i can't take myself or what i do very seriously. it would be inconsiderate to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
usually first drafts are poor. this is why i jump to the final one right away.
i don't know if this is well known or not, but i've discovered at some point that i could pray within a nightmare and the diabolic stuff goes away or i wake up. usually the latter.
yes it's all connected, and sometimes what you must do is sever.
how do you save what cannot be saved. people ask this question, but put it in such elevated and grandiose terms, so they miss the absurdity. which is why it's important to speak plainly. you catch nonsense very easily and can move on to real questions. it helps a lot to think of real life, physical examples. how do i save this rotten piece of flesh? easy, you don't. throw it in the compost bin, or dig a hole and bury it. next. speaking of which, i need to dig a hole today (the bin is out of the question cause animals will get to it). not gonna try and make soup with it, that's for sure. classical metaphysics, however, is precisely such a suggestion. no wonder it tastes off.
when birth becomes a death wish, the carpenter won't multiply the fish
if it wasn't illegal i would speak even more plainly. but it isn't, and this means something. there are spiritual lessons from this. i don't think ignoring it makes it go away, regardless of nuances that always exist for everything.
hiding in front of my humor
poor imagination, always question begging
the good news is that things are going to get so very bad that it will be impossible to ignore the truth if you want to have a little dignity. just kidding. we're way past that point.
fell over backwards
head over heels
in over my head
my novels are really only ill disguised, thinly veiled attempts at telling stories
everything now is an antichrist test. but it's also a christ test. the wheat being separated from the chaff.
it might be too late, but it's never too early
always wait as much as possible to install updates on any machine. the world may end before they force them on you.
i think america needs fathering founders
first hot shower
since may
summer's over
words not flowing. the muses having a disagreement. as a man, you have to resist the urge to tell them to come down and just enjoy the spectacle.
it's inappropriate for a man to be fascinated. a man should be entranced, at most enthralled. fascination is only appropriate for women. i must remind everyone again that a fascinum is a penis shaped amulet.
you can reduce reality to words. and you can expand reality to words.
change actually happens, regardless of how much drivel is written by classical metaphysicians. new problems never before encountered actually exist, not to mention that traditions eventually create their own new set of problems as things change.
i won't let go that against you
a reader complained that my weekly aphorism compilations are getting too big and i should make smaller ones. so obviously i'm not doing that.
fiction checked: true
first you draw the line, then you put everything on it
i used to believe technocracy was the primary danger, but the muses told me otherwise. i was very convinced of it too. the stories convinced me that the machine is mostly a distraction, and the devil in charge of it is being played by another much worse one. i didn't plan on it or think much about it at the time, i just went for it and started to write stories, but i did not imagine how much i would learn from it, certainly more and deeper than i have ever learned writing or even reading nonfiction. that's a big part of the pull now.
all bets are off to the races
they are called corporations because they have bodies. but the flesh and blood comes from you. beware. if you still conflate or confuse body with flesh, this late in the game, you're gonna have a bad time.
at this point, if you're not a heretic and blasphemer about something, i cannot trust you.
a lot of people, maybe most, do not believe in muses as actual beings, but only in a metaphorical abstract sense. but when i speak of muses i don't mean an abstraction. the problem is they do this with everything.
a stepping stone
becomes a stumbling block
if you linger on it
the muses are possessive. but all women are.
i can never ask
me and who
it's always you
the philosopher said
a person is too much
give me being as such
something beyond seeing
something i can't touch
a person is too freeing
and i need a crutch
does anyone remember that disaster means unstar. i don't think so.
David Bentley Hart should write a book on gluttony. you know, put his money where his mouth is.
here's my list of advice that is applicable to everyone: .
revenge is wrong
vengeance is of the Lord
revengeance is a loophole
(yet i don't recommend it because it's too much work)
neither self doubt
nor self confidence
secret third self nonsense
the future is off to the side
the worst argument for religion, by far, is that 99.9999% of humanity has been religious. and yet God still exists, as does all the other stuff like devils and faeries and so on, which proves that miracles exist too.
i write because i like it and i share it because others might like it. but also who cares we're all gonna die.
everything ends in failure so love your friends and have fun
death is my greatest motivator
gotta face the fictions
if i don't share the muses will choose someone else. seems fair to me.
i want to see someone say that all things denote there is a God but with a picture of a slum instead of a mountain or a waterfall. now that would be strong faith. totally false, but strong. strong faith is not the same as true faith. i don't know why it's so hard for people to admit that a lot of things in this world rather denote, not that there is a God, but that there are many devils. seems rather obvious and elementary.
i like to scatter seeds, but i also like it when the birds and the wind do it. and i don't value one above the other. i love it when i find a random plant growing in my garden that i did not put there. and the ideal really would be a garden of only volunteers and squirrel and bird and wind plantings. ones i found recently: tradescantia, canna lily, lantana. the first two i did plant elsewhere and the third was growing at the other end of the garden, but it was very sweet to find them where i did not sow them. also interesting is that i found them all growing within two feet of each other in a patch that gets washed away pretty easily. they really must have wanted to germinate there. strong wills.
the village cat sometimes sleeps in our garden. wife named him Merlin. when he leaves he always stops by one particular olive tree and stays there for a while. they're chatting.
they say you make your own luck, but i didn't make mine
i am sane as heaven and i will continue to give. i will not meddle with the primal forces of nature.
ambiguous preamble
ambulatory ambition
ambivalent ambience
if you repeat a word enough times it loses all meaning. this is what happened with everything. which is why i think we should try to say new things. you try to hold on to the meaning through the repetitions but it keeps slipping away. it becomes mere sound, and then even noise. this is a law of nature, and i try to understand it, rather than fight it. because it's not only pointless, but reinforces the effect.
die trying or die without trying
everyone knows it's easier to destroy than to create. a tree takes years to grow and seconds to cut down or burn. that means evil is actually more powerful than good. but so what. this is not a problem unless you worship power rather than goodness. but many people do. many try really hard to miss the point, and quibble about definitions. if you don't like the word power then i can say that evil wins more often. but it doesn't matter because it's going to face the same misunderstanding. i'm sure i do this with some things too. but i try not to. i'm actively on the lookout for situations where words trick me and narrow my understanding rather than expand it and help me. i also understand why people don't want it to be the case. i mean it's terrible. but illusions about reality are also terrible.
when we moved in to this house we set a room to be my office and also a smoking room. guess where my de facto office is.
i'm never sure how much i should share from my novels because i know there are people who really really really hate every kind of spoiler. unfortunately all the best bits spoil one thing or another as the ideas are quite intertwined with the story. it would be like trying to talk about Noah without ever mentioning the flood. personally i really don't mind spoilers. all the good stories are worth rereading. a story that depends on twists and is only good for that hit of dopamine is weak.
If the future is offsides then it should get a yellow card and all goals disallowed. Or we can change the rules.