Tag: Wednesday Vignettes

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.

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.

VIN 23- Bullshit Without Context

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Here’s my problem with the so-called light-net we use everyday: it’s full of bullshit.

Not the kind you think of first. Not ads, spam, morons– the elegantly meaningless bullshit spewn by people and organizations with no scruples and even lower intellect.

Rather, the deeper bullshit, after the moments of clarity from laughing, when you recognize the source. It’s the kind of bullshit where everyone needs to feel big sometimes, so they belittle, but its something more than bullying or memes can touch.

The net’s revealed one, crucial reality Humans have known but never faced before: Bullshit without context brings out our worst instincts.

Human History is rife with social catastrophes borne of crucial-yet-missed context. Nowadays most seeking to ridicule deliberately remove or ignore that context to a point of impotence. Doing so, they ridicule whole swaths of their species, whole disciplines of study, entire milennia of recorded history.

Rightfully or not, and just-so from circumstance rather than desire, makes no difference if it is devalued to impotence

Putting this more simply: it is foolish and unacceptable for any one of our species to isolate itself, let alone groups of us to– especially to other groups of our species.

No advanced society, awareness of status aside, would deliberately drive people to ignorance without ulterior motive. Ours does so, demonizing those its sees as peaceful, loving, accepting of change. In the meantime, and via others playing on fears or egos of their would-be-wards, are driven away from true knowledge and enlightenment.

Shame and fear turn people away from experiences. Often, based on others’ perceived reactions. Which they’ve no control over. That is therein turned to ignorance by circumstance, want of peace.

These are the effects of an aging system producing output errors visible only in its finest details. It is Chaos incarnate. Learning to spot the flaws in a system, social or otherwise, is what is required to prevent total collapse or decay.

It used to be that such ignorance was excusable due to Humaity’s isolated nature. Geography isolated culture, and culture insulated the individual against their neighbor.The Human-Mind, though capable of it, was not so thoroughly engaged as it now is.

Until recently, too much of life and time were spent in back-breaking labor and the simple assurance of survival. No mass-planning or growth could ever take place on the individual scale, let alone the social scale. The Civil Rights and Anti-War movements, Women’s suffrage, the French Revolution: all effects of Humans pressure-cooked to explosion.

Things are different now. Technology is at-play here. Television was big, but it didn’t fit in one’s pocket. It didn’t cast during storms. It couldn’t intercommunicate.

Predigital, Humans were auto-pilot only configurations. Technology has since reformed them into auto-pilot and operator configurations. Our ancestors’ ways will soon be lost to their efforts and those of their descendants. Very soon. Yet with so much change, so closely abound, Humans are forgoing all connection to sanity.

How? Allowing their species to repeat its own delinquently juvenile-mistakes. Overwhelmed or blind-sided, it must be overcome. The Human Condition is that Humans must thrive despite their flaws, always seeking the unattainable: perfection, because it is the ideal and ideals last longer.

Humans can overcome, yet our flaw is that we must when we should not have to. One need not touch a hot coal to be certain of its heat if history assures it. Rome fell because of simple problems people believed nonexistent, or at the very least, inexplicable.

This current madness is yet another “Gods Must be Crazy” of civilization. A culture shock to be sure, but so long as we keep our heads, survivable.

Until then, we are willingly complicit in the tainted pipe-lines, the civic laziness, their existence; whether by allowing others to drink or forcing them to. We may only change this if we, as a species, come to recognize it as only an extension of the Human Condition. We, as a species, must recognize Humanity is not ordered, but that order can and may exist. Chiefly; by Humanity, to aid its sustenance and growth– as a whole, as well as individuals.

If we do not come to recognize this, Insanity will take over. Chaos in the system will lead once more to its fall. And due to the datum– the contexts and subjects involved, possibly the Human species altogether. Whether that is through an evolution or extinction seems the only question.

Our species suffers when any one of us is disparaged in intelligence and opportunity. The sooner we realize this, the better off we’ll be.

A century ago, when governments controlled everything, they feared that. Who wouldn’t? Information, the right kind, could tip the balance of power in instants. The individual had no power, not as it was. They did however, have the ability to rally others. Which meant keeping dissent down for fear of being overthrown.

Especially then, it was a legitimate fear. Governments were relatively new. Monarchys, Tsardoms, empires– all the norm until too recently, and with a bad habit of rallying themselves like Napoleon after Elba. Often, they came back and retook more ground than before, destroying any new, systemic improvements to society for the sake of their own power.

Until society at-large, and those in places of power and control, recognize the pointless futility of attempting to flex authority over natural, systemic, societal evolution, our species can go no further. Worse, we might meanwhile go extinct as a result of the aforementioned few, their choices or lack thereof, and their effects.

A politician denying a factual report opens the door for others to do the same. When these same individuals form groups, their power heightens exponentially. They know this. Allowing for it is dangerous through the sheer fact that humans, no matter their ideology, are often wrong.

Beginning to understand my concerns better?

VIN 22- Halls of The Universe, pt. 1

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

I started writing when I was about six. Doesn’t everyone?

As soon as I could pick up a pen, I began writing. My mother, an oldschool reader, subscribed to volumes of collections of fairy-tales as a child and filled the house with books until the shelves sagged. My father, though not traditionally “literate,” held true the written word enough to have learned most skill through self-teaching manuals.

Thus, the vein of story is pure and deep within me. It’s no surprise I became a writer. Though spending life attempting to please others is not the way to go, it does not devalue what you learn of yourself along the way. For me, that was fiction. Stories. Information. Then later, technology and science, truth and justice. Text. Words.

For words are power: true, eternal power.

What separates us from the so-called inferior boils down to language. One need only look to history books to see as much. Especially with regard to North American and European history, the barrier between “civilized” and “savage” was based upon whether one spoke specific languages– usually, those of whites, Caucasians, Europeans, and later, North Americans.

This extreme and prejudicial example is no less repeated in regard to anthropocentric– that is, Human-centered, views on Death, the Multiverse, and Nothing. The problem is, these views are subject to mob mentality as a result of their manifest by the group. Simply: Death, the Multiverse, and Nothing, are concepts too big for one person alone to understand and thus require the effort of the group.

Big jobs need more people. Simple enough, right? Right.

The catch, as always: this reality means the mob-mentality– or that state of chaos roused by inexplicable rage, fear, or inner turmoil, can also exist.

This is not seen in other animals. However, the reason’s likely a result of Human intellectuality placing them as ecologically dominant. It is quite possible, given enough Evolution, any remaining lineage of Earth-animal surviving alongside Humanity long enough would inherit its traits. Intelligence being its defining trait, would only increase the likelihood of that trait being made manifest.

Evolution would need only, as a result of the same naturally-selective processes, on social-scales, eliminate those traits. To do otherwise would avoid evolutionary paths-of-least-resistance, which is counter to nature’s tendencies.

In essence, if dogs or cats could live in large, intelligent enough groups, for long enough, they might too become as complex socially as Humans. Canids and Felidae alongside Homo sapiens in the halls of the Universe isn’t the worst idea, but it does require compromise on the largest scales of Human Ego.

Then again, maybe that’s the point.