There's a heavy tension behind this silence. Everyone seems angry, even though they're just quiet. Inviting words makes it clear that they harbor no ill will, their light and shimmering voices belying some innocence, but the silence returns my suspicion. I know it's only a reflection of myself. It's only the weather that I'm much too sensitive to.
We're preparing for the apocalypse. Vacuum-sealing packs of beans, rice, sugar, salt, flour, cornmeal, pasta. Dry goods, spices, basic commodities, fuel, and some things we can barter for a greater value. We suspect the monetary system may collapse, so gold and silver are important. We have plenty of bullets, guns, knives, and knowledge of hunting, fishing, skinning, tanning, butchery, and basic survival skills between us. Honestly, I don't have much of those things, but I believe in my instinct. There may be time to learn, motivation to learn, and room for trial and error. And surviving that way in a cabin isn't that complicated. You're working on the bottom tier of the hierarchy of needs, and discounting electricity as an option. We've got little guides to salt curing and smoking meats, and in an ideal world, we'd each have our own truck to take up there. I doubt I'd want to stay long, regardless of how bad it gets. Either there's no problem, the world either stays as it is and I learn to cope, or it actually improves, in which case, there'd be no need to stay on the mountain, or else it will truly be armageddon, and nothing we do will matter. Fuck it. The world's handing you a chance to die with impunity, offering it on a silver platter, so just shut up and take it.
I haven't been able to write very well lately. I've experienced a great dearth of ideas or a complete unwillingness to elaborate. Maybe it was both. I've thought that I should read more, learn story structure a bit better, work within the ancient archetypes, try to write escapism rather than always examining myself. But I take for granted that any art is an examination of the self, and that putting it on display to the world will show off all the things you wouldn't want to say. It's just another silly facet of my paranoia. Even so, I believe that is one of the reasons I can rarely make it past 1000 words. It may have also been my horrible excuse for a book that I wrote a couple of years ago.
I pick up styles by osmosis. It's good and bad; I only pick up the superficial qualities of a voice, but not the subtler genius of actually directing a narrative. I think I was unable to appreciate it until a few years ago, even though I've been reading since I was three. It's sort of like watching movies since you're born, but only seeing Jean Claude Van Damme and Pauley Shore and Whoopi Goldberg until you turn 20. I did get into more advanced stuff out of high school, but I've been reading on the Internet too much. And most of what I read is non-fiction, DIY, self-instruction sort of stuff. I have to keep up credits for my certification right now, so I go a long time between reading fiction, and it tends to be bite-sized, like Happy Cruelty Day! or Razor Wire Pubic Hair. (There is the odd erotica, come to think of it, but those are rarely by award-winning authors.) Cracked and E2 are clogging me up a bit, possibly. It may be kind of an addiction.
Reading deprivation can do me good, but when I do, I just go for a walk, play guitar, draw, paint... I've started to hate words. I hate concrete thoughts, and I long for the abstract primordial space where all these phantom sounds and shapes get pulled from. Words are the worst choice for escapism. And all this introspective stuff ruins escapism. That's what I love about Razor Wire Pubic Hair -- there's lamps powered by fucking, human sex dolls straight out of H.R. Giger's wet dreams, a society really based on sex, not like our money-powered world. It's on Eraserhead Press for crying out loud. It's what Jhonen Vasquez would read if he wasn't asexual. It's such an awesome retreat from not only our everyday reality, but sanity itself. The pretense of sanity I have to maintain. Anime used to be good at that, but somehow, somewhere they got corrupted. I mean, You're Under Arrest was incredibly mundane, but it was still fucked up in such a subtle way that I could watch a bit of it, at least.
I need to connect to people again. Leave my house, put myself out there. I'm getting better at it, but everyone else isn't. I'm not sure I need to change. I'll try to invite some people out, start meeting regularly, draw and be friends, have a fancy love-in. I'm bored. I feel like I'm waiting. There's nothing left to wait for, but I'm waiting all the same. I don't think it'll happen. We won't have to go to the mountain. But the world won't improve, either. Everything will work as it does now. Maybe I'll change. Maybe it'll make more sense to me. That sounds like I'm inviting insanity. There's no other way to describe it.
I went for a walk today, just when it started to rain. I can feel something on a day like this, and I remember it very well. This is normal to me. Clear days aren't. Since I was a kid I didn't understand why everyone called sunny days "beautiful", and snowy and rainy days "dreary" or frightful. I may really need Vitamin D, since I only go out when the Sun is hidden, and I like to keep my arms covered, and the rest of the time I'm in doors. I meant to look up the symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency, but I forgot. All I did today was shred and go for a walk. I might have sat around thinking, paced around, sang for a bit. I spoke to the neighbor about hardware stores and security clearances. I did nothing substantial, and I don't care. It's only an observation of fact, not a judgment.