Category: Vignettes

VIN29- We Think We…

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Okay. Another one. Less Raw this time.

Look, bottom line is, no matter what happens. The game is over.

The illusion is broken. The jig is up.

See, that’s what people like Woodward understand. Because they have seen it come and go for decades longer than you or I have lived. And they always will. Because it is not any one person they read. It is all of them.

This is how to reprogram ourselves: We think we. Each of us. About something. One thing. If you’ve got a kid, you can have more than one, but you’ve got at least one. If you’ve got a dog. Or a houseplant. Or anything that depends upon you, devote your mind in its service in its appropriate moment in time.

You were sick, but now you are well again, and there’s work to do!

If it possesses more of your time, you can break this down for an aspect of it instead. If your kid is LGBTQ, that is a good one. It will never not be an issue. Because it is very personal and difficult to handle.

Children deserve love. Everyone deserves love. Even the most vile, hate-filled creature on Earth, deserves love. Oft-times it’s those that don’t show real love, but rather, superficial love or enabling, that turn them into what they are.

Take a shiningly shit-turd of an example, ReziDump.

Dump has never known love. He has known adoration, perhaps. Most certainly, he knows awe. To an infantalized degree. It is his character. It is not ours. Chiefly however, he knows enabling.Yet he remains deserving of the true-love of those around him that put a hand on his in his weakest moment– even if to be slapped. For if that is the price to be paid, then it will one day be more deserving of the recompense of healing afterward.

Humans do not deserve loneliness, only confinement. The more confined, the more important and intensely the loneliness must be dealt with. Such people will always exist.

Trouble is, many have been played for fools by him and they’re angry. They do not know it, but their anger is stirred by the very cause for its existence. That is only logical. It is the drunk-mother’s money-offering hand. Combustion stoked by firemen dousing gasoline and flame o’er burning heaps of knowledge.

Thing is, that’s all well and good. But people burn out. This was the importance of the two-minutes hate. A thing even its creator could not fully comprehend how to explain, but ultimately is the social regulator valve:

Writers always have pretty wives. Someone should look into this.

Look, regardless of how people use a system, if it can be used positively, it should exist. To mitigate danger, it should be otherwise regulated. Yes. Regulation is good. It’s what makes sure your hotwater doesn’t scald you immediately from your pipes. It keeps your gas stove from blowing you to a hole in the Earth while you’re on your shitter.

It’s important. Like taxes. Or porn. There’s more in common than you first think. That’s the point.

We need it. We deserve it. We earned it. As a species.

We don’t need to understand Pi to understand Pi is important. That is the compartmentalization of knowledge. We need only know that others do understand. That, when or if it is relevant, those unaware may turn to those aware.

People like Dump are just misdirecting, trying to play us for fools that they’re the authorities on things they’re not.

We’ve all fallen for that. And it makes us ashamed. That makes us distrust. That’s okay. It’s Human Nature. We are all nothing, if not Human.

See, that was the thing Darwin grew to understand all those years and months of living thought. Certain, inextricable lines bind us to truth, as water is bound to rivers by physics. Even if we do not understand fully, why, we know we’re on the right path when in their light. When accepting them as fact.

Even if we do not know why we are forced to learn, we do. It is in the learning we are humbled.

Once, I set out to find a “We” and I found it in women. I wanted to solve Doc Brown’s great mystery of the universe:Women. What I learned wasn’t that there was anything to solve, it was that newgrowth is the most chaotic– be it in a plant, or a Y-chromosome. That is the moment when the certainty of pattern-recognition, or the link binding observation to instinct, is weakest. It is in that moment that we, as a species, are most likely to err.

“…Never forgetting,
N1T3 will soon come…”

N1T3 isn’t just a character. He is an encoding into the collective, unconscious mind that cannot be broken. A BLCKN1T3 protocol for society. He is Hiro’s bitmap. Case’s blackice. He is a postdigital intrusion countermeasure for the modern Human– And he has taken a lifetime to achieve. I am proud of him in a way I could never be of myself.

He is flawed. As are we all. As a character and creation. But serves his purpose nonetheless. And he always will. Whether it is via subtle, unconscious means. Or overt, belligerent ones. It does not matter because he will come when needed.

Batman’s got nothin on this muthafucka. Batman needed money, brawn.

N1T3 is weak. All brain. He is poor. He survives off wit. Old and new. All mental. Batman is forced to risk his back and neck. Night in, night out. The apex of N1T3 protocol, learns that the hard way firsthand, and yet it is immediate. It is now all he knows: what happens when the man behind the mask dies? Someone has to ask the question.

The answer: same thing that happens when we all die, life– nature, goes on.

It changes. It mutates. It evolves. Natural life is not just one planet’s meager piss-dribblet of carbon. It is all of “creation.” This is what makes Darwin so dangerous. He believes wholly what those whom say they believe, actually do not. He had a “we” implanted in him from birth. So does N1T3. Now, you do too.

Powerful ideas. Dangerous ideas, but powerful ideas.

This town needs a better class of criminal.

BLCKN1T3 PROTOCOL ACTIVATED: 181016:1730UTC/GMT authorization:timequake

VIN28- Raw

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

This is a raw week. For everyone. Myself included. Here too.

The state of things in this country, they’re rough. But they’re not as bad as they seem. I know this, because I’ve spent the last too-many-hours feeling like the most utter dog-shit a Human-being can without being terminal. On top of everything else.

Folks, I’ve had some rough ones, but this one put me out.

If you read my stories regularly, you may wonder what the deal is this week. We seemed to have branched off into a personal land of weirdly astounding proportions. I mean that so globally, I still can’t comprehend the scope of what I’m talking about.

Generally speaking, I don’t do that. Not in my work. Off-the-cuff isn’t how I like to play it. And even now, I’m not really. Just playing it “close to the chest.” It’s tough for me.

But guess what? A few hours ago, I couldn’t eat. I was too ill. I don’t know why. I know I awoke, and started to feel better because of the people I love. That’s pretty right-on to me. I mean, dead-on. That’s what life is.

We need to all remember this.

I have been numb for a decade due to some not-so-hidden emotional issues. I’ve finished hiding those issues, because I see now how important it is for all of us to know, that no matter what the fuck we say or do, we have all felt like I’ve felt so recently. RAW.

Worst, this time around we felt it together. Whatever the reason.

Yet we don’t always have to. And when we don’t, the people there in those moments are what buoy us against the others, the raw ones. Even if not as raw as lately.

I am the youngest, only son, of a family of three strong and empowered women. Not because they wanted to be, but because they had to be. My father left us bleeding. He has his reasons. He is an old man now. I wish he could fix those himself, so maybe, we could all heal better. With him.

There are plenty of reasons to want that. There are more children now. Young ones. They are our light. He is missing that. We have all missed much: the imparting of wisdoms, follies, bare truths. All of us, myself included.

I personally, missed something crucial as well. I missed a true role-model for how to be. In that, I sought it so brashly I hurt not only myself but those that loved me of their own accord. For no reason other than that spark which draws the reader back, week-after-week, day-after-day, ramble-for-bloody-ramble.

Since then, I have spent a decade in exile trying to learn and grow and understand.

I have seen the faces of cowards and liars and cheats, faces I recognize well and have seen in myself, claim things I never thought possible.

One does not weep to wound. We weep to heal.

Fools! All of them. The lot of them. Interfering in the affairs of Wizards and Shaman!

We have bled together as a species this week. We are still bleeding. We are wounded and we need our healers, our Shaman– digital or otherwise. They are being denied us by those very forces we set in motion to bring them about.

No creature claims to be of heart and weeps to wound if it truly be. None. It is irreconcilable with the existent-anti-existent nature of Death, the Multiverse, and Nothing.

Remember that while our wounds are laid bare. For we are stronger than we know in soul. As a species. As peoples. As cultures. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the universe. We have each other. Even if rat-bastards do too.

Remember though, even that saying is no longer true. Rats love. They are family-oriented. So what does this make those others? Personally? Human.

And that we can never forget, lest we repeat their mistakes.

VIN27- In It Together

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

I grew up wanting to be a cop. Then, as a teenager, I was treated like a villain for my views. Most ran counter to those of what I wished to be. Not because I was any different, but because I learned my “dream me” requires being someone other than me. Namely, an asshole hypocrite.

Simply, my views kept me from achieving what I wanted because I was suddenly the enemy, rather than the Guardian, as I’d wished.

Growing up is difficult. Yet I remain a Guardian. Each fool that believes I hate: I do not. Each debater/hater that disagrees and hate me— I don’t hate you.

In fact, I feel for you. Because you hate, and that is a painful thing to carry around.

Trust me, I’ve spent most of my years hating myself.

Growing older, I came to realize how important it was to discourse. I grew up, realizing, if I wasn’t the bad guy, and “dream me” wasn’t the bad guy, and the guys I wanted to be like weren’t really bad guys– for Guardians are required, regardless of title– then something was wrong.

That something, it turns out, is the system meant to support and nurture these “dream me(s)”.

It is broken. With it, so are we.

But I’m speaking personally, so I will remain narrowed to that field, and personally, I am broken too. I am damaged, emotionally and physically, as are many of my family and would-be friends (as I don’t have any left at this point).

All the same, we’re not the only ones.

In fact, there are entire generations of us utterly wounded, bleeding, broken, and all from unhappiness.

I have said it once and I will say it until my teeth fall out, tongue withers, and throat bleeds:

We are in this together, and should fucking act like it.

In the end, I don’t give a fuck what you put in your body. I don’t care how or who you love. I don’t care about your affiliations, views, or perspectives. You are Human and I love you.

If I feel you are wrong or confused, I will debate and correct you ‘til the B’ohs wander in from pasture, or I get bored, too angry, sad, or disappointed to go on. But I will return. Eventually. And do it for you. And me. And everyone between, around, and hidden or foreign.

Because we are in this together, and should fucking act like it.

Take heed however: there are powers that wish us all to be at each other’s throats. I love them too. Because they’re Human, susceptible to error, and just as much scared, lost, and alone as the rest of us– no matter their power or position.

That doesn’t mean I like them. It simply means, because they are Human, I feel for them and hurt with them. I love them, as I love the stranger weeping on the street for their loss whilst the others walk past.

It’s past time we stop walking past and help.

Because in the end, all any of us wants is to be happy, healthy, and loved. You cannot deny that. Not at the core. It is a Human thing. No matter what you say, you’re Human– if only in part. Because you understand, at your core, (even if you don’t want to admit it, and trust me i have fucking been there) that you it is truth.

So. If you see me fighting, arguing, debating, or finding yourself subject of it, please remember I am doing it for the betterment of all. Even if I wrong, the point is to discourse: to understand and compromise. For the good of all.

And so we all can come to happiness, health, and love. Because we’re in this together, and should fucking act like it.

VIN26- The Best “Worst” Decision

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

We all have wishes. Skee-Lo had the most, at least in the publicized market. I had the second, but mine was written in words across pages invisible to all. Even if they hadn’t been, it was doubtful anyone would have found them. Even then, they’d never have enjoyed them.
It was simple mathematics, really. Take the amount of people in the world, multiplied by the amount of non-Skee-Lo wishes, then divided by each level of exclusion required to reach them.
In my case, that was invisible pages, requiring active readers, whom would not only ferret them out, but also enjoy them. Recursion that deep requires consideration.
But it happened. All of those infinitesimally small chances, and it happened.
What the fuck was I thinking?

Initially, It was from loss. Something I needed to do. Music had failed… sort of. Then, anyhow. I knew my body was too damaged and my spirit too wounded to do anything else. So, I tried to heal. Not knowing I was seeking to heal.
My dumb-ass went and put pen to paper.

For non-writers: the feeling of writing is intoxicating. It is more than a drug. It is like missing a crucial part of your genetic material and needing to supplement it with lifelong therapy. It is my theory that writers are Bodhisattvas: that we were the first to be reborn as Human, and needed to identify one another.
So, we began writing.
Only then, because we knew it would take lifetimes to make work, could we begin to understand that it was us, ourselves, that were the Bodhis now. Those old stories, their Buddhas, had already ascended the Godly realms. We were last in line, but richer for it, because we’d get to share all that extra time with the rest of this existence.
Righteous.
Wicked. Righteous.

The point I assume in this theory is that we are all building toward Enlightenment, Nirvana, or the Liberation from samsara. The cycle of Birth, Dying and Death, and Rebirth. It has put all of us, through the aforementioned, nearer to attaining that.
Seeing that, understanding that, is the way forward for Humanity and each of us as individuals.
Now, at every turn, the systems we’ve built around us to aid this are working against us. Justice is unjust. Corruption is purity. Fleas are jumping ship, yet the bridge isn’t burning. All the same, we know the waters are disturbed there’s a smell about there air. Something bigger is afoot.

Vermin fear predators.

I remember a story about a rally cry being heard in the distance at war-time. The village nearby immediately mustered its defenses and revealed its number. The rally never came. Days later, an army thousands strong had been amassed to encircle the village. They surrendered wholesale.
“Deception is the Art of War,” so sayeth Sun Tzu.
“Justice is blind,” retorts Lady Liberty.
Neither is wrong, yet others still bleed. It hurts somewhere. Deep. Even if we don’t care… we do. Even when we have every reason, rhyme, and conviction in the world not to, we do. Deep down. That is the condition: Human. The soul. The conscience. It is the effect of violation in that which is otherwise your norm and comfort.
No matter how comfortable you pretend to be with it, how much you smother it, it remains.

Becoming a writer was one of the best, worst-decisions of my life. I wouldn’t have it any other way.