080318 # Penance I didn’t do my fifteen minutes at 4:00 as scheduled because I was really engrossed in my living-room rearrangements, and I actually, honestly just completely forgot. But I am doing it now, because as I mentioned before, I have to do it this way. The nice thing about it is that it is **ALWAYS 100% do-able!** There’s never anything really difficult or impossible about it, except carving out the little slice of time and attention. Once you figure that out, once you come to grips with that, *anything is possible.* All you have to do, she said, and I believe her, is just spend 15 minutes on literally anything that’s not purely nonsense. Why? Because your subconscious would be content to daydream. Writing it down (typing it, or whatever is next—hey, will something else be next? and when it is, will it change this whole equation? Will there be something quantitatively and or qualitatively different about the affordances that will follow the current level of scripto-tech?) helps you focus it. It helps you become aware of it—that is, it bridges the gap between the flowy ephemeral dream world and the waking life. It also can help you figure stuff out, like math problems or language problems or whatever. It also can lead you towards having some sort of crypto-product that you could actually share with someone. And that’s kind of the next level, isn’t it? That’s some next-level type shit. Why do you want to hold up the words you put down in a certain order on a page and stick them in front of someone else’s eyeballs and say, hey, would you do me a favor and somehow associate this encoding of characters in this particular order at this particular moment with me, and think of it as something I want to say to you? But would you at the very same time also intentionally *not* think about me at all, but just cast your memory and your fibrillating, constantly seeking tendrils of consciousness into the virtual reality created by your personal act of decoding these characters in a certain order at this time in the context of your—god it’s confusing. I truly, honestly, don’t know how or why it works at all. I don’t know what this weird magic is. It seems so obsolete. Writing is even older than UNIX, and we’re still using it every day! It shows no signs of abating any time soon. But maybe it will change. You don’t want to design a lunch box, you want to get the concept and possibly the purpose of the thing, described in terms as objective as possible—in other words, the way an alien would describe the thing you’re holding in your hand. The alien would have to spend some quality time observing the way the native creatures interact with the object. THey would speculate and infer and discuss what the object is “used” for, if “use” is even the point of the object. THey would not merely design a lunch box. THat’s just making a “me-too” iteration of someone else’s preconceived notion of what is real and what is significant. THey would instead build a cup for your brother to drink from. Sometimes I want to just sit and rock back and forth and listen to music. Sometimes I just want to sit and drink one drink after another and rock back and forth and cast my memory back, dear lord. But then again, what’s the point of that? I mean, I had some really good times. I had some really good sex. I had some really good music. I had some really good friends. I had some really crappy jobs. I had a lot of time in basements, in cars, in the woods, along the sides of highways. I had a lot of drumming. I had a sinewy body that was, compared to this one I mean, taut and nippy and fresh and kind of hot. I had some really good girlfriends. I had a couple of almost-boyfriends, but I never quite figured out how to do that. I didn’t have the blueprint of that, after all. But here’s the thing: There’s no “glory days.” THere’s no war I can’t escape the singularity of. THere’s no raid on no castle. No-one ever hurled me over the castle walls via catapult. My kids are still alive. I’m still alive. THere’s no football game. There’s no great epiphany. THere’s a lot of small ones, but still. THere’s no ultimate staring-in-the-face of death with my bonded brother, my holy lover. THere’s I guess what I’m trying to say is, other than the fact that I’m jealous of my 24-year-old body, THERE’S NO REASON FOR ME TO GO BACK IN TIME AND STAY THERE. IF I’m going to do anything, anything at all, I might as well do it here, now, and in the future, as long as I’m still breathing and my throat hasn’t closed up and my dick hasn’t fallen off. Let’s try to do the next thing, instead of pretending there was some magnificent previous things. Don’t get me wrong. I love all you all and me. I love the places I’ve been and the people I’ve been there with. THAT’S WHY I’M STILL TRYING TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE STUFF DOWN AND SHARE IT IN SOME KIND OF WAY. THAT’S THE MOTIVATION FOR THIS. THAT AND THE UNUTTERABLE AWESOMENESS OF THE LAKE AND THE WOODS AND THE CITY AND THE LITTLE LIGHTS AND THE STARS AND THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER PEOPLE AND EVERYTHING. But yeah. I’m not dead yet. THe plane hasn’t crashed yet. Let’s see what’s next. Let’s rock back and forth with someone new, in some new room. Let’s do something else scary that we haven’t done yet. Let’s ride a roller coaster we didn’t even notice was in the backyard. Let’s live in the future, Johnny isn’t that so.