Peppered Amongst the Mountainscapes

Sometime during January of 2025, I wrote a list of resolutions. It’s not something I do often because I am aware that I will follow them for only a short period of time before falling into other more, for lack of a better word, comfortable routines. I feel now that I should go over them to see if they pertain to my current situation in life.

1. No more than 1700 calories a day until February.

This can be easily modified, of course, to read No more than 1700 calories a day until August or somesuch. It’s most probably not doable, however. Several factors point towards failure. We’ll certainly be traveling in July, at least twice. We go to Berlin to see Marillion and possibly to hang with Jayrope. Traveling is the antithesis of discipline in a dietary sense, especially when said diet tends towards ketosis. The sheer proliferation of sacharidy in foodstuffs distributed to shops small, large and everything in between is staggering. In fact, I shall stand up and stagger now in honor of how staggering the fact truly is. I suspect that humanity is addicted to sacharidy.

A few days ago, I met with a fellow denizen of Mastodon appropriately named Lee. I also met with his woman (I believe it to have been his woman, but one can never be sure and I did not ask any specific questions concerning their relationship). We sat just outside the café along the street on an uneven wooden table of the sort one sometimes sees in public parks. A portion of our conversation centered on contrasts between hunter-gatherer “cultures” as opposed to those imprisoned in rigid hierarchies birthed from the dawn of agriculture. He seemed to agree with my tenet about the consequences of the agricultural revolution. It was the step that humanity never should have taken - at least on the scale that it did. It signaled the death of cooperative cultures (the hunter-gatherers) who lived in small, intelligent, mobile groups, and prompted the rise of despots who snatched at any opportunity for power. A hierarchical system arose from the stagnation of a culture being rooted.

Lee did inform me, however, that there still exist, especially in southeast Asia, multitudinous disparate hunter-gatherer clans peppered through the mountainscapes. I was surprised and somewhat gladdened. Therefore our Ouky Douky rendezvous ended on a positive note and not in a circular discussion about how humanity is a seething morass of cancer engulfing itself and the planet. Not that it isn’t, of course.

What was the purpose of this detour in my writing? Ah! The hunter-gatherers, as opposed to the ones rotting on an echelon loosely bound to an arbitrary branch of the festering weed of agriculture, certainly had an easier time avoiding sacharidy. It was just part of the lifestyle, volečku, or perhaps still is part of the lifestyle for those peppered amongst the mountainscapes of southeast Asia.

2. Write something every day

I currently do not have a problem following this resolution. I have been semi-consistent about Daily Notes in Obsidian, plus I scribe from time to time directly to my Nostr account which is tied directly to my personal Nostr node which is a part of the infinite branching structure that glistens through the cosmos unlike the drooping, pestilent weed of agriculture.

Of course, without the drooping, pestilent weed of agriculture, I wouldn’t be sipping on my delicious ranní napoj. Or, rather, my delicious Ajran from Hamakom. Also, had the drooping, pestilent weed of agriculture never sprouted from the kind earth that was never keen to birth it in the first place, I’d’ve never existed at all! How delightful!

(Ajran from Hamakom)

3. Practise or improvise something every day

There is a distinction between working on a piece of music - a process that may include learning and then repeating a guitar part twenty seven million four hundred eight thousand two hundred and eighteen times in order to play it correctly into the virtual tape machine - and actually placing oneself into beta state and practising the guitar. I must admit that today I have not (yet) placed myself into beta state and practised the guitar. However, I intend to do so, and even before this abomination of a blog entry is complete! In fact, I’ll do it now!

(Two days later - of practising constantly - no food - no sleep - naturally!)

4. No new equipment for at least six months unless it is to replace something vital

The question that is begged in number four is what equipment exactly is vital? I lately found that my tone is most probably the most vital thing of all and since I do not use an amp, I have to have a certain collection of pedals in a certain order to maintain the tone that is important to me for the timbrel thurk of my compositions. Currently, and all of these are absolutely vital, the pedal chain that creates my tone is thus: Basic Audio Scarab -> Spaceman Redstone -> Fairfield Circuitry Shallow Water -> Zen Drive -> Empress Compressor. I’m sure multitudinous other pedals in my vast array are also vital, come to think of it. El Capistan, Red Panda Particle, to conjure two from the void of my mind.

All that being stated in a ponderous paragraph, I should do my best to heed my past self’s advice. I recently purchased a Bass Guitar that I’ve yet to give a name to and a Hydrasynth, also still without a moniker. I have a persistent mental itch to just say fuck um and also buy an Isla Electronics S2400. I have however so far resisted raking my ragged fingernails along that itch.

5. Speak my mind to my parents always

This is moot, as my mother kicked it last July and my father a month ago. Honestly, it was a resolution that was very difficult to keep during my time in the eternal cleft anus that is Seminole, Texas. My childhood and teenage years weighed heavily on me during the eight months I was “stranded” there. I suppose that in a way, my childhood and teenage years will always weigh heavily on me. One can never wholly escape from a time in life when one was constantly berated, perpetually castigated for being nothing but who one truly was - a soul searching for its own direction in the universe within the context of an environment that was dreadfully hostile to creativity, intellect, and any behavior that made one stand apart from the flock.

My parents never wanted me to speak my mind. My parents wanted me to speak what they expect to hear. They never cared for me. They cared for an eidolon of me that they constructed when I was very young, far before my early teens. That was the Bob they loved and certainly not the man that Bob evolved into.

6. Have a concrete plan for the next step in life by March. Remember this is a fresh beginning

When I first wrote these resolutions, I was waking up at five (approximately) every morning and immediately studying Japanese. It was fun. I was happy. I was in Seminole, yes, but during those dark early hours, I was happy memorizing Katakana, Japanese vocabulary and even a few Kanji. It was my pytel. I lay in bed with my neck skewed at an angle that Ivanečka would surely (rightly) criticize now. I studied. I was happy.

My next step in life was to the north-west. I was saving money, slowly but surely. My goal was Sitka, Alaska and then eventually across the Pacific to Japan. What were my concrete plans? I know some sort of boat was involved. I had even begun learning the basics of sailing, at least theoretically. I planned to take a course in Seattle before heading to Alaska late one evening to watch the reddening twilight never quite end for the second time in all of my accursed years. I imagined myself in Sitka. I imagined myself setting up a rudimentary studio there and eventually having a primitive studio on a sailboat. I’m still not sure how realistic that would be were I to actually use the sailboat to spend time on the open ocean. Salt could play hell with electronics over time.

None of this ever came to pass.

I was still thorax deep in my relationship with Martin and the work we were doing together. Oh! The Sperm Bank. I still have the code sitting around somewhere. Amusingly enough, they have since gone bankrupt. It doesn’t really surprise me given their disorganization and general ineptness with technology. Idiots. “Business men” with no technical training or know how or, better yet, no direct programming experience have no business telling people who actually know what they are doing what to do. It’s been the same story since I began my career as a developer in the 90s. The idiots who managed to talk some other semi-rich idiot into investing in their idea have dragged a troupe of developers along to carve a swath of their own failure through the decades. Idiots.

I was still thorax deep in my relationship with Martin and “work” we were doing together. We talked every day, in fact. I called him my friend back then. I’m not sure what he is now. Who knows? Most people in life simply come and go. The few that stick around through one’s torturous mood-swings, ups, downs, sideways sprints and dark downward spirals are the only ones in the end worth their gristle. Their thoraces smile back to you no matter the shambles of the situation.

I was still thorax deep in my relationship with Martin and the Sperm Bank. Somehow, he convinced me (or I partially convinced myself) that the correct direction for my life was to return to Praha - or, rather, for him it was move to Praha, as I don’t know how aware he was of the years I spent previously decades ago in this city. And so, slowly, I abandoned my Sitka and ultimately Japanese plans. I began replacing my morning studies with Czech. I found a Czech teacher online on a site called Preply. Her name was Ivana. We’re getting married next week.

7. Remember I have the right to be happy

Since childhood, I was told by my church and my parents (who were informed by my church) that I was meant to suffer, that my happiness was not a priority in anyone else’s point of view. The fact that it was important from my point of view just proved to everyone (especially to my parents) that I was a selfish, Godless wretch. It’s an awful way to grow up, but I think it is more common than people here (in the Czech Republic) might realize. The contrast is stark. I know that it does happen in the United States, too, but I believe it is a rarer phenomenon. Parents here openly encourage their children to pursue the goals in life that make them happy. They aren’t insistent on the old traditionalist ways of Son follows in the footsteps of Father or Son (or Daughter!) must go into a profession that is financially successful with the emphasis on exactly that: financial success. Though money is still relevant under the oppression of capitalism, it is not the driving force behind practically everything like it is in the hunk of pestilence that is the United States of “America”.

It’s directly against the tenets of my upbringing to be happy, or more specifically, to place my own happiness first. I realize there are compromises all humans must make to their own happiness so that other humans living with them, in their vicinity or on the other side of the goat-yard from them are also in some equalized state of happiness. But even in such cases, unless one insists on surrounding oneself with humans who amass misery and distribute it to themselves and upon all those living with them, in their vicinity or on the other side of the goat-yard from them, mostly mutual happinesses can be easily maintained.

So fuck you, Mom, and fuck you, Dad. I have the right to be happy.

8. Less TV series. More books. Two novels a month minimum sounds good

My reading style of late is one of creeping examination. I enjoy going over sentences and paragraphs again and again to taste the words and especially to taste the syntax and morphology of the expression. I don’t think I’m actually capable of reading two novels a month in this manner unless they are both particularly short novels. I just started something new, in fact. It’s by the Japanese author Kawakami and its name is Heaven. Or, rather, that is the translation of its name into my mother tongue. I began this novel two days ago and have only read perhaps six pages as I am tasting the syntax. I realize that the syntax I’m tasting is possibly more the translator’s syntax than the author’s syntax, but I’m still finding it delectable. I’m certainly gargling both of their semantics. It is a short novel. The other one I have by the same author (Breasts and Eggs) is also short. Let’s see if they both get read by the end of July.

I’ve begun a number of series over the last month and a half, but I’ve not finished them, excepting one German one whose name I refuse to reveal. The raw, reeking fact that I usually do not finish a series points blatantly towards what this resolution itself commands: read books instead of having some story thrown at you at the pace it dictates.

9. Be ruthless, even if it means at times being heartless

I created this resolution in the context of living with my parents. This ties intimately back to remember I have the right to be happy. During that period, which, as I’ve stated before, lasted eight months, I spent quite a bit of my energy every day maintaining patience. It was grueling. And yes, I did lose it a few times, but only a few. Mostly, on the outside, at least when I was with them, I maintained tranquility whilst fury raged in my mother’s chemically imbalanced brain.

A phrase I began using in my early 20s (or even earlier?) that described my mother’s treatment of other people (including my brother, my father, and me) was assassinating their personality. She spent more energy than I thought she had in her tiny body doing that very thing. She assassinated the personalities of pretty much everyone she came into contact with. Of course, she didn’t assassinate their personalities in front of them (unless the subject of the assassination was my father, my brother or me), but instead slandered them behind their backs. She even had stock phrases for people that she used to write off what they said or did. Doing such things is a logical fallacy - one of labeling - the act of dismissing the entirety of what a person says because they can be labeled a certain thing, regardless of the actual validity of what they state or represent. For example, my friend Acy was (and still is, I assume) big on researching events, situations, ideas, etc in depth and then drawing conclusions from that research. So, whenever my mother and I were having a discussion on anything, be it a rule at university, a traffic law, the way to prepare a meal or the more modern method of doing taxes (or paying bills) online and if I EVER brought up what my good friend Acy thought, she’d immediately follow up with a quip about Lawyer Acy. And that was that. It was as if saying Lawyer Acy completely dismissed anything Acy had to say, no matter its relevance.

At least I encountered this behavior early in life. That way I could suffer for a longer time under its oppression. Also, I instantly recognize it in other people, which can be a further source of suffering, especially when the labeling fallacy comes directly from someone I care about. When this happens, I further perpetuate my own suffering by flaying the perpetrator. I suffer whilst performing this act because I care about, or even love the perpetrator. After flaying this human whom I love alive, I place the jerking, quivering, and still mostly living body into a sarcophagus filled with photographs of various goats that I fancy. I seal the sarcophagus and then sit down in the vast cemetery to read a few pages of whatever novel I’m in the middle of.

10. No alcohol unless it’s an aperitif, and those only rarely. Especially no beer

This is genuinely amusing since yesterday, the day of my wedding, I drank between seven and nine (inclusive) beers with Michal whilst Ivanečka and Mirka enjoyed our company. It was thrilling! I had that amazing feeling I used to have back in the good ol days when I was in a semi-daze as I walked the infinite trudge between our place of residence in the “restaurant” and the toilet to empty my swollen bladder. Oh, nostalgia! But that was only a minor detail. That Ivanečka can coexist with mine and Michal’s ever joking state of tipsy mind for so long and honestly enjoy it amazes me. Looks like I found the best woman in the extant universe.

As for aparitifs, I really don’t do them and I am unsure why I even included that word in my resolutions a year and a half ago. It’s actually a filthy word used by wanna be tyrants to attract wanna-be apostles of tyrants. I shall do my very best to never use it again in my existence within the extant universe. My take on beer these days is that having a few during the day (probably not between seven to nine inclusive) is not particularly damaging (except to the general creative productivity of the day), but one must cease before evening and not fall to slumber before the alcohol has completely worn off

11. Less coffee. More tea

Yesterday I imbibed Lapsang Souchung. This morning I imbibed Genmaicha. I have not let the putrescence that is coffee pass between my lips since mid July last year.

I have noticed during my meandering existence that many of my friends, acquaintances, goat-buddies and parasitic hangers-on have quite the “time of it” letting go of their daily culinary luxury items. Yes, I dub coffee a luxury item. It is certainly not required for physical or mental survival in any meaningful sense. Of course, one can become addicted to caffeine (and become addicted quite easily, it seems, for some) and then coffee (or an adequate substitute such as cocaine or strychnine) seems to the addicted “individual” to become a necessity. Yes Ja Ano. But in my burbling opinion, it is still only a luxury. Addiction is best broken by abstinence unless the addicted one will stuff it by not continuing. If that’s the case, well, then the “addicted one” is in the hands of The Great Mamba, the ceramic goat sitting on the night table or the clairvoyant neighbour’s effigy of Ba’al. Said addicted varmint may choose from the three deity-ish entities.

Každopadně, many humans have a “time of it” letting go of their daily culinary luxuries. For example, I am greatly amused when a human walks into the exquisite dining hall of The Great Mamba, the ceramic goat sitting on the night table or the clairvoyant neighbour’s effigy of Ba’al and declares to all seated there the beginnings of, say, a ketogenic diet. Well, actually that is not the part that amuses me. I’m all for humans declaring any number of things in the exquisite dining hall of The Great Mamba, the ceramic goat sitting on the night table or the clairvoyant neighbour’s effigy of Ba’al. The amusing part is what comes afterwards. Many of these humans spend chunks of their day searching for or preparing foodstuffs that closely resemble or in some-way imitate non-ketogenic foodstuffs. An obvious example is anything of the sweet variety: sugared chowders, flapjacks, candied hamster kidneys, or any beverage that “requires” a “sweetener”. For myself, it seems much more simple to, for the duration of the diet, just eat meats, eggs, cheeses, lilek, cuketa, zelí and a hromada hnoje of greens and oils. The willpower of the masses seems to be a shallow splatter of liquid on the sunken floor of the public lavatory around the corner.

12. Patient, but ruthless

Living with my parents for eight months was always a balance between these two seeming extremes. I never wanted to openly fight with them about what I wanted in life and what my future would be, but it came to that a few times, as I mentioned. Mostly I had to insert into random conversations details about what I was about to do with my life. Absurdly, this even included when Bender-boy was visiting the “neighbourhood”. Our trip to Carlsbad Caverns nearly gave my mother an embolism. Or, rather, the idea of us driving for a few hours in highly dangerous West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico nearly gave her an embolism. According to her, the roads were swarming with drunk Mennonites. We would be lucky to get past Hobbs without being crushed by a pickup crossing the soil, weed and gravel space that divided the highway at an unmanageable velocity. I decided to just not mention that we were taking a road trip to Marfa, four and a half hours (or more?) distant from Seminole. The family drama it would have caused would not have been worth it.

In the end, I had to choose my own happiness. I was drowning from the moment I stuck the disfigured “index” toe of my right foot into the red, dusty gusts of West Texas on whatever day it was mid-October 2024. I am not a nurse, though I had to act like one more and more the longer I was with them. They came to expect it. By the time I departed for Praha on 15 June last year, the situation was dire and one could cut a rill through the tension in the air with a comatose yak.

13. Lakife

I have not done anything at all concerning Lakife since last spring. This is unfortunate and must be remedied at some point soon. The most direct solution to the problem is to just write some lyrics in Lakife or translate something into Lakife such as A Fool Fancying Cliches, an old song I want to recreate.

That brings me to the problem of current musicking. MUSICKING. That’s the way I spell it, vole. The Dissolving Pool album seems to be stuck. I am reorganizing my thoughts concerning how exactly to finish it. My conclusion is to excise a few pieces and use them for another album, leaving only the following ones:

• The Fen
• Hela Strolls Through the Botanical Gardens in St. Johns
• Řeka
• Molju Fekli Tzikon Xaj Mapu
• Gibbet

All of them are in some state of completion or at least progress. Their structures exist and most of the composition has been done. I just have to sit down with my more putrescent self and concoct a sound and / or timbrel idea for the album as a whole, then replay, perform the parts that need to be completed to that end. I’m sure I’ll end up abandoning the original TR-808 idea, except perhaps on parts of Gibbet where the bass drum timbre itself is essential.

The excised pieces of music will reside on the new album. New album, you say? Oh! What a surprise! I have spent monolithic chunks of my time “perfecting” Dobbs but as it seems like Christian is having a very difficult time completing his own parts, I shall pause my efforts, though there is not much to pause. The only piece that really needs anymore work is A Continual Undermining… and Christian has no part on that one. I’ve mused to myself time and again about possibly finding another vocalist, but without Christian, the album loses some of its identity in my mind. I just wish he would get to it. His desire to make music may not have waned, but his impetus has, for sure.

Každopadně, the excised pieces of music will reside on the new album. New album, you gawk? Oh! What a malodorous event! Many new pieces (some based on old ideas) have flowed easily from my hara of late and I have been quickly sketching and in some cases practically finishing them. It will therefore be:

• Protivný Pták nad Bouřičím Oceanem
• Sandra (excised from the aforementioned album)
• Sketch #1 (based on something I began writing at the beginning of 2019)
• Qat (excised from the aforementioned album)
• Shambal Drained of Fluids
• Tundra
• Encima de Gallarza (excised from the aforementioned album)
• Song for Ivanečka

14. Physics

I had a university textbook out and I was going through it like a klíště in a fat woman’s underpants. I wanted to relearn everything I had forgotten. Sadly, I shall not be getting back to this. Life requires narrowing. Hobbies require being consigned to the pit. One only has so much time for one’s passions. I choose the few that are the most important and everything else falls away. Fuck um.