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Their tawny robes drink sunlight
each day as they shuffle the monastery grounds
slowly bleaching the fabric
so the elders’ garb pales like their hair
and the neophytes show darker colors

Their breakfast is blueberries wrapped in a mint leaf
their lunch is a spicy tea
most abstain from dinner once they have ascended
but the neophytes spoon communally from a pot of soup
it’s leeks and pepper and potatoes
an orchard grows nearby
apples swell with juice and fall into the dirt
the passersby are free to take from it
the monks will carve faces and sermons
and whatever crosses their mind into the apple flesh
as meditation
as a way of passing time

the eldest monk has a robe of virgin white
though it started tawny like the rest
and his sleeves are ragged tendrils dragging along the ground
thin white netted veins loosely affixed to one another
his eyes are clouds unblinking
each day he shuffles the monastery grounds
he never speaks
but he takes the long, sharp fingernail of his thumb
and he carves into the flesh of an apple
what he describes into the fruit is different each time
and he never shows anyone
but you can find them in the orchard
turning brown and crawling with ants
rotting into the soil to feed the future apples

a neophyte finds a decomposing apple on the ground
he fixes his dark eyes upon it
finds runic equations he doesn’t understand
he is very hungry
so he takes a bite of it and
vomits

it may be impossible to know the future

of course. why would you know it?
you are working off past knowledge, meeting each passing moment as it comes. This is how time works, right? You experience NOW and keep a catalogue of all the previous NOWs mostly vague and uncategorized inside of your brain, only bookmarking the important and relevant ones.

this is useful as the Animal Man, to have a backlog of prior trial and error to reference when facing whatever the new day brings. If I stick my hand in a fire, it will get hurt and that will be bad. If I dance around really cool and sexily, maybe a pretty lady will let me touch her boobies. Etc. That’s kinda how it goes right

Our powers of prediction seem limited to observation. “A priori” experience is a thing wherein you can use your understanding of systems and patterns to determine the outcome of a thing you have not seen before. This is like that, your brain says to you, so I reckon something similar will happen.

This is abstract thought. Abstraction lies entirely in the future. The mind takes what is, creates an architecture built upon it, and allows you to suppose. When you have an abstract thought, when you plan or wonder or any of that shit, this is your future-seeing farsighted mind disconnecting from the NOW of your animal self and living outside of the stream of time.

Less intelligent animals lack our ability to plan, to remember, to think as we do. They snap from moment to moment. They lack the juice for abstraction, and therefore consciousness.

It’d be tough-sleddin’ for any cowpoke to explain how this dang-ole universe is not mechanistic and deterministic. On a Neil Tyson-simp bent, the base level of reality is molecules and particles and atoms and all those little dudes just bumping off each other, which is mathematically predictable, something that given enough time and computing power you could recreate with perfect accuracy. Some dummies act like quantum physics somehow disrupts this, but probably not, right. like that is just a facet of the measurable that we don’t have the tools to inspect yet. It’s like my ex-wife’s vagina: we ain’t made a caliper big enough yet.

But even if you take a more spiritual bent to the thing, and ignore modern science (which I am happy to do, because I think it’s preposterous that we think now, just now, we have all the right tools and strategies for determining the true nature of the universe. scientific method provided it for us. aren’t you so lucky to live here, right now, wherein we just got it all figured out? unlike any other time in history. those dumbasses) anyway where was i going with this

Oh yeah

Even if you take a more spiritual bent and assume that the universe isn’t mechanistic and deterministic, well then some day, some day, this crazy world will end. And God will take back from us the things that he did lend. And therein, with the closing of the last page of the book there will be a finality, there will be One Complete Copy of Existence. And even if it has not arrived yet, it one day will, and that will be Eternity. And if Eternity truly has no end point, there will be a demarcation between the way things are now and they way they will be, and that would be a significant bookmark in the way things are. The way things are will have gone, so that will have been the end of time.

Please stay with me here, I’m not fuckikng crazy. I’m a few Miller Lites deep and I’m in a groove. That’s different from being insane. Don’t try to get deep into my groove though. That’s just not how I roll.

A lot of people smarter than me have said that human beings are 3D creatures existing in a 4D world. Maybe it’s 13D. I don’t know. We have immediate access and control over three dimensions, height, width, and depth, I think. They tend to place time as the next dimension up, which we also experience too, but just not in a controlling way. We are subject to it. I can move freely in space, but in time, I am just along for the ride.

We are in that 4th dimension though, bro. We’re a pattern that is coherent throughout that world. None of my physical body is the same one I inhabited even 10 years ago. What is this “me”? Our bodily cells die and regrow all the time but there’s this continuity of something, man!

Alan Moore is a great writer and he said something about important moments having a weight in spacetime, that they affect the gravity moving back and forward in the timeline. He said that in 1999, and asked if you could feel something coming. It was probably 9/11 right? That sunk the collective consciousness into itself. I think it’s happening now. I think we’re walking downhill. Maybe good, bad. I don’t know. I feel the gravity.

We don’t know the future. Maybe we don’t allow ourselves to. It might be forbidden. It’s probably a little scary. It’s probably beautiful.

We will all touch eternity just for a moment, right at the scariest part.

they come in from farming and fields
they come in from hunting and hills
they come in from gathering and gardens
they come in when the sun is going away

the sky gives them light each day
so that they may toil and strain and pursue
under her rules
but when they come in
a fire is made

they come in and build a fire and talk to each other about what happened
and in the fire is light and warmth
a tiny child of what the sun gave them
but this fire that they made
is not from the sky, is not for surviving on the earth
this fire is from them, for them
it is for the mind and the soul
it is not for the body but for everything else

when the sun is in the sky
all is bright, stark, and bare
when the sun is gone
all is dark, occluded, and mysterious
the fire, with all of their people ringing it
that is what can be known
they come in and they speak and they find each others’ faces
and it starts to become known

Jesus said
that he was coming back very soon
and that when he did, Heaven would overlay Earth

so why has it taken like 2,000 years? That’s a Long Time! What’s up, Jesus?! Have you been hitting the “snooze” button a little too much?!

Nah, fam. Dude said “The Kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21, for you pedantic nerds)” And a fella by the name of N.T. Wright said a very wise thing: ““Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.” But he was also like, anti-gay or something so maybe he’s not totally awesome but you get what I’m driving at here, right?

The Project that Jesus took up was not one of further mystifying religion and propogating arcane rituals and innate hierarchy. Dude said you have to love everyone, even and especially your enemies, you have to forgive, you have to repent when you have wronged another person. He did not say that you can do whatever you want here on this material plane, and as long as you say you like him, that you’ll get into Heaven. I’m looking at you, Evangelicals. Those dirty Evangelicals love to point to John 14:6, “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” and apparently centralize this verse to mean that you stamp your card to get into Heaven ONLY through believing in Jesus, whatever that means to them. There is no Good Works, there is no inventory of sins vs. good deeds. Any serial killer goes to paradise by simply saying “jesus rules” right before they die.

However, there is a Gnostic lightning bolt of a next line in this book. The Bible.
“If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him,” This line indicates that Jesus is anticipating the posers, the hangers-on, who take the prior line and run with it. They trash the world and their life like it’s a cheap hotel room and they paid for it with a prepaid debit card that only has like $119 on it anyway. This line implies there is a fake way to know him. That’s what these bible-thumper anti-abortion fucks do. Falsely know Christ. It is more of a lifestyle brand to them than it is a religion.

The Kingdom of God is within you, little dog. Heaven is a choice that we have to collectively make. We could have a world where love for one another is given the top priority, but we do not. We feel like resources are scarce, we feel like we have to be impressive, we get way too tied up in the demiurgical material plane, little dog. This physical world fucking sucks, first of all, write that down. But if you have a quiet moment here or there, you get uncomfortable. Drown it out with music or videos or whatever. Noise. Noise, baby! Buy something! Treat yourself! Capitalism!

It is a truly Satanic idea that you are the only sentience that exists. So many people live with this mindset. The universe exists purely within my own perception, and it’s about a 5 foot circle around my head. Capitalism will do that. Made to feel vacuous and inferior, right from the jump. You must run this race, you must accumulate.

Anyway, perseverate in a place of nature sometimes. Let your head drift to whatever thoughts it might. You may see things, small and mysterious, and they’ll extrapolate out into very large and tearfully beautiful ideas. Know that Christ was trying to transplant Heaven onto Earth. Wish to be calm and kind. When you finally punch out, a young person picks up your shift. Make it easier for them. It can be Known. It just takes some effort.

water strider

i was a boy
i had a net
to catch butterflies and other bugs
and i wandered into the swamp
down by the creek
and I stood on the moss and shoal
and mushrooms
looking at these water striders
skating over the surface tension
of the water like
it was always their way
refracting the light in little impressions
underneath their feet

and I leaned over too far and I fell
into the creek
for a second i was panicked in the water
shallow and dirty
and I stood up alarmed
and agitated
and I took my little net and held it up
in the air
when a child wants attention, you hold your arm up
as to be called on
as to reach an adult’s eyeline
Standing sopping wet in that creek,
I stood and raised the buttefly net
and asked for an adult to come make it right
and I knew it wouldn’t happen
I was the only person here
And after a second of embarassment
I raised my leg and stepped onto that loamy shore
And the water striders rode the ripples
as I arose a new person
without that safety of childhood
muddy and wet legs
striding into a new world

I had to solve my own problems
and the butterfly net leaked prismatic
bubbles down into the soft soil
Water striders dashed over sacred water
and a baptism was realized.

I haven’t been afraid since

Greetings,

I am Professor Lucas Bonehard, PhD. I hold many degrees in mathematics and physics, and have had the honor of solving a few “unsolvable” equations in my time. That being said, I still furrow my brow a bit at calculating exactly how much to tip my barista when I make the occasional foray to Starbucks. My attempt at humor. Please forgive me.

I find that people from other walks of life aren’t quite sure what to make of me when I explain my livelihood to them. Many of them will sort of rock back a bit in their stance, sort of feigning being impressed that I’m accomplished in the “hardest” of the sciences, as it were. And then, to sort of bridge the gap, they will relay to me that they are terrible at maths, and that they were too dim to find any of it engaging, and so on and so forth. They associate maths with chalkboards and a droning instructor and a sort of basic lack of humanity.

This, I feel, is one of the great injustices of our time and a fundamental failing of the Western education system. I feel very strongly about this. Maths is not boring. Maths is not some sort of dull, intellectual wankery. Our models of conveying the grandeur and very real application of maths are so wrong-headed, so basically wrong, that I feel I must make a strident declaration to the exact opposite. I will stand like Martin Luther, on Plymouth Rock, and plant the Rhodesian flag in honor of Muhammad about this.

In numbers, there is all of reality. Philosophers of all stripes ponder “Was maths invented or discovered?” I couldn’t give a damn less. The fact is: numbers are here now, and they are not dry, abstract constructs. They are viable, living, knowable personalities, and once you understand this, the schema for knowing it all is unlocked. Don’t believe me? It’s a bold claim, I acknowledge. However, try to disprove this analysis. Here are some fundamental truths about numbers.

82: This number is very chill. 82 doesn’t have big plans, doesn’t imagine itself to be anything special. However, divisible by a lot of other factors, gets along with everybody. 82 is living in a pretty nice apartment, isn’t looking to upgrade, and drives a ten year old car. You can stop on by anytime, and 82 offers you a beer and has a funny story to tell you.

40: Bit of an authoritarian, but for no good reason. Very formal, rigid. Wants everybody on time and gets pissy when they are not. But you can see through it. 40 “dresses not for the job they have, but the one they want” even at like, informal events. 40 wants to seem like they have some big project they are working on, so they’ll hint at it to you in conversation, but if you call them on it and start asking them about it, they drop it completely.

9: 9 is fucking awesome dude. Just has a really infectious vibe. Somebody who when they show up, everybody goes “Hey 9!” But doesn’t get an ego about it. 9 looks you in the eye and talks to you like you’re the only person in the room, but then they’ll just grab a guitar and start noodling some awesome Jimi Hendrix type shit in the next moment. We should hang out with 9 more.

111: Ohjesusfuck! What the fuck is that?! Ah! Is that some fucking insect or something? What the fuck?! This like, utilitarian brain that is never tired and also completely devoid of desire. Just a completely fucking evil-ah fuck, I can’t look at it anymore. Get it the fuck out of here.

6: Precocious, but a bit much. 6 is a hoot at first blush, but ends up being exhausting. Overstays it’s welcome, and you think like “Man, 6 is extroverted, but not social.”

424: A sagely number. Wise and contemplative. 424 will take a long time to speak, but when it does, it’s a very interesting story. It’s something you’ve never done, but you can relate to it. 424 may be a bit long in the tooth, but it’s got wisdom.

38: In a red dress at the end of the bar. The cloth flows around her curves. She’s smokin’ a cigarette out of one of those cigarette holders, 38 with all the body a man wants exactly where he wants it. I’m trying to hold it together but she sees me and her gloved hand beckons me over. Hubba hubba, I thinks. I follow the smoke trail of her cigarette over to her like I’m on tracks and she says to me “If a football team scores five touchdowns and makes all their extra points and also one field goal, that’s me baby!” And I loudly fart and ruin everything. But 38, if you are reading this, you are dynamite. A true queen of the neon.

4: Pretty good number. Hard worker. Keeps his nose to the grindstone. A family man. Likes to follow a routine. You’d never know that he was into pegging.

521: A complete mess. Window blinds in a trailer park, covered in cobwebs. This is just not the type of thing we want to contemplate. Like a very, very negative hippy colony. I think I hear gunfire…

8: A very bouncy number. Boing! A big piggy with a squishy belly just bounced up and said “BOING!”

5003: A free spirit. One of the last ones, really. An open road and a dream is all 5003 needs. Has a daughter that he cares for deeply, but Mom is such an obstacle. He keeps a polaroid of her taped to the side mirror of his hog as he drives that salt desert future. Heavy metal music seems to echo over the canyons as he ventures into the dark awake and unafraid.

If’n a man’s lucky, he’ll live the better part of a century. The bitch of the thing is, though, that he’ll spend the latter half wishin’ he was in the first half. Them later decades have eyes for the early ones. Just how folks are built, I s’pose.

Calls to mind my great granpappy. Not sure why. I suppose his life of ramblin’, wheelin’ and dealin’, and the general unknowin’ of things seems appealing. The hell of livin’ now is that you can find out any fact, but it don’t make you know anything. We got the bits ‘n pieces, but it’s too scattered somehow.

My great granpappy was named Flood Mud Johnson. Can’t find his Christian name, s’far as I’ve looked. Flood Mud. Ain’t that some shit. Reckon he was probably called Matthew or Luke or some Christian name. Not Flood Mud. But I guess he took that name and it suited him. Born in 1887, died in 1923. Flood Mud was a drifter. Kept ramblin’ from town to town, looking for work or women or whatever the night could provide. He’d guess your birthday for a biscuit. Won a lot of biscuits that way. Never could figure how he knew a birthday just from lookin’ at a man…

Flood Mud kept a length of twine for a belt and a clay jug slung over his shoulder. “Just fill the jug with whiskey,” he said, “And I’ll be the hardest damn worker you’ve ever had.” That’s a family trait. I’d take my pay in whiskey if’n I had the chance. Instead, I’ve got a time card and a percentage taken from my check for miscellaneous otherdoings.

Sleepin’ in hollowed out trees, taking a bath in a lake. Flood Mud could whistle like an angel. He’d dance on bartops and woo the women with his sapphire eyes. He stunk to high heaven, but everybody did in those days. A drifter with mischevious mirth in his soul.

Flood Mud died when he got bit by a copperhead hitchin’ in New Mexico. He crawled to a cactus and bit into it and suckled it’s tough green teats like they were his newborn instincts. The venom clotted his blood and closed the book on a hard-workin’ hobo.

Sometimes the morning has a charge. Flood Mud wakes to a favorable sunrise, and those sapphires spark at the edges. He’s alive. Today’s going to be a good day.

Mitch Paulson: Welcome, football fans, to the 2012 GSFL Championship game, presented this fine Tuesday afternoon by Jiffy Lube. A raucous crowd of about 318 people have sparsely packed the bleachers here for what is sure to be a legendary confrontation between two of the best teams our league has ever produced. Your analysis, Jerry?
Jerry Joof: Well absolutely, Mitch, and I want to just first give a shoutout to the grounds crew here in Roswell. Hats off to these guys. A number of local high schoolers seemed to have had a bonfire party here last night, they burned a huge hole into the grass right at the 50 yard line, but other than it being charred black earth over about a quarter of the midfield line, you can barely notice, so hats off to those guys. And what a matchup we have today, I’m looking forward to calling this game.
Mitch Paulson: Indeed, the turf here is always a factor, mostly being loose piles of grass and straw spread over a desert. We turn now to the opening kickoff.
Jerry Joof: And this is a little bit confusing right? Because the Roswell Visitors are hosting the game, so they’re the home team. But the visitors are the Tucson Roadrunners. So if I say it’s the visitors’ ball, you might think I’m talking about Tucson, but I might actually mean the home team, the Roswell Visitors, so you just have to pay attention to the game.
Mitch Paulson: I’m already regretting drinking with you before the game, Jerry. High, booming kick and that’ll just bounce out of the back of the endzone. The Roadrunners offense gets to work, they are the visiting team, okay? Yeah. Against the Visitors defense. Christ, where’s that bottle? First and ten.

=======

Mitch Paulson: 3rd and 9, feels like a big play already in this one. Dontrell Fibonnaci, changing the play at the line. Saw something he didn’t like. There’s the snap and he trips and falls onto his back.
Jerry Joof: Uh-oohh…
Mitch Paulson: His own lineman stepped back, and I think-
Jerry Joof: Yep. His right guard stepped back off the snap and stepped onto his foot.
Mitch Paulson: You can see here-
Jerry Joof: Right. Right guard pops back off the snap, and his left foot just pinches Dontrell’s right onto the ground when he’s trying to drop back.
Mitch Paulson: Oh, and now when he’s trying to stand up, his pants-
Jerry Joof: Yes, the ankle of his pants is still pinned under his guard!
Mitch Paulson: His pants have just been pulled down by the waist. Pressure down around his ankle, just…oh my…
Jerry Joof: Yeah, and he doesn’t seem to notice.
Mitch Paulson: Wow.
Jerry Joof: Y’know, when the adrenaline is pumping in a championship game-
Mitch Paulson: His pants are around his ankles and everybody can see his penis. I mean, just incredible-
Jerry Joof: And it’s big!
Mitch Paulson: It is! Look at that thing!
Jerry Joof: Sideline trainers, trying to come onto the field to get his pants in order-
Mitch Paulson: He’s just walking around with a huge dong hanging out!
Jerry Joof: Well, would you expect anything else? Oh, there we go, the trainers are tucking it back in. Just confirms what we’ve all been thinking. Confidence, poise. I mean look at that thing. Here’s the replay. About as big as my forearm, I’m not even going to lie…
Mitch Paulson: 4th and 14 and the punter is jogging out onto the field.
=======

Mitch Paulson: 3rd and Goal, obviously a huge play in this contest as we near halftime.
Jerry Joof: Watch for them to hand it to the fullback, Alligator Micheals. He’s a goal-line specialist for them, he’s stout and compact, he-
Mitch Paulson: Oh and suddenly there’s a timeout.
Jerry Joof: Yep, you saw that too, right?
Mitch Paulson: Indeed I did, the ball was lined up on a fire ant mound, and the fire ants came out and started biting the center’s hand.
Jerry Joof: Exactly, and when you’ve got invasive insects mauling your snapping hand, you’re gonna want to call a timeout.
Mitch Paulson: You can see the ants climbing his forearm here on the replay, and I pretended like I was going to do dry January but with my life being what it is, I don’t think anyone will begrudge me for pounding this bottle of Fireball. 4th and Goal, and the field goal unit comes out…
=======

Mitch Paulson: 15 to 9 here, in the waning seconds of regulation, in what will surely be the end of my life if it –
Jerry Joof: All field goals today, but the Roadrunners, the visitors, are sniffing at the coochie of the Visitors’ defense.
Mitch Paulson: A touchdown and an extra point would end this, and hopefully, sever my mortal coil to this world. The Roadrunners are showing pistol formation.
Jerry Joof: Watch out for the play-action here, Dong-Bik Koon is an underrated tight end, and he’s on the outside-
Mitch Paulson: Ball is snapped, all day to throw, he’s looking, rolling right, and then he, um…
Jerry Joof: What just happened there?
Mitch Paulson: Well we’re gonna see it on the replay. Unorthodox, for sure.
Jerry Joof: Okay, so he’s running back to his right. Quarterbacks love to roll right because most of them are right-handed, right? So he moves over there and then just-
Mitch Paulson: He crammed the ball up his ass.
Jerry Joof: He did! He did a pump fake, watch this pump fake, boom! Made the middle linebacker jump and then just stuffed the ball into his pants, up his own ass, and walked rigidly into the endzone. Talk about a disappearing act! That might be the greatest play I have ever seen in my life. He’s Houdini out there!
Mitch Paulson: They’re reviewing it now, but his arm pumps out to fake a throw, and then. Wow, he subtly crams that football up his own asshole and then just walks into the endzone. Unreal!
Jerry Joof: You wanna talk about unorthodox ways to win a championship!? Is there anybody who would want it more than that?
Mitch Paulson: No. Amazing.
Jerry Joof: Well there you have it. Tim Tebow just won the championship with the Tucson Roadrunners.
Mitch Paulson: I am going to get so drunk tonight.
Jerry Joof: Same, bro. Same.
Mitch Paulson: I love you.
Jerry Joof: …okay.

Maisie knelt before the grave of her father. She murmured half-prayers, half-songs into her hands. Her eyes drifted between the ground and his grave marker, a cairn of grey stones with a bluish hue. They were the color of dusk after a hard rain, she thought. She whispered into her hands rhythmically, praising the gods of the harvest, the gods of the forest, and all the gods as she recalled their names. Her shoulders and arms bounced with her recitation of the rites she knew. Her breath escaped the spaces in her fingers in filigree plume. She wasn’t sure if she was being too loud or too quiet.

Our people have recited these hymns since the world was born, she knew. Maisie felt the wet grass on her knees. We sing and speak to the gods. This is as much life as anything.

She finished reciting the songs and prayers she knew and then she stood up. She turned to leave, and then looked back. The pile of stones looked like his eyes, she realized. Hot salt tears welled in hers. She felt like she should say goodbye, but to what? Turning and walking away from a grave is strange, always.

So Maisie walked, breathing slowing. Short-breath crying gradually gave away. She tasted the air and felt the enormity of the moment trickle back down into her like rain finding a puddle. Everything is going to be fine. It can only ever be fine. If it can’t, I won’t be here.

Maisie reached the top of a great green hill in the mist, and at the bottom was a silhouette. Not a black figure on the landscape, a negative space where something else should be. A humanoid figure cut out of the landscape.

Somehow she met it. She felt like her head was tilted back, and as she approached a curtain of grey and blue seemed to envelop her vision. A squealing, boiling noise came from somewhere.

“Maisie,” it said, voice like a hive of bees. ” Do you remember me?”

“No,” she lied.

” Don’t lie. You do,”

Her head was thrumming. She gritted her teeth and pinched her eyes open

The void said

” You are only a copy,”

his blaspheme started: ” You do not exist. You are an amalgamation of everything that other people think of you. Your dearest friends, your lovers, your blood relatives all have different interpretations of who you are. Whatever you are, inside your head, is not within anybody else’s head. Nobody thinks about you as much as you. Whatever your own conception of yourself, it does not overlap with whatever anyone else thinks of you. So what are you?”

Maisie turned her head and started to answer, ” Well everybody knows-“

The void screeched a sound like a new universe being born: “You’re within your own mind again!” He bellowed a grey and blue smoke into the heavens that gave neither heat nor light but still scorched the skin, but that’s to be expected of a void creature, so anyway,

” Whatever you are exists only within the moments where others perceive you,”

Maisie sat down and began singing those hymns again.
and for a few moments her voice was so sweet
that a man could understand
That we’re not alone
we’re not the One looking for everything
we’re a piece of all of it
So beautiful, so dancing with it

Maisie says “Well, hey. You dont’ have to be a dick about it,”

Void looks at me, I say: Here I stand, I can do no other

I’ve always had an affection for New Year’s Eve
It’s a holiday about introspection and reflection
Taking into account the passage of time
and as such, necessarily, death
Thinking about what happened, where you are, what’s going to be
Drinking crisp, bubbling champagne and watching a clock assiduously
like you’re trying a new recipe
but the recipe is your mortal coil upon this earth
or something

The major holidays are touchstones upon the basest human emotions and hangups and sources of happiness

Valentine’s Day is for love and relationships, being close to someone and touching their butt and stuff
(I mean, it’d ideally be more about appreciation of them as a person but consumerism tends to skew it toward some horny dimension or something, anyway)

The Fourth of July is that warlike, Our People sort of instinct. A tribalism wherein we are great as a people. It’s always hot for this one. Makes a person immediate, snappy. Our tribe rules. Look, we’re blowing shit up in the sky. We could turn it on you if we wanted. A very strength and masculine-type festival.

Halloween is a cool one because it celebrates mystery. It is about inviting fear. It comes at a time of year when the nights are getting longer, the green grass is dying, the world seems to be shutting down, and you also disguise yourself. You become a different creature to stalk the night in search of Treats. This is true as a child or as a horny college student. The nights are deeper, darker, colder. You are going to venture into it with fantastical armor. Unafraid of the night, but it’s also fun to scare yourself sometimes.

Thanksgiving often gets overlooked. I like it a lot. The month of November fucking sucks, greasy grey-brown doldrums. It could hail, or snow, or just be grey skies and windy. But Thanksgiving is there to remind us that a bounty still sits in storage. We have prepared for this winter. We gorge on food and doze on couches to football. It’s a sedative sort of holiday. I know the sun is dying on the vine. Eat and sleep, mammal. We’re getting through this.

Christmas has been fucking cornholed by capitalism, but I think I get the gist of it. The days always start getting longer right around Christmas. Our ancestors and our descendants will both watch where the sun sets and start celebrating when it goes back the other way, into longer days. A gift-giving holiday makes sense. A stressful, artificial need for some sort of love-expressed-through-consumerism is horse shit.

And then in the wake of the bombastic, in-your-face marketing of Christmas, comes little humble New Year’s Eve. Everyone’s looking at their mostly dead Christmas tree, catching scotch-tape and wrapper bits on their socks, hungover. The week of wishing that we did enough.

A somber song begins rumbling up. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? The year is old and succumbing to that slipstream that is the ever widening past. New tombstones rise from the loamy soil into your head and heart each year. The song of your own life might move into a different chord, you might find something new in the future. The clock on the wall raises that second, minute, hour hand to the sky. You’re counting down but you almost don’t believe you’re really here.

Happy new year!

With a long drink, and a look into your friends’ eyes. Here we are in the future. I’m so glad I made it here with you.