Tonight I am writing this while wearing my cable knit merino wool sweater from Ireland. It’s usually what I wear when I want to do some writing. Because of the food drop last month, I had 4lbs of Alaskan pollock to try to figure out how to use, so I tried my hand at making a chowder tonight. It was really good! I’m not much of a fish stew kind of guy, but somehow this was delicious and not at all fishy. I froze a few servings for later and plan on making more as needed.
I’ve been thinking about a few things, sitting here in my cable knit sweater. One of them has been Facebook. I’ve been jumping back into it on and off for the last few weeks, but honestly, nothing much interests me about it anymore. The last few blogs I linked to it got maybe half a dozen hits at the most. Combine that with the facist levels of censorship on that platform, and the Pavlovian response it generates for not following “community guidelines” and I just don’t care anymore. So I deactivated my account.
If people need some kind of tickler to bother tapping a link to my site, I don’t really care.
I had a friend tell me she doesn’t read it because “I don’t do the stuff about the feels.” Talk about condescending. I haven’t really spoken with her in a few weeks, and honestly, I think I’m just going to let that whole thing go.
The more time I spend by myself, working, writing, living life, the less I need some people around. I feel like my buckets haven’t been getting filled for a long time and I just don’t have the desire anymore to throw that kind of energy into the law of diminishing returns with people. I fill my buckets up in other ways.
Tonight, I have been listening to a playlist I made on YouTube to listen to while I write my meloncholy stories (sorry if writing “about the feels” isn’t everyone’s cup of tea). One of my favorites that pops up is Mazzy Star’s “Fade into You.” It never fails to make me feel like it is 1994 again. Such an amazing song. I feel like I’m 19 again and mesmerized by that dark haired singer with her tambourine, mini-skirts and army boots. Sepia tones, blue light…for around three minutes, I am young and feeling that lament of youth all over again. Something missing from my life that I didn’t even know how to articulate in words. The music expressed it for me, when I could not.
Those kinds of “feels” are what I try to capture in my stories. Most of us have them, unless they are afraid of looking into that murky mess of nostalgia.
One day, I will look back at 46 and think that I was young then too. Hopefully I’ll just shake my head and think if only I knew that something amazing was just around the corner. Something I never knew was going to hit me. I’ve had several of those moments in my life. Maybe 1994 was one of them. It was the end of one era and the beginning of another. In the midst of four short, yet brilliant years. There have only been a handful of years things have gone right since.
I’m hoping that will change.
Because right now, the way other people are, I’m fine with figuring out my path on my own. I’ll keep writing about the things I feel because books are a monument to emotions. When I am gone one day–unlike that sneer of cold command on the face of Ozymandias–it will still mean something to somebody.
Wendigo Mountain 