not as bitter as before
Another day at home with a fever, cups of tea, feeling on the edge of reality. This is the best time to post an update. When the cares of the world seem distant. I am not as bitter as before. Although many of us can now see the trajectory things are going, and the carcrash there, we can also see that there are some curious lights far ahead in the tunnel, somewhere around the bend. Some of us might get there one day and have a look. That’s an encouraging thought.
I could delete forkword now, leaving it to exist on the wayback machine, until one day society moves on and it quietly winks out, like its author. Or perhaps i’ll gather some of my favourite parts into a book and publish it as a final, cleansing, act. But first i must try and discover a coherent narrative.
Things have changed since i started making blog websites, culminating in this one, to support my poetry around 2006 or so. I used to wander around the internet wondering where everyone was. First of all they were in the newsgroups, then in the comments sections under blogs and news articles. Now it’s clear that they are all on social media. So that’s where i spend most of my time online too — twitter rather than facebook, posting poetry to reddit sometimes, instagram to follow musicians and oddballs. Tumblr before the people left. But they are not on blog websites. This site feels more like a museum than a living thing.
I used to think i had interesting things to say, now i’m not so sure about that. They are still just about interesting to me. But I now understand better the many competing demands on the time of random internet strangers. Unpicking the many threads of my thoughts and creations requires dedication, and who has time for that anymore? Even I hardly have time for it. My energy wanes, and it’s not just today’s fever burning me up like a pyre.
2020 feels like such a big year. I think we will each of us deserve a prize simply for getting to the end of it. And then we will deserve an even bigger prize for getting to the end of 2021.
What is my role in this? Writing a song? Keeping my family happy and healthy? Keeping my cool while all around is ruin? Hopefully i will finish my Sanskrit studies at ANU in 2020. Then my degree will be more than 90% done, whatever that means in the schemes. And I will still not understand much Sanskrit, that is absolutely certain.
My pleasures today are other people’s music, the buzz of the online, watching my children grow (of course), and a few close special friends and family.
Seeing nature suffer through this hot bushfire summer has been incredibly painful to me. Many of my favourite places are now incinerated. I doubt i will see the reef before it too, is much damaged by the heating.
My way of dealing with this is to turn inward where there is no world and only consciousness-bliss exists. And then i turn outward and I do what needs to be done. That is enough.
