Sitting once again at the head of the table, one of the ghosts (it is Shambal) is pushing his women one by one onto the stack - and as his life slows and declines to death, he’ll pop them off one by one, finally getting to Karla, then to Ashley.

I wrote that quote whilst sitting on a bench in the fantastic park in Seminole. I had a ritual during which I stopped at one (or sometimes at two!) benches on each circuit round its perimeter. I sat and typed a short adage into Thinking Space, a mindmapping application that doesn’t seem to exist any longer for Android. I still have the antiquated version.

Resuming this ritual again using whichever type of writing application is a grand idea. I occasionally take walks through Logroño. Benches are available. I am still vital enough to boast a creative countenance. My protoplastmic alter-ego yaks in my ear: So do it, cunt. That bastard rarely shuts up. In this regard, he is similar to Shambal. Shambal doesn’t even quiet his stream of consciousness ramble during sleep. It comes out as grunts and snores, sure, but I am certain they are still the half-baked ideas resembling those spouted during waking hours, just without enough proper non-dormant muscles for articulation.

One can see Shambal’s life like a stack of relationships. He measures his life by his relationships. I have done so before, as well, though these days I’m more apt to place the borders between epochs at changes of long(ish) places of residence.

The quote also presupposes an exact midpoint in Shambal’s life. At this median, he will stop pushing and begin popping. Much like my regurgitation the other day, whilst living the upswing of his life, he pushes women onto said stack. This act signifies that he is temporarily finished with her. He may have another in his immediacy register or just a vacuous cell. At times during the upswing, he’ll pop the most recent off for another go (naturally when the register is vacant). That chick’ll be pushed onto the stack once again, soon enough.

So, Shambal is standing at his apex, peering into the white backwards and then into the black forwards. He doesn’t have the ability to actually travel into the white, but only to observe. Being predominately white, the distance is increasingly blurry.

He carries his stack like one of the stones mentioned in the aforementioned entry. So he begins his descent.

Reviving the dehydrated relationships is a chore. Some are dessicated beyond hope. Since Shambal still has the ability to mature, the creatures in his stack are revelations. They dare him to confront his past self. They are distorted mirrors into layers covered by the murk of his ascent.

The entities are eidolons. Whatever beings in reality they symbolise is not important. When he pushed them onto the stack, they were frozen. He begins all of his relationships once more, but in reverse. These times round, he thrashes in an ocean of despair with no land in sight. Yes, in the manner they ended, they start.

Instead of a maelstrom of encroaching desolation sucking his time and his energy, he finds himself more and more satisfied. His smiles pervade days. He is nurtured. The tumble downhill is simple. He rolls with the flowing avalanche. Then, all at once, during emotional ecstacy, everything vanishes.

He still has his stack, however. It is not yet empty. Perhaps he’ll ease himself slowly down his hill in vacuity. Perhaps he’ll immediately pop another woman off.

He has choices.

Christián loves to point out the fact that I have asperger’s disorder. I am not particularly convinced at the accuracy of his claims, however, as he is of a certain class of people who convince themselves they are correct about certain issues and are never to budge from their position evermore despite any evidence to the contrary.

I would go as far as say this class of people is the status-quo. It is much easier to fall back on long held beliefs no matter their accuracy because of comfort. Further education for most ceases after certain points for topic after topic. One is set in one’s ways, the rubicon is crossed, and the future is as static as a portrait hung in the basement or attic. Well, it does tend to collect dust, but that, too, just tends to place a coating over hardened beliefs, weighing them further.

In any case - asperger’s. A significant, ongoing impairment in social interactions with others, as demonstrated by at least two of the following symptoms:

Significant difficulty in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as the lack of eye contact, few facial expressions, awkward or clumsy body postures and gestures

I’ve always be self-conscious about the manner in which I’ve held myself. Slouching is a problem, for certain. I have to pull my gut in a bit these days. However, the origin of this behaviour is from elementary school. I was always the scrawny one in gym class. (And gym class was an ongoing nightmare.) I wished I had just an inkling of pecs. My nipples seemed inverted whilst those of fellow gym-mates protruded proudly.

Although I strive to always maintain eye-contact during one-on-one banter, I often find my gaze straying, especially during monologues. Marisa asks me to tell her stories at times about my life or even in detail about my day. Of course, part of this is to practise Spanish, but, on the other side of the wormhole, she rattles away at length, herself, so it is encouragement that I do so, as well.

Eye contact has always been something people noticed about me. Only during meandering soliloquies, my view drifts. In these cases, my mind is turning inwards to live the words that dribble from my lips.

Most everyone knows (and in many cases dislikes) my wild gesticulations during conversation. The immediate conclusion is that our first symptom of this portion of asperger’s does not apply to me.

Asperper’s is quite a long way from introversion, honeybunch. In fact, they are not even intersecting in the venn diagram bubbling through my mind at the moment.

Lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people).

I’ve been criticized for pointing out the obvious many times. Unfortunately, I believe I contracted this habit from my father, and it certainly irks me when he does it again and again and again and again during road trips from (always the point of departure) Seminole to (select one from the set of points of arrival) Ruidoso, Hobbs or even Ft. Worth / Dallas. One thing I truly enjoy doing is letting my companions know about objects or situations close-by with interesting attributes. My friends do the same for me. I enjoy observing situations, especially, but never trying to predict outcomes. I want the bandera to unfurl without suggesting I might know beforehand its colours.

A line cannot be drawn distinctly between citing an obvious object or situation and one that may be more obscure. Trying to find novelties in even the mundane is enlightening.

Failure to express appropriate and corresponding social or emotional reactions, such as when conversing or playing with others. For example, a child who shows little or no reaction, feelings or empathy to another child talking with them.

The article from which I am pulling these quotes uses examples with children often, as it is noted that these symptoms are often first seen in youth.

I think Christián has been exposed to a darker part of my personality more than most other people have. Drunkenness has pervaded much of our proximous relationship and drink can make my ego burn. I become much more self-absorbed. Christián, being a self-absorbed cunt in general, as well, usually encourages this behaviour with his own misogynist and misanthropic ravings. What remains is the memory of sociopathic rants both from myself and from him. I can certainly see how a lack of empathy towards other humans in general could be determined from multitudinous enjoyable yet insane hours together.

It is easy to confuse empathy with guilt at times. Is my sorrow for the woes of my faraway mother guilt or empathy? Is it empathy spawned from guilt? When is empathy on longer empathy but some secondary emotion spewing from a ruptured self-esteem?

It is true that I find it easier to feel empathy towards animals than towards human animals. I gather this is because I feel most humans have the ability to change their situation but elect not to. Then, they proceed to bitch and moan at length. I have little patience for such diatribe. Is this lack of empathy? I’ve been told upon thirty five billion, nine hundred seven million, eighty two thousand, four hundred and seventeen occasions that I am an intellectual elitist. How this coincides with having asperger’s, i cannot ascertain (if it is even true in the first place).

Restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as shown by at least one of the following symptoms:

A significant and encompassing preoccupation or obsession with one or two restricted topics, that is abnormal either in intensity, subject or focus (such as baseball statistics or the weather)

On this point, I could argue that Christián, himself, has asperger’s since the majority of times (again whilst sloshed), the only subject that gushes like a waterspout from his maw is of the evil and manipulative nature of women and how to tame them. This tendency asserts itself in Christián’s actions in other forms, as well. I have observed that he becomes obsessive about a certain band or small circle of bands and listens to them relentlessly for a time before moving on to another. I’m not sure this is a good example, but it is a trend that does not let up.

As I grow older, I do not lose my hair, but instead let fall away past foci. Fewer and fewer topics envelop my interest. I attribute this paring of hobbies or occupations to the ongoing press of time. My mortality presses its flattened palm down on my skull, pressing me into the softer and softer earth. It will bury me. I shall parish not by the flame death, but by simple stagnation.

When only the foreskin of my scalp in left to smell the air, there may be only one obsession left. What will it be, I wonder. Music?

Seemingly inflexible adherence to specific routines or rituals that serve little purpose.

I know I have a few of these, but none come to mind immediately. The majority of my time is spent avoiding routines, however, since their mere existence cause time to seem to pass at a pace that is uncomfortable. I follow the Tao, cariño, and strive to be as water. I flow without routine to the lowest places. I do not choose the past most easily navigated. It demands that i flow along it.

Routines have to exist to facilitate improvement in any activity, but shuffling the details of those routines helps to slug time in the paunch, make it pause for you. Everyone needs for their mortality to stub its toe now and again.

Morality, too.

The bridge would collapse even before he got half-way, Shambal thought. He’d been thinking the same for years. Realistically, he’d been crossing said bridge for years. On the way to the center, the point at which he figured the collapse would occur, he’d been collecting. His mother had always told him to goal in life is to collect.

To accumulate.

His feelings now were not just presentiments. He could actually see the absolute center. The apex was obvious because his life was a simple one: A series of crests, each of varying heights, that wore him thinner in preparation for a collapse at the peak.

In a sense, his life was only a half-bridge. He had no intention of descending in ease and good-humour the more or less descending second half. Nah. At the zenith was the place to climax. In slumber and in waking, that climax meant loosing every drop of accumulation.

His mother would have been proud at his accumulation. To accumulate is to be divine. So, in the proper manner of his fore-folks, and being the last in a long line of hoarders, the universe will welcome the imminent explosion. Possessions will rain down into the abyss. The wretched wraiths below will scrabble for the shattered pieces - the ones who are not pummelled by weighty debris.

His mother would have been proud, but she was dead. Or perhaps she is among the wraiths now, waiting to snatch greedily at the air as bits and pieces she once owned hail from the sky. If this is the case, Shambal can see her spittle run down a chin fouled by tough, white whiskers. She has that silver chain in her left hand. It fell directly into her left hand. The amber pendant swings listlessly. Two drops of spittle patter soundlessly in the dust.

Every crest on the way to the top has been a mini-goal of accumulation. At times, these accumulations have been literal, but mostly they consisted of filling empty vessels in his spirit with assembled stones. Once assembled, these stones were static. They did nothing but sat in his chest and on one hand augmented his stamina and strained muscles, but on the other weighed more than solely physically.

Easily, upon each crest, he could have lain stones aside. Then, at the apex, he could look back and see his marked progress. He could even colour each completed stone according to whatever aesthetic an individual climb had instilled in him. He never did so.

His discrete goals stayed with him as eventual burdens. And, as over each hill he went, to lay any of them aside seemed more and more of a task that to carry them all to the zenith.

Oh, what an explosion it will be!

Christián once again clarified his love of goals to me in a message a few hours ago. He had just left some sort of movie premier. Some of the actors (including Brenden Gleeson, woo hoo) were also there, and his titillation shown through even in messages. I resisted the urge to mock it. The urge was strong, however, since I have a deep hatred of star worship. The deification of celebrities is repugnant to me.

I can try to see it from Christián’s point of view. His apex, of course, is to be a successful, and therefore, famous opera singer. Or a rock singer. Or a writer. Or just about any sort of famous thing possible. I’d suggest to him to become a famous pursuer of sexual relations with goats, but he’d probably just laugh it off. Cunt.

He wrote this:

We seriously need to get our stories out there. The world thirsts for them.

And I replied:

It’s not really my objective to get my stories out there. the journey is much more important to me than any destination.

Impermanence pervades life. I admire the artists in San Sebastian who create sand sculptures and relish the moments when they are washed away by the tide. They build them purposefully below the tide-line. I respect these humans.

The idea of Shambal’s bridge is an echo of what I typed the other day about discrete points of life and goal-oriented living. I find it to be a terrible waste. To crush an existence to a number of points with the passages between being only means to those ends makes me at times literally weep.

I was raised like Shambal by a mother (and a stubborn, niggardly father) to create a life of discrete points. With what I have left, the journeys are for the savouring.

At times, phrases from songs have an astounding impact on me. For example, the subject of this entry is a line from a song from the Strawbs’s album Dragonfly. I am hearing this album for the first time in my existence. It is folky and predictable, but strangely nostalgic. Possibly, it recalls other Strawbs albums of which I used to listen often during the primeval years (1996 - 1999).

My mind shifts suddenly to Christopher Bender. We have not chatted in more than a week. The last few things I sent him could not have been decisive in any way, however, and I suspect he is a busy, house-purchasing boy. Yes, he is / has purchased a new house in Wellington.

A very vivid dream haunted me. Brynn had bought tickets for ME to see Bruce Springsteen in New Zealand. Time was short and my flight was leaving within weeks. I don’t think I was to meet her there. She simply supplied the tickets. Why New Zealand besides the fact that Bender-Boy lives there? Images of an unknown aeroport strobe in my mind. Most likely, it is a collage of images for multitudinous aeroports assembled into some haunting ideal.

I used to love aeroports.

Perhaps I still do. At least, I enjoy occupying them. The feeling of rivers sweeping round me as I sit with a beer at a pricey bar entices me. I used to write during these times. That gradually morphed into sending absurd messages to whomever might be willing to read and reply.

However, in an aeroport in London (Heathrow?), I awaited a flight to the states. I was sitting in a restaurant sipping (guzzling?) a beer and writing on Mustela-ermina. That laptop now sits in a chest-of-drawers in my ex-room in the ex-house of my dead grandmother. Had I it here, it would be running some sort of Arch.

In that restaurant, I wrote plenty. It is one of the last times I recall writing in such a situation clearly. I was overjoyed. Emotions rush back with such memories. I even rememeber, without searching for entries from that day in the Martenblog, that I was listening to one of the albums (probably the first) by Fripp and Summers. And I recall writing about listening to that album. Urk.

One of the last things I sent to Christopher was a link to a recent entry in the Martenblog. In fact, one from a week or so ago. I was still writing on my unnamed Raspberry Pi then. My mood has markedly improved. Creativity has not spiked, but my routine has subsumed it. Many improvements can be made, for sure, and for one I have not accomplished writing every day in the Martenblog. Nor do I practise guitar every day. I did manage a hurdle today, however, by doing so whilst Marisa was still in the house. It is Saturday, after all, and her days off work are filled with constant scurrying.

WORK

WORK

SHRIVEL

I’m not complaining because she did not bat an eye at me practising gueetar whilst she furthered damaging her back working in the garden. At this moment, she is in the trastero below rooting through whatever there is to root through down there, punishing the knotted muscles in her lower back even more. To be idle is not a state she desires EVER. Her finite state machine merges that particular state with to be asleep and to be watching a film.

I’ve put the aforementioned album on random play along with Brother Where You Bound by Supertramp (one I had not heard in several years and never actually appreciated in detail - not that I am doing so currently, as the majority of my mind is focused on the screen before me and words coursing from my bouncing brain to my fingertips). They make an awkward couple. Then again, I am a fan of awkward couples. If it is possible for the two to grow to inhabit each others’ lives in harmony, I belive such a coupling can be more fecund that one that starts simply on the same plot of earth. Harmony signifies mutual encouragement and cracks never forming that ooze emotional blackmail.

Fuck emotional blackmail.

Keep your mouth closed and embrace the simple life. You will live carefree until the end of your days. If you try to talk your way into a better life, there will be no end to your troubles.

For a great deal of my life, I have been a talker. I find that as the ages pass, silence is more and more my friend. I remember once what my friend Ellen once said in the common room of the house on Enfield. She said that especially when many people occupy a conversation, the space is too filled, too jumbled - heavy with words. She chose to stay silent. It is certainly better to try to sort through a tangle of threads than contribute one of your own to entwine among the others even more messily.

I have always preferred one-on-one conversations.

A rather elitist viewpoint could be this: The larger the group, the more the conversation tends towards the lowest common denominator. You’ve gotta keep the slowest dude up on things, don’t ya? Larger groups do split into smaller, intelligent clusters. I am a fan of this fragmentation. Still, most of the time, I sit alone with my thoughts, sorting through threads, occasionally disentangled from it all. I am oblivious.

I was accostomed to talking immediately about any topic assuming my brain would conjure a coherent flow. As the ages passed, I failed more and more. I became more and more quiet. Keeping my mouth shut was a large step away from my ego. Fuck my ego.

As I wrote recently, I am striving for a simple life. To exist only in the present is divine. This screen before me, beyond the keyboard sitting on the coffee table, is my lowly, burning campfire. A solitary pot sits atop it. Within the pot, a gruel is simmering. The result is unknown. The result does not need to be known. The process is more more important than the result.

I am learning that all things pass and accepting it. Watching my past beliefs crumble is satisfying. The satisfaction, however, is not a feeling of vengence in defeating the ideals my upbringing instilled in me. It is a slow contentment. I can pass the hours without time.

So, I used to be a talker. Is writing in this god-forsaken blog the substitute? An argument could be made for this point of view. The blog is, after all, online for all to read. Though I publish (but never advertise) every entry, the process is what moves me.

One result of writing has been poignant in my life. Like a medicine, it heals me psychologically. During the journey between the first letters and the last mark of punctuation, I am filled with a liveliness. Sleep is shrugged away. Apathy is kicked in the kidneys. Those kidneys fall out and are later eaten by British immigrants. An analogy is vomiting. No. That is not a very good analogy, actually. The process of vomiting is quite unpleasant. It is the antithesis of a healing process. My analogy is wrong. Please behead me. Or just take my kidneys and feed them to British immigrants.

The question of who Shambal is and what he means in my life floats amid the debris of countless other queries without worth. But to be without worth is to be weak. And to be weak is to conquer. Shambal is a vehicle. The fact that I took the original concept from Christián does not matter. His Shambal is a creature of virility. Mine is weak. In the end, he is absorbed by a stone. His insecurity and fears prey on him. But by being prey, his journey has more satisfaction. His end is desolation, but finality is the same as ceasing to exist. A goal oriented life is a life of discrete points. Everything between said points is meaningless to such a being. My Shambal is a creature of the moment. He is eternally on a roller-coaster. He is eternally on that roller-coaster because he never thinks about discrete points, of finalities. Therefore, he is always alive.

On Reddit a few minutes ago, a thread about Kurt Vonnegut piqued my interest. I shall re-acquire what siezed my interest and place it below this line.

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies, he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

I like to look at Shambal like this: He is riding in a small bubble through a static universe. He has infinite places to visit and infinite time to visit them. The concept of rush or deadline or goal does not exist. In his context, they words are meaningless. In fact, my previous sentence including the word visit also has little sense. Discrete points are not available. Life is a fuzzy wave. Remembering is even not important.

Ride that wave, you bugger, and bask.

The room is dim but for my trusty blue LED lamp on the coffee table in front of me and the television which serves as the monitor for the Raspberry Pi I have not (yet) named. The fact that I have not named the beast is unusual. I have had an obsession with naming inanimate objects for the whole of my life. Well, that is an exaggeration, so I’ll proffer a good deal of my lifetime, instead.

The room is dim except for a lamp and a whitewashed television screen. Since instead of observing my surroundings, I was writing a sequence out of a tepid fantasy, the LEDs from the squarish alarm device more or less below the television also counts as a light emitting source.

And Dunaj has just begun on my headphones. ’Tis a thrilling song.

The room is pitch black if I purposely omit the influence of my blue, LED lamp in front of me and slightly to my right (let’s say at 72 degrees), the television sweltering with brightness directly ahead, and three, green LEDs on the face of the alarm apparatus. Consequently, the house telephone shows the time (20:50) in dim, bluish numerals (plus a colon) directly beneath the alarm apparatus.

The room is still particularly dim, however.

Between the minutes of 18.00 and 19.30, evening is slowly eaten by night. My senses dull along with this consumption as if the encroaching darkness nibbled at my forebrain. For as long as I can recall, this has been the case. One remedy is to, early in the process, provide artificial illumination of a modest to full spectrum variety.

My chump of a blue, LED lamp makes a mediocre job of it.

The room is dimmer, as the television, responding to the lack of stimulus fed from my unnamed Raspberry Pi when said pi itself receives neither stimulus from the keyboard at 88 degrees nor from the mouse at 74 degrees.

The last three days has had me listening to Ruins, especially the album beginning with the letters Hyder. I could look up the rest, but by doing so, I’d stimulate my unnamed Raspberry Pi and therefore the slumbering television. It’s response would be to vomit decidedly non - full spectrum light at me. No way, dude.

I had perused Ruins albums in the past and distinctly recall walking through Letna northwards on that tram-lined street that knew my steps so often. In fact, one song from the album Burning Stone is titled Praha in Spring. It grooves mightily. I must have been living with Habosh at the time, or with Pavel (was that his name?). I suspect the former, however.

Hyderomastgroning…

I have just been informed that in cinco minutos, más no something is going to occur. I didn’t quite catch was exactly that is going to be, but I shall conclude for the sake of my rancid navel.

Indeed, the bacon is frying amid cumin. I will always recall that Acy’s love of bacon is unequalled. Or at least WAS unequalled. I ponder at times whether it was the reason for Ramona’s departure. One of several, I suspect. Relationships are the gradual accumulation of disdain. Miniscule granules lump together to eventually be indistinguishable.

I am reminded of a conversation that Acy and I had in the back, screened-in kitchen of his place in Austin. (Note: A place that is missed - a fantastic place - one I regret I’ll never see again) I was probably cooking some sort of bratwurst and the topic of spinach came up. He comforted me in the thought that if I eat enough of it, I’ll die of vitamin a poisoning. Ha! How many cubic meters a day, Ace-man?

Regardless of his overreaching need to prove his correctness scientifically, Acy is charming and a person that I dearly miss. That bastard should come to Spain. Now!

A possibly viral incessant cough arrived in Marisa’s pecho last night. Now, she lies in bed, suffering. Her voice is nearly gone, ragged. It did not help that her children yesterday created a situation of nefarious stress. Miguel elected to take María and the perro (Uriel, no known as Charlie) to Ezcaray with the vehicle in which Uriel is forbidden.

Miguel seems to buck his mother’s wishes at every slight bend of the corridor these days. In my opinion, it is the direct result of his relationship with Andrea.

Andrea is a controladora, an only child on which attention was always heaped. She knows little of any other life. One is reminded that all of this is from my observations and therefore my opinion. I continue. She has Miguel wrapped in a shroud of fear - the fear of irking her in any manner whatsoever.

Yesterday, Marisa told me that María told her (yeah - indirection) that Miguel is afraid to speak out to Andrea’s face and that he retains his ire to explode upon his friends and family. Well, she only mentioned family, but I know from experience that anyone in a social circle that at any time excludes the perpetrator (Andrea, in this case) becomes a victim.

Marisa has also told me several times that Miguel is the stereotypical good son (cue the Sylvian tune). Whether this means, as the first child, he was babied during his life so far by his mother or just behaved ideally or a combination, I am not completely sure. The conclusion is, Andrea being his first serious relationship, his behaviour has remained the same, but the mother role has been transferred. If this is the case, she has total control over Miguel without the forgiving, understanding attitude of Marisa.

I search my memory for my adolescence. I could not tell anything of my own ire or even more miniscule feelings to my parents in fear of reprisal. The situation is similar, as they had no perception of leniency or forgiveness. I digress.

Marisa furthered her opinion by stating that Andrea is poison to the family, in general. I’d further this by adding to anyone she disapproves of in his life.

Somebody needs to slap that whore around.

I am sitting on my bed as Marisa softly coughs beside me. She is playing a game on her mobile. Perhaps it is Pet Rescue Saga or something similar. It entertains her. It relaxes her. She definitely needs it after the stress her children caused her today.

Also, I am downloading an image of Archbang linux to test. I am of the opinion that I will like it, being minimal and supposedly very quick, and shall replace Ubuntu on galictis-vittata. I’ll have that mustelid back in my arms on Monday or Tuesday. Well, so I hope. Bastards.

I realize that I will never know true silence. The ringing in my ears prevents it. Have I ever known it in my lifetime? Surely at some point in Fort Stockton, it presented itself to me. I spent much time on the outskirts of things, literally and figuratively. I’d gamble both of my kidneys, my liver, my larynx, left femur and all of the pine martens in Canada, however, with the assurance that in my casa in good ol’ Fort Fucking Stockton, Tejas, there existed to silence.

The television blared perpetually.

And usually it was American Football - a constant favourite. My days visiting my parents during the last years confirms my win in this gamble. Noise pollution from the tele punches forcefully through the door of my pseudo-bedroom and assaults me.

Deaf bastards.

What is the best manner in which to motivate myself in the morning? I once had a book that I bearly got into entitled The Artist’s Way. It suggested the concept of morning pages. I suppose that is exactly what this is since it is thirty-one minutes past nine in the morning. The writing should be free flowing, almost stream of consciousness. Or, rather exactly stream of consciousness. I get to an initial point.

I feel particularly demotivated. I believe it is lack of stimulation, in general. I do my best with programming challenges, but they days rush by and I find I’ve little to be greatful for in the late evenings. I used to make lists of goals, but they rarely came to anything, so I’ll just mention here a few things I should do everyday without fail.

Though I am demotivated about my guitar playing and feel my course is in retrograde, it is a tool to creativity I should pick up and pluck every day without fail. Without fail, you fuck. I’ll go ahead and call this a morning page and can write every day. It’s not difficult. Just put aside time, you cowardly cunt.

More generally, don’t interrupt yourself with menial tasks during creative or thoughtful periods. DO NOT come whenever Marisa calls. DO NOT be daunted. Openly say, I am in the middle of something at the moment. Give me time. Multitudinous articles point to concentration dissociation killing the creative brain.

I am fighting against the inevitable. Age and my years of alcoholism has atrophied my abilities to gush creative associations. I know this ability can be rebuilt, but the only means I am sure of is proper concentration. Do not let petty interruptions deter you, vole! Marisa lives in a world of constant distraction. She rushes from one task to another in a state of perpetual multitasking. Let in be known that multitasking is a detriment to anything resembling mental progress.

My original idea for this martenblog entry was a stream of consciousness ramble about Shambal Brambel. I was deterred by a stupidity: The hangouts app in my phone will not allow me to search through my conversation with Christián. Whilst I was waiting on the female medical persona that some may dub a doctor a few weeks back (sitting on the cold tile floor of the hallway outside her closed office), I wrote a few lines to Christián that could have made a jolly introduction to a short Shambal saga. I shall attempt once again to find them now. Note: This is not a distraction, but rather a furthering of my current endevour.

Shambal stood atop the hill. He was sihlouetted in the strange double moonlight. He surveyed his vast crew, their work now complete, their faces upturned and expectant.

~ You are the egalitarion goats ~ he smirked down at them.

~ I am your shaman. I say your job is done. So it is done.

~ Now die.

The spell that he cast was a simple one - one of words. They were not kind words. However, instead of rage, the crowd expressed slow bafflement. During those moments, they were all grannies on the drip. Unexpected words can be soporific. They woo the mind into foggy oblivion. The crowd knew not what it was. As well as ceasing to be individuals, they finally ceased to be Shambal’s flock at all. They became the mute sheep of another pasture.

His command die mayhap could not be taken completely literally, for any flock without a shepherd will wander away to unkept fields. The flock will gradually scatter and scattering means, like with any corporal being, disintegration. They were never individuals in the first place. They only became a proper entity in a clump. Cells die alone.

Shambal ambled back to his one room hut. The door hung open and he didn’t bother to close it after he went inside. The raw earth floor oozed a mossy odour. The sod walls and densly leafed roof accentuated humidity. He sweated freely. On the solitary table against the back wall was a book. He walked two meters to have a closer look, as he did every day after dismissing a flock. It was the only copy left on his world that he knew of. He had written it in another age for another age, in a time where pressing matters let individual sheep or cells survive longer outside of nurturing mobs.

He turned back the cover. It rose with a gooey sound like mucousy lips parting after slumber. A page came partly with it, then fell away silenty as it settled to the table. He saw what he saw every morning, less and less discontentedly every morning. Where paragraph upon paragraph once stared boldly back at him were only congealed smudges. His words had joined their own flock long ago.

A message to Christian earlier today, recorded for my own amusement in the distant future:

That being said (and what it was will be lost in time, like peacocks in the rain), I believe that doing laundry during the night is the correct moment to accomplish such an important task.

1. It allows you to prance around with an exposed, lye-caked penis as you do calisthenics in the neighbourhood.
2. It provides a time for zen-rapture as you stare at whorling linens whilst baked on quaaludes.
3. It earns you the respect of your landlord’s teenage daughter, who secretly wants you to scour her orifices with your raw, lye-mottled penis.
4. No shaving (the most boring process known to mustelidkind) is necessary.
5. There is no five.
6. Every time one of your pieces of linen is sufficiently clean, one member of any of the number of marching bands practising for the Easter parade in Logroño explodes into a shower of gore.
7. You grow an additional nipple on your left buttock.

Many broken souls should band together and write a self-help book entitled How To Raise A Gifted Child In A Hick Environment.

I have no conclusive evidence, though it would be rather simple to just put the question to Christian, but I am convinced that in the cesspool that is Cold Brook, New York, he was raised to believe he was a kind of prodigy. I remember snippets of conversations with this cesspool of a man roughly between 2004 and 2006 claiming genius-like abilities and guaranteeing success before the age of forty.

Well, he is forty now.

Heaping praises on children because of yet undeveloped ability is a curse. Expectations pile to form an insurmoutable mound. Most likely, tunelling through it would be more practical. Sluffing off the baggage of youth becomes harder with each passing year. My parents also promised me blinding future success. I was even presented with a plaque (of sorts) by my mother’s best friend that stated Scientest Bob. A portrait of a boy with a bubbling test tube in hand accompanied the declaration. Expectations were built from an early age.

And did I turn out to be some prodigy? No way, vole! Certainly, I chose a different path from most. That fact can be directly attributed to the expectations foisted on me during youth. There was even a time during Middle School when I rejected intellectual progress altogether. I recall telling my brother and my mother in the car on the way to school that I am not bothered by not being as intellectually competent as others. Not in exactly those words, most likely.

Christian took a path somewhere between mine and the one mapped out by his family’s encouragement. He entered the opera world and has worked in a number of places playing insignificant parts in insignificant productions. Nothing has lasted. A series of temporary jobs has been what Christian has waded through. He’s mostly turned to his obscene desire to produce lettuce products for cash. Well, that and borrowing from his family.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I’d suspect he also had the expectations of attaining and keeping any woman he selected. He saw himself as a type of superstar, able to elect as he liked from the seething mass of female-kind. The sting that was Sing dumping him came late in life - at the age of thirty nine. His attitude towards women hasn’t changed, so it was a lesson lost. Or it could be he is set in the ways his family molded him in.

I told him the other day in a message that at this point in my life I am happy to never accomplish any thing in the western sense of the word. I’ve slowly turned to my own hobbies and the satisfaction tiny successes bring. Just solving a difficult problem on 4clojure makes a half an hour / hour / day worth living.

(4clojure)

Small successes. No pressure. No expectations for a grand overture or finale. I like that.