Which is to say that things are very bad

Friday 10/4/24

People will defend anything except greatness. Any behavior, any kind of person, any entity.

People want to tear down greatness. The greater the person, the greater they thing, they more they want to tear it down.

People will say or write things to me and I'll always know what they're up to. They'll backload some passive aggressive comment because they can't help themselves because it's me. They'll say ignorant things, too, that if I challenged at all--put them on the spot--they'd falter, fast. They would then despise me for doing this.

So what do I do? It depends on the person, but normally, I just thank them for weighing in or some such. I recognize their projection, their motivations, what they need to try and think about themselves in order to exist.

But chances are if I say some idle pleasantry, that's what's happening, because I don't really say idle pleasantries otherwise. I'm very candid and open. But a person would be unwise to think I'm putting everything out there all the time. For I also play things very close to the vest.

I did something very stupid on Wednesday. I was cutting up a credit card and I got carried away in trying to cut it up so that no one could ever put it back together again, and I cut my right thumb open. Incredibly dumb. No excuse for this carelessness. It wasn't a slice but rather a cut and it was kind of a mess. I got it under the tap and that really stung. Bandaged it up and it bled through the bandage some, but I thought maybe it was okay and I wouldn't need stitches. I've never had stitches and I'm scared of sharp things. Went about the day, ran stairs in the Monument, and then later I was undoing the button on my pants, and without thinking I pressed that thumb into it, and the blood started flowing. Got it to stop, but then this happened again later when I was lifting something. I looked up where I might go to get stitches in case that's what I had to do in the morning, but it didn't seem to bleed more--or not too much more overnight. I got these wound-closing strips at CVS. Put on Neosporin, then the strip, then a Band-Aid wrapped around the thumb, and another Band-Aid above it to keep the strip--which sticks out--in place. Yesterday after more stairs and a shower I changed the bandage, and I can see a little bit of blood on it now. I was really angry at myself. There's no excuse for being that careless. Stupid. Been doing my push-ups with my thumb off the ground. I'm not supposed to be typing--space bar thumb--but I wrote a piece yesterday, started another, worked on "Go and Come Back," and obviously I'm writing this, because what am I going to do, not write?

Speaking of push-ups: I keep see these posts where someone asks, "Can you do fifty push-ups?" presumably meaning at once. This speaks to how people are now. How they just say anything they wish from out of their asses. Because each time, it's comment after comment like "Easy," "I can do 80," and so forth. I'll look at these people and think, "You have more chins than you can do push-ups." I'd bet that eighty percent of American adults between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five cannot do five straight push-ups properly. I bet there's a significant percentage that can't do one. People are these things in their minds that they almost never are in reality. And we encourage this. We encourage fantasy, which is more like delusion. "Fantasy" is a more benign word and can have healthy aspects. Delusion is and does not. "Live your truth!"

Here's an example of delusion. I see this post from a woman who is talking about her therapy session. She has some breakthrough, according to her, and at that precise moment, her therapist says, "Hold on a second," reaches into her bag--the therapist's bag--and pulls out...the woman's novel, which is bookmarked, and opens it to a certain passage. See? Crazy. That's not something that occurred. I click on the woman's bio. They/them. Yep. Cats. Yep. Always the same. Always crazy. Always delusional. This doesn't stop a thousand people from writing, "OMG! Love!" and "I love this for you!!!!" and "That would be my dream come true!!!!" etc. etc. Because they are also crazy and delusional and broken and empty and they always will be. They are the people for whom society lowers itself, because you can't fire the team, you fire the coach, right? We can't get rid of everyone. This is how people are now. So society has to adjust for them. These people go down the ladder. Society moves with them. I move up the ladder. I get further and further away from how everything works, from what is rewarded, and when someone looks up and sees me, I am hated more and more. I don't know how to get anywhere at all when that is the case.

Yesterday I said to someone that I almost look at my life now as a matter of palliative care. Managing the time I have left--which could be more than fifty years--the way someone manages their final months. How to get through them? I also said that life for me is a nightmare that ends when I wake up into death.

Which is to say that things are very bad.

I had a very unpleasant experience the other day, in one regard, but that was the salient regard. Someone with whom I shared "The Bird" wrote me to say that they finally read it. There are only a few people who get to see any of these things, discounting the excerpts that appear in this journal. In other words, there are only a few people who get to see these works in full because of what the publishing people are doing as a result of that work being so far superior to anything produced in their incestuous system.

So, this person read "The Bird." Then they read it ten more times. Then they shared it with their kids. Then one of their kids read it aloud to the rest of the family. Then both the kids took the story to school to show everyone. Then everyone at school--the kids, the teachers--loved the story and were talking about the story. This person writes me to say that it's more than a masterpiece. That there's never been anything like it. That there's almost no single thing you can even call it. It's a story that's more than a story. You could call it a poem. A gift. A song. The word, he said, that everyone was using, was "magical."

When I wrote this work--and this is part of the reason why I worked on it for four months--I thought to myself, "You may really have something here." I thought of things like Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go! Things people share, that are always there. And I really felt like this was so much more than that. I thought about "Hey Jude," how it was coming out of seemingly every radio for a while after it was released. It was in the air. But just for a time.

And I thought that this could be around for all-time. I looked at it like it was humanity's heirloom. You give an heirloom to someone you love. But what if there was this thing that everyone--not literally, but a lot of people--was giving to everyone? I knew that this story would blow the mind and fire the heart of a seven-year-old girl or a wise eighty-year-old man. I knew I had something big. Something perfect. Or it would be. So I kept working to get it perfect. It's 433 words. That's it. But there's no "That's it" about it. But even if you want to play the whole "People have such short attention spans" card--which I'm going to have to reverse or prove the exception to with my work because of what my work is and how it functions--you can read it in a couple minutes. But then you'd read it again because you wanted to and take longer, savoring it as you went. And again. And so forth.

The thing about a bird is they're the animal we see the most. We see birds so often that we normally don't even note that we're seeing them. The way the story works is that everything that is said about a bird--the bird--is scientifically correct. Or technically correct. Liberties aren't taken. But it's the way things are put in the language. Anyone who reads this--or has it read to them--starts to think about all they're seeing without really seeing it. And that includes themselves. The end is just...it's perfect. It's like ultimate payoff.

It's also an education for all of humanity in 433 words.

The reason this depresses me is that there are a billion people who could love this. Right now. This thing that would never go away, would always be loved and shared. People would look forward to sharing it. People would say, "Read it again!" And it just sits here with me because the people of this system hate me like they do. They're also not equipped to handle something that people could actually love. With no demographical limitations. They're not set up for that. And this story--like everything I write--is like nothing else that's ever been written by anyone and never will be. They don't know what to do with that. They need bad works like other bad works.

You'll see some agent go on Threads. She'll be a total moron. Not a serious adult. But she wants to strut about as this "expert" fielding questions from these broken people with "dreams." "I'll be online from two to four to answer your publishing questions!" We see how bad all of the work is out there. But that agent will post, "I spent all day Sunday reading queries! OMG!!!!! There are so many brilliant writers out there!!!!! Hashtag Super Grateful!"

I could coat myself in puke. Thousands of agents exactly like this woman.

This agent will say what she's looking for. Half a million books come out each year. There are no readers. There are no readers for these awful, awful books. They're all awful. The agent will say that she's looking for "Cozy romance mysteries set in the winter at cute bed and breakfasts in rural spots with pine trees such as..." Then she lists four or five books that are exactly that.

She'll go into a few more things she's looking for, and it will be that specific, that prescriptive. "Romantasies with talking owls and twins." I'm not exaggerating. And not only is all of it so stupid, but she wants it to be like these other stupid books that had these very specific things. Very specific insipid things.

What is the market for that? There's no market. She's just out there playing this game. Enacting her own fantasy. Her own delusions. Trying to feel important. With these boobs and slobs hanging on her word word as this "expert."

And trust me: This is what she really lives for. This is what it's all about for this agent.

I go and look at her page. Its cat memes. I look at who she represents. It's a woman who looks just like her, also with cat memes.

Let's say you had this carbon copy of a ridiculous book that all of these other people had done. You're not going to sell four copies. This agent has to know this. As crazy as she is. But you see, it's not about business. This is never about business. It's about indulging one's delusions.

What do you think would happen if I wrote that agent, which I would never do at this juncture, because I know all of those people for what they are and, more to the point, there isn't an agent qualified to represent me. What if I said, but in a proper, polite, detailed, professional letter, "Here's who I am, this is what I do, I just want to sell books, we can do this, we can do that, we can do this novel, this Beatles book, this memoir, a sports book." And on and on. All my fronts. Whatever you want, lady. All of these people do one very niche thing poorly. You have someone who does everything better than anyone else does any of those things. The person who can talk like no one else can talk. How about radio, podcasts, TV, speaking? Let's earn along all avenues, and wherever you want to begin, let's have at it.

How do you think that would go? You know how it would go. Terribly.

So back to "The Bird." "The Bird" is its own thing, but it's also indicative of what I do from thing to thing, in each work, and across the whole of my work. Especially my fiction. My fiction doesn't really have borders. It's not for this group and not that group.

"The Bird" is the least demographically-limited work that anyone has ever written. I'm going to put it like that. It is the work that potentially appeals and definitely applies to the most demographics, groups, ages. We're talking potential universal appeal. And as someone said to me, "If someone doesn't love this, they're a very black-hearted person, or they're up to something."

But because these things are true--and because I am what I am, and seen for being what I am--there is nothing I can do with this story right now. Or the book it's in. And you would love it. If someone is reading this after the story has come out and was able to be seen by people, they may very well be thinking, "I did love it, and I do, and so does my daughter, and my dad," and so forth.

Do you know what that's like? For all of the hardships of my life right now, this here, something like this, may be the hardest thing of all. And there are so many things here with me that are unlike anything anyone has ever created, that can do so much, mean so much.

So that was just one example from the other day--and it's about the only one I'll have right now--of "The Bird" doing what it can do.