070120 then you don’t come out of your room hardly at all today except to go to the park, and basically don’t talk to anyone, and cel says “hi” right to you when you get back and you ignore her, and i just know this is another of your little grudge fest slo-mo temper tantrums but if I were to press you on it it would almost certainly turn out to be “about” something else, and so attention to it would be diverted once again. Dude I’m sorry if you ever read this for whatever reason but you STRESS ME OUT SO FUCKING MUCH when you get like this. I guess if it goes on another day I’ll ask you about it. ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (to quote Mermista) Then the next phase is the learned helplessness phase. You text me to ask me to put a pizza in the oven for you, but I’m not by my phone cuz we’re watching a movie (yes, we asked you to join and you said no), but instead of trying again or asking me in person, you come down a half hour later looking all doleful and murmur something about how I didn’t do it for you, and I tell you sorry I wasn’t by my phone but there’s pizzas in there and you can have one—and I mean come on, get real, it’s the easiest goddamn thing in the world to do and you KNOW you are fully capable but you just eat some crackers or something and go back upstairs for the rest of the night, and either I’m completely deluded or else this is all part of the plan to make me feel bad, part of the retaliation. so but and here’s the thing: if I expect you to be a 17-(almost-18)-year-old which has different rules than someone who is a 10-year-old, then whether or not you are always successful at that, I still have to also act like a—well, let’s just say an adult. A “grown-ass man” as the kids say—a parent, which means that I don’t hate you for all of this nonsense, even though it is SUUUUUUUUCH a fucking draaaaaaaaaag—no, I’m going to act my age and I love you, and so I’ll figure out some way (or just give it time) to smooth it over, reconnect, talk, and/or move on. OK but before I start writing my own hagiography here, let’s just acknowledge that i may be framing this wrong: remember, “she always comes up with some other thing to change the subject after she’s acted like a goddamn baby” could look on the surface all but indistinguishable from “she’s more likely to react like a goddamn baby when there actually was something else going on in the first place.” Either way, I get it, compassion is in order. Totally. At the same time, I’m really fucking sick of the near-constant vibe of her resentment that I don’t agree with her about what a horrible person Cecilia supposedly is. If she would/could ever take the time to actually sit down with her and have a real conversation, she would have to be blind not to see someone who is thoughtful, compassionate, loving, generous. It frustrates me that she can’t or won’t see that, and I’m not going to just go along with that poisoned perspective. 070220 Think about it. How is this not an even bigger deal than people are making it sound like: “Team Trump” asks EVERYONE TO STAND BEHIND ANTIFA. Got that? We, Americans, are supposed to OPPOSE ANTI-fascism. OK. Just wanted to check in and see what reality we’re living in. How can these supposedly “American” white suburban fuckheads not see that they’re siding with Hitler? Either a wave of hideous evil has swept the country in recent years, or it’s been there all along. I came away from history classes in HS thinking “the world” was pretty much unanimous about Hitler and WWII but maybe history classes lied? Maybe we were never so united, maybe the golden age was never untarnished? I mean, out of everything, and believe me there’s plenty of things, I think this is honestly the one I’m most flabbergasted about. These HAVE to be the same people whose fathers, grandfathers, mothers, grandmothers all fought and DIED in opposition to what they’re blithely swallowing now. I truly just don’t get it. Is being a wealthy white suburban fuckface really that fucking great, that it’s worth having no social conscience AT ALL? 070420 instead of berating myself for being a fake intellectual, how about just embrace it, and internally and externally accept that it’s a game? Like how Ruth says you used to play games like Monopoly. Like that Chris guy at Mixed Company—how the group that you had swiftly become a part of kinda despised him, not because he was fake but because he wasn’t very good at faking. Like this. Look, I get it, I’m 50 years old, according to Dorothea I’m a failure because I never kept going, I always stopped (but then again she apparently had fascist sympathies so do we really need to listen to her?), but honestly, feeling like a failure doesn’t do me or my kids or my students or my neighbors much good, so I might as well feel like something else. If that means I have to pretend to be something else, so be it. On the other hand, you could embrace being a failure, and see how that plays out. Does it give you a certain kind of freedom? Either way, it’s ridiculous to pretend that lack of connectivity is an epiphany at this point. There may have been a time (say, my mid–late twenties) when “loneliness” was an asset, but that is no longer the case. I’m literally dying over here, and if it weren’t for the girls I would probably already basically be dead (or else I would have gone out and done something because of not having to be a parent, but whatever). I need some people. I need a connection. A community. A plain old group. Yes, it’s hard to get that now, but the alternative is too pathetic to contemplate. The alternative is giving up, for real, on virtually everything. My present solitude isn’t hermitlike enough to be virtuous; it’s not heirophantic or meditative. It’s just pathetic. OK, all that shit that happened happened. Great. Now what? What’s left? You’re either dead yet or you’re not. Pick one. 070620 “From the moment we acknowledge historical necessity to be something in the nature of a plague, we shall stop shedding tears over the nature of its victims.” (The Captive Mind, p. 232) It’s not “botched”—the response to the virus—they’re not incompetent—it’s intentional. They’re killing us off on purpose. It’s all part of the plan. Now what? 071520 look, i just want to be invincible and immortal. we all do. or, well, maybe not *all,* but a certain class of us definitely, predictably do. the thing is, the portrait of ourselves we usually get is so cartoonish, so obvious, that we fail to recognize ourselves. if we don’t have a magic caterpiller talking into our ear and telling us how to steal the sunforge power and kill the dragon queen, then we’re all like, who me? i’m just a normal guy. what are you talking about? but the thing is, you don’t have to be an evil pretender to the throne to be enthralled by dark magic. you can just be a normal guy trying desperately to live forever, just like any other schmuck. so maybe the first step is to forgive yourself. and then maybe you have to apologize and suck it up and get on the right side of things. and somewhere in there you have to stop spending all your money on stupid shit that just keeps your daydreams puffed up, keeps you thinking that the *next* purchase, yes, that’s the one, whether it’s a thousand dollars or nineteen ninety nine, that *next* little thing is going to be the thing that takes you over the edge and brings you that perfect power, that flower flow, that serene machine of envy that means you’ll never have to touch another human being ever again, and then— your dreams can precipitate back down into your body 071920 how is “a history book of all the least important things” different from just zooming in really far? Some things have a certain kind of element to them that only gets fun when you start getting good at the thing. So in order for some of us to get to that point, there has to be something *else* fun about it in the awkward, tedious, or painful beginning stages. When that other thing occurs naturally, that’s fun. Is there a way to find such an other thing that would otherwise be hiding? to cultivate it, nurture it? Coax it out? For yourself or for others? Or is the nature of serendipity (as of placebo) that it cannot be intentional? If you don’t give your characters any flaws, their virtues won’t be of any use (have anything to do) Don’t worry about losing your audience—people with no doubts don’t read books anyway. Why should they? They’ve already got it all figured out. 072320 > 17 30-second images of the comet added up by @cielodecanarias, completely photobombed by @elonmusk's #Starlink satellites.... Yes it was a cool tweet and picture, but the “elonmusk’s satellites” thing is what’s really arresting... To think that one human can literally have satellites that are zipping around in orbit, right now, while most other humans are picking their noses trying to figure out how to put an emoji in the chat in Zoom. Why? It’s because everything is going toward the tyrrany of the individual. That’s I think what government was supposed to be—a way of making more stuff collaborative. A way of constructing a “we” that virtually anyone can be proud to be a part of and contribute to. But now we’re moving farther and farther towards a collosal clash of singularities in the form of the billionaires’ cabal. Why? What can be done about it? Is it already too late? But then again you could argue that Starlink IS for everyone, cuz it aims to provide internet access. Yeah OK but why do the individuals now get to be in charge of common goods like internet and space exploration? Is that really new or is it just a return to Columbus and West VA Company and shit like that? “Astronomers claim that the number of visible satellites will outnumber visible stars and that their brightness in both optical and radio wavelengths will severely impact scientific observations” says Wikipedia. Who gets to decide what’s more important and how can someone who stands to get even more insanely hyper-rich be trusted to make the best decisions? “Because the Starlink satellites can autonomously change their orbits, observations cannot be scheduled to avoid them.” -- again, more and more is out of the hands of humans. Plausible deniability is turning into involuntary species-wide abdication. People argue about whether rich people are meritorious or just lucky, but it kind of doesn’t matter. Either way, you gotta decide who to trust, and the smaller the number of people to choose from the more prickly that problem becomes. Just cuz someone is smart doesn’t mean they’re going to choose the best path for the whole world every time—no more than we can say a dispassionate AI will always make the best choices, even if we put into it all the data in the world and try our best to ask it the best most humane questions. It still might--WILL--fuck it up, often in horrific, nightmarish, and/or hilarious ways. Just ask Janelle Shane. 072420 “Can I go to the park” at fucking midnight. Right, if skating around by herself is really what she’s doing. I wish she gave a shit about the people she lives with, even if it’s only for another month. And is it? She can’t be trusted not to act like a cornered animal. And yet, I’m trusting her with a cosigned lease. I just have this feeling that I’m going to get burned because it’s hard to be mean to her. But let me tell you, once something breaks, it’s broken. It won’t be hard to be mean anymore—if it comes to that. I hope I’m wrong. But I’m usually not. doing damage control in the system i’m complicit in. also hope to god millie doesn’t have covid also why are my eyes puffy Hope to god Megan can pull this off If given a different way to deal with it, would this person be willing to try? If yes or I don’t know, then Find a different way. If no then Are you sure? (With subroutines full of ideas for that) If no then go to step 1. If yes then OK I trust you, you’re the professional. > the rosy colours of an idealised nostalgic past \<https://aeon.co/essays/nostalgia-doesnt-need-real-memories-an-imagined-past-works-as-well\> That’s what gets you stuck trying to recreate what you did with words and space and time before; you can’t go back and that sucks and is scary but you can at least try to go somewhere else—not by sinking into nostalgia though—at least not all the way in. See also Facebook and stuff like that—times you’ve reconnected with people from back then based on the rich sweet loamy words from back then, and it was titillating for a while but ultimately no longer useful after you delivered the one memory or resolved the one kernel that had been digging into your heart’s heel What is it if it isn’t mind blowing but just unexpectedly familiar? When it puts words to something you’ve been mulling over for years—maybe all your life? It almost feels more like an implosion than an explosion; either way there’s a great pressure simultaneously released and introduced 073020 when megan gets depressed she gets withdrawn, short, she only answers in monsyllables, there’s very little consideration of anyone else, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with us except she still complains about shit we do. in short, she becomes extremely selfish and it’s VERY HARD not to take it personally. Which is all a big enough deal on its own, it eats away at me, but NOW? RIGHT NOW, WHEN I’m ABOUT TO PUT MY FINANCES AND MY CREDIT ON THE LINE SO SHE CAN MOVE OUT? RIGHT *NOW* IS WHEN SHE’S GOING TO BE NONCOMITTAL AND UNMOTIVATED AND NONCOMMUNICATIVE??? FUCK When do I get to relax a little with regard to this? When is she going to be “able to be on her own”? And how are we going to know, and how are we going to get to that point without a lot of anger and possibly catastrophe? 073120 Shit I’m worried about today - Megan (independence, health/safety, money, vector for virus) - Job/career (changes, uncertainty, politics, own performance/distinction, motivation, jealousy, need a backup plan but what) - Millie (school, health, happiness in general, feeling like I’ve let her down, that pellet gun) - Lib and cel (ache of them being little quickly passing, fishing rods) - Me (lonely, stressed, still struggle with spending to try to fill the holes, general sense of having lost or missed or left behind something important, the overwhelming pathos of everything) - My failure/inability to be a mother - Mom (Don) - The piano needs tuning but Megan’s leaving anyway - And then it just trickles into all the ridiculous menagerie of petty shit; saddle sores, how much iOS sucks, heartburn, etc - America - Oh yeah, and at any time, you could just drop from the virus