Reality: The Affectation

Well, gosh darn it, we seem to be nearing the lateral end of November. I was charitably poked the other day and reminded that one of my chief duties is to cook up brain matter to splash judiciously on this page. Someone wanders off from writing an already sporadic-as-hell blog for a few months, and the readers of said page naturally assume a failing of purpose, a waning of vital force; yet here I be, quite alive, the better for a dozen strange sojourns, & straining at the seams with cogitation. Expect a few bumps and bramble-scrapings 'afore this post terminates. I'm listening to a lovely sludgy psych thing called Mr. Flood's Party, & it's manning my nerves for the immediate present.

Have moved back to Michigan, and spent several months adjusting to a very different (yet oddly familiar) new existence. All seems well as the snow begins to fall in graceful, mild quantity...very different than the desert, here. It took me a month to fully compute and integrate the sheer abundance of trees & green life, and then there was a long lingering Autumn, with mild but everlasting rust colors spilling over the hills (odd, I always thought of the area as flatter). I'm prepared for the coming crystalline flood, only slightly apprehensive, but the old Nordic blood is beginning to boil a little. I grit my teeth and exhale a cloud whenever I step out the door. There are no cacti in sight.

So, in short, 2015: the Year I Hurtled. I came up to Michigan twice on visits, then executed a full cross-country move with my boyfriend and his nephew. Settled back into the house I lived in before I went away to college, and have been gradually unfurling my senses. Always odd to come back to a town you've lived away from for many years, odder still if it's altered as much as TC; it was always a tourist-fed community, but it seems the ol' berg has exploded into something of a boomtown. The two-lane road that ran near my house ten years ago has swelled into a five-lane monstrosity. There's a tantalizing array of restaurants and about two-trillion locally made beers, a genuinely bustling downtown district, etc etc...the half/mask prosperity of inspired gentrification. I believe the new season of South Park addresses the phenomena with abundant causticness.

However, prosperity is prosperity. There's a lot of dedicated artistic energy being focused here. And the lakes, forests & dunes are every bit as beautiful as they have been declared in countless magazines. I merely observe, & do not complain (tho railing about the yearly influx of 'Fudgies' is a hallowed local tradition, after all!).

On to business: I know there are a few people very interested to know what happens to Kelrob and Jacobson in the next installment of The Magistricide. I've been spending a large amount of energy adapting to my new, very-different-than-a-trailer-perched-on-the-edge-of-reality existence; however, I have been doing some very devout, if periodic, writing. Much of my effort has been poured into a series of weird fantastical tales, which I'm hoping to polish and submit for zine publication in the next year. I've hacked at The Curse of Roc-Thalian, which has gotten itself into a very gooey, horrible flow - I definitely seem to be fusing elements of horror & fantasy with larger interpersonal arcs, & have hope for the book, though I doubt it will see print before early-to-mid 2016. I know I swore to get it published by October of this year, & admit the deadline became a somewhat uncomfortable lodestone in the midst of drastically & concretely altering my life. However, the book is mostly writ, and my editor (remember that friendly poke mentioned above?) is currently looking it over. With the luck of Dionysus and the fetid blessings of Nyarlathotep, the third installment of The Magistricide will burst into the world slightly before the leaves & flowers, along with a trickle of shorter fiction.

I've got more to relate; expect increased clutter on this page in future days. Lots of thoughts ricocheting in me brainpan: Lovecraft (& L. Sprague de Camp's rather infamous bio of him), Clark Ashton Smith (found a beautiful - but overpriced - hardbound book of his in town, drooled & walked away), krautrock (currently listening to later Kraan, which is kinda like disco-prog), getting the podcast up and humming, the fact that people have been rationalized out of an understanding of magic, allowing them to be constantly enspelled by corporate wizardry, downed Russian planes & the viscera left behind by suicide vests (Always remember, War ain't good for business: War IS business!), & a host of other glandular secretions desirous of being expressed in language. In short: The Curse of Roc-Thalian still being written. Also writing a host of odd and depraved little fictions. Have moved to Michigan, unified my family, & am prepared to endure the coming freeze-out. Also I like using &s now, apparently......AFFECTATION?

..........reality is an affectation. G'night n' talk soon.

Kindly Afterthought:

“Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.”- Alan W. Watts