You know, 2022 was a bad year. 2022 was also a good year. Just like 2016 and every year before and after it. Some things we can point to and say, “Yep, that is bad.” And other things we can point to and say, “I am filled with an emotion I can barely describe because I am looking into the eyes of my child and the feeling of connectedness to all things beautiful and brutal in the world is devoured by this moment of realization that everything I think is insignificant in comparison to everything this human will do.”
The world is cold sometimes and then there are glimmers of real beauty. You wake up sometimes in a great mood and the sun is perfect and the humidity-to-heat ratio is just right in January and it’s seventy-some degrees and it’s just perfect. You can enjoy a beer in a plastic cup that you’ll throw into a recycle bin and eventually end up in a landfill anyway. Just like you. You can’t stay buried forever. And all of the sudden that warm day January is actually the last good feeling you’ll have all day because that warm day January is going to kill you and everything you love and all life on the planet because you just can’t get enough beer and the bar you go to only pours in plastic cups now because COVID was a good excuse to stop paying a barback to grab and wash them and it just gets worse from there. You’re the one throwing tires into the tire fire. You’re why pandas are dying.
We can spiral. We can float. We can be clear-eyed and stoic. We can be all those things at once and we can be none of those things. But we will be all of those things some of the time. And that’s 2023, baby. That’s the way it’s going to be.
I’m trying, y’all. I’m trying to appreciate the beauty in the world and drown out the voice in my head screaming about everything else. I’m trying.
XCRMNTMNTN is coming out in March. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I heard, once when I listening in on a bunch of smart people at a poetry reading, that Nabokov said that literature should be a game. I don’t know if he said that. I don’t really read interviews (except for that John Swartzwelder one in the New Yorker) but I think that’s a good idea. XCRMNTMNTN plays games. I’m sure compared to Nabokov’s chess games, XCRMNTMNTN plays Checkers but it was fun nonetheless. Support the Ghoulish Kickstarter here to get your copy or you can pre-order here.
I will get back to updating regularly! Thanks for reading!
Shit, that's beautiful.
Looking forward to reading XCRMNTMNTN.
Brilliant!