Intermittent Journal

October 17, 2021

True things. I want to be a writer, a web designer, a bassist, an artist, a yogi.


August 30, 2019

I follow a yoga channel on YouTube run by Adriene Mischler, who says "Heyo" when she makes a risqué joke. I also love The Fifth Element, so when they overlapped, it made me laugh so much. This is from Valérian and Laureline by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.

a pic of the bande dessinée Valérian and Laureline by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières

Also, I'm binge watching The 100 again.


February 18, 2019

Where did I go? I'm not sure I could thread together the big waves of life things that have passed since I wrote last. I finished season one of Mr. Robot - it's a relief somewhat. My stomach for tense things has gone down these past few years.

I kept thinking of how actors like Christian Slater are, for me at least, original cannon, whereas someone like Chris Hemsworth is just a guy from New South Wales who is also an actor. I like them both, but it's not the same. It's like when Stephen King, through the narrator in The Body as it appeared in Stand By Me, says that nobody has the kind of friends later in life that you get to have when you're 12.

I was about 12 when I saw The Name of the Rose for the first time. I've watched a few Chris Hemsworth movies in the past year and really enjoyed them. It's just not the same. The depth of experience is different. When I was 12, I spent a lot of time feeling the importance of the chipped paint on the inside of my schoolbus, and was overwhelmed while watching the news with my parents. Now, I seek out the news, and paint is just paint.

Where did I go after that? Has it been more of the same? I try to keep a routine so I won't get overwhelmed by all the things I set myself to do. I missed a couple of weeks of the news, and I'm still trying to become a daily newspaper reader. Every time I finally get myself to read it, I am happy I did. Just like exercise, I guess. That is going okay - yoga online, daily, and I'm still gung ho for it.

Part of my daily routine is to read one or two pages of books from what I call my "Don't be an asshole" stack, and one of those books turned up a real gem today that hits at the heart of where I'm focused at the moment:

Just as the satellite dish scoops from space an astounding plethora of channels, so, too, does modern life offer us an astonishing array of diversions. Overindulged in, the media world becomes toxic to our art, flooding it with a surplus of information and detail. Underencountered, the world of affairs whirls past us as a dizzying confusion. We can feel too helpless and too underinformed to take our place as citizens. Each of us must determine for ourselves, and in the light of our own creative productivity, the amount and the type of outside information we can allow to enter our sphere. It is a matter of experimentation.

Julia Cameron, from The Sound of Paper: Starting from Scratch

Underencountered.


January 29, 2019

I started watching Mr. Robot last night for the first time. I was hooked on Rami Malek's excellent delivery of some very funny, deadpan lines, and I liked how instantly recognizable Christan Slater was.

So far, I've picked up references to House of Cards, Fight Club, and The Matrix, and I'm wondering if that's how this will be throughout - glancing off other stories like billiard balls. I wonder how dark this is going to get, too.

I also finished the audio of Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane. I like how the opening of Rachel's character was like the unfolding of a really well-made, well-folded map. I wonder what it felt like for him to write that. Good, I hope.

On a totally different note, Happy Birthday to Lisa Desjardins!


January 27, 2019

I read this the other day and it really got me. Maybe you'll identify.

"You don't grow up gradually. You grow up in short bursts at pivotal moments, by suddenly realizing how ignorant and immature you are."

Robert D. Kaplan, from In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond

I'm feeling that right now. Maybe I'm headed into another period of growth.


January 26, 2019

I've had the I'm gonnas for a while now and it's time I got moving on this.

I've been trying to keep up with the news, but invariably I get busy with something or the evening news has a story in it that upsets me and I end up taking a break for a few days or a week or so. Then I'm scrambling to catch up.

Honestly, I think it's a form of mild depression, brought on when I won't articulate how sad something made me (child separations, starving Yemenis, awful people being given the floor), or maybe it also has to do with a failure to recognize my own capacity for things. I always think I should be doing more.

Someone asked me once, when I bemoaned that I felt like parts of me were dying on the vine when I tried to focus on one or two things, "Are you even enjoying yourself?" Now that was a bombshell question and it helped me clarify my choices. Remembering what it's all about can really do that for you.

So, this about (this website) is getting some attention right now because I have a big project in mind and I want this to be my proving ground - the place where I learn all I need to learn to make it happen. Expect randomness.