurd purpose, and I say that with no judgement. I say it with love.

[vitl0k]

this morning I woke up and stared at the sun

there’s a haze that protects it. Protects me, rather. There’s nothing I could do to the sun. It’s like a sunset, except the sun is too high in the sky. And small. Smaller than I expect, at least.

It’s from the wildfires. They’ve burnt millions of trees and now their ghosts have traveled to us. They say that every hour you’re outside is like smoking a cigarette. Which kind, I wonder. I’d trade it for a real one if I was forced to choose.

I can’t though. I have to breathe in this smoky air, the ashes from 800 miles away poisoning my lungs. I had a teacher in high school who said that all air, not just the sooty kind, was poison. He said it’s the oxygen that keeps us alive, but also what kills us. Too much oxygen, and you’re a goner. I guess it’s about finding a balance.

[vitl0k]

I keep having the same dream

It’s early in the morning and I’m standing inside a giant basalt turtle’s open mouth. The sun hasn’t come up yet, but there’s a faint glow that shimmers along the water. There’s no wind yet. The waves are small and frequent so the lakes surface looks like millions of glass shard spilled on flat silver.

The turtle isn’t alive. Maybe it never was. I’m at the edge of its gaping maw, two hundred feet in the air, and below me I see myself, younger, rowing through the water below but now it looks like a bed of mercury and I— myself, my younger self— am a dull lead bullet streaking through the polished veneer. The wake behind me is frozen solid, ripples that will never die.

I don’t know what it means. It comes to me every night and every night it feels cold and distant.

[vitl0k]

what’s the opposite of deja vu? To think nothing happened when something really did? That terrifies me more. Repeating reality could be a comfort… but not knowing what I missed? To only be aware of a gap?

[vitl0k]

[vitl0k]

[vitl0k]

[vitl0k]

[vitl0k]

Today was all right. Hopeful. Any progress feels good. I can breath. Literally, figuratively, the whole shebang.

[vitl0k]

Every season is different. We go through them every year, but this fall was not the same as last. The outlines don’t change, warmth in summer, despair opposite; the general idea persists. This winter is different. The nights seem longer. Deeper inkwells. An abyss. The Abyss.

[vitl0k]

I don’t want to talk about blood because I’m not bleeding. I feel empty. A ghost without his sheet.

[vitl0k]

I’m in Florida tonight

Away from the glitz and coke

On an island with grid streets and warm fog that fills the air ignites the edges of neon signs

[vitl0k]

It’s been dark for a while.

Rows of dish water grey clouds tightly lined across the horizon, streaming towards me, over me, engulfing my body in fading suffocation.

The feeling of obsolete hopelessness accompanies the short winter days. So little time between the dawn and dusk. The hours are drab. The sun doesn’t really shine. It’s a flashlight peeking through fibers, pressed against a blanket.

I know the winter ends. It always has before. But when I die, it will not be in the radiant sun.

[vitl0k]

This is an insane thing to say. You’re responsible for yourself, no one has to listen to you, validate your feelings, or let you berate them. You’re not denying them anything because a denouncement is merely words. And if you can’t overcome words, you’re fucked.

[vitl0k]

I’ve been bad

Walking through dangerous streets

Praying I’ll be attacked just so I can find someone to take this punishment

Hooks through my skin, meant to hold me back

But everything breaks.

[vitl0k]

I am in control of my mind

I am in control of my actions

I am in control of my life

[vitl0k]

I guess I'm back. It was a long winter. Too long. I feel the edges tightening, closing in. I feel like I'm running through the floor in a canyon and at the edge of a jagged pass there is a little opening and I can reach my hand through it and it's so small the rock edges cut into my skin but I still reach through and my hand is free, at least a bit, and I can hear the rushing flood coming from behind me.