“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”
-Niccolo Machiavelli
Elizabeth Holmes is currently imprisoned for defrauding investors . . . puppets—taken for a ride by her misleading and fraudulent nonsense.
Elon Musk has an extensive history of something similar, which is to say: raising money by promising projects which ultimately never develop because the science is either impractical or impossible. Nevertheless, countless puppets disregard the improbability of his many promised projects manifesting in the way originally described or at all, opting evidently instead to await his orchestrated cyberpunk dystopia where corporations and the individuals who run them run the world . . . and whoever assists in that may have a place at the top. Among these gullible puppets is unsurprisingly our art-of-the-deal extraordinaire, multi-bankrupt, bleach-in-the-blood President, Donald Trump.
Of course, a uniquely dangerous kind of puppet is one under the impression that the relationship they have with their master is reversed, and has puppets of their own ensuring them so.
“To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your path, and don’t worry about the darkness, for that is where the stars shine brightest. Always do what you are afraid to do, always do what you are scared to do. And remember, every man and every woman is a star.”
-Sakis Tolis
Years ago, my older sister and I met at a downtown Atlanta coffee shop to discuss our insufficiently nurtured inclination for personally-gratifying creativity.
She and I sat at the table, a sketch pad between us, doodling in our fashion. She had, and still has, an eclectic fashionable sense for decorative aesthetics (clothing, décor, and communicable exclamations). My desires have long been gratification through entertainment in varying degrees of subtlety.
She and I decided then, well over a decade ago, to exercise and communicate these inclinations eventually digitally. I believe in that moment, the seeds for what would, some six years later, become our corresponding blogs (a progressively outdated mode of communication). Nevertheless, we nurtured these desires until she—my sister—produced “cafethenightaway” for her love of staying up late over a pot of hot coffee in a cozy, lamp-lit, enjoyably decorated environment to discuss what mutual interests may manifest. This proved challenging for her as a mother of two and her attention to this outlet exponentially waned. As my interest in this endeavor was constrained, balanced, and dependent by and upon our collective participation, I ultimately allowed mine to do the same, having disregarded what was ultimately unsuccessful frivolity anyway.
As I consider, now (or lately anyway), our global and sociological paradigm evolutions, I can’t help but hunger for some outlet to discharge these potentially psychologically-calamitous considerations. So, to exercise a creative and artistic desperation, I return to my lonesome platform to produce whatever inspired considerations cerebrally fester. Perhaps the future will play out positively and perhaps this sort of self-therapy will help prepare myself for that hopefully, minimally doom-ridden reality glistening off the future’s horizon . . . but perhaps not.
So, for myself, the happenstantial passerby, family member, or friend, welcome to whatever the fuck I decide to write about . . . again.
-Matt
Note: The sketch above is of Bearspot—my teddybear—from this meeting with my sister. This was eventually turned into a short story here.
“Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Half a decade?
Yeah . . . well, sorry. Not like anyone reads this incoherently vivid verbosity anyway.
There was a time, long ago, when half a decade seemed endless . . . so quick it flies now—the rhyming of history. And how wasted was it? I’m not sure it has been.
The value of what marrow we extract from life is only ever up to us. But whatever that value is seems so regularly displaced by a contemporary, sociologically-imposed perception of necessary aesthetical participation—it’s heavy . . . and constant. We’ve been drugged . . . distracted . . . hypnotized . . . enslaved . . . to disregard any inclination for a non-prescribed obedience to our unique enjoyments.
Yet, despite our pseudo-global, progressively dystopian, neo-liberal, end-stage-capitalistic hellscape, there’s a refreshing recapture of wasteful frolic as our distracted fascination wanes. Not all . . . or everywhere . . . but sometimes . . . and someplaces. Class solidarity, global empathy—humanity’s desperate gasp for a lovingly-collective compassion fending off those frightened by the curtain being pulled back—are remanifesting (I presume what empathetic envy we bear for our indigenous/aboriginal contemporaries and their ancestors—those of us that have it—blossoms from some hopeless desire to participate with the planet, one another, the life around us, and ourselves in such a way instead of conquering it).
It’s fun to revisit what I once thought clever, even if it reads poorly, incoherent, incapacitated, or boring. I think, though, considering now’s all, I’ll return . . . even if only for individually exercisable psychological-preservation and the maintenance of primitive practices.
Maybe the marrow’s richer now.
“The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.”
-Thoreau, Walden
-Matt
Title quote from Fit for an Autopsy’s Black Mammoth
