The Mace, Junkie Bells, and other tripe writings by OTP deplorables :D

[StratBastard]

Oh that's funny!!

So... how might I procure a copy of the Requiem? I would very much like to read it.

Oh geez... I haven't seen one of those lying around since like forever. It's been at least 10 years since the last of them sold. No reprint of course LOL. In the literary world, if people don't already recognize your name, it's sloooow going. FAR more people know the name Phoenix Michaels in the music world than in the literary one. In fact, most who purchased my book were musicians who knew me from guitar videos on YouTube. You get 60K to 100K views on a guitar tripe video, it's a good opportunity to pitch your other tripe. Maybe one or two lying around in my storage locker... I'll take a peek next time I'm disposing of a hooker body.

I would post an excerpt, but the PDF files for the book aren't exactly jumping up and waving their arms. I was lucky to find Junkie Bells. You and I are never going to make it as librarians LOL.

[MountainGirl]

Oh geez... I haven't seen one of those lying around since like forever. It's been at least 10 years since the last of them sold. No reprint of course LOL. In the literary world, if people don't already recognize your name, it's sloooow going. FAR more people know the name Phoenix Michaels in the music world than in the literary one. In fact, most who purchased my book were musicians who knew me from guitar videos on YouTube. You get 60K to 100K views on a guitar tripe video, it's a good opportunity to pitch your other tripe. Maybe one or two lying around in my storage locker... I'll take a peek next time I'm disposing of a hooker body.

I would post an excerpt, but the PDF files for the book aren't exactly jumping up and waving their arms. I was lucky to find Junkie Bells. You and I are never going to make it as librarians LOL.

LOL boy you got that right!
How about this. Next time you're disposing of a hooker body, if I come to mind and you spot one, lemme know and we'll figure it out from there.

[TJC44]

Just finished The Mace. Great job, MG!

Now that you are settled in at Ten Oaks, are you going to take up the pen again?

[TJC44]

Strat,

Don't think that I'll read "Junkie Bells" to the little ones on Christmas Eve, but good work. Nice thing about being an elf, Bullets don't kill you. Maybe the kid can take the teeth left behind, and leave them for the Tooth Fairy.

OTP's got Talent

[MountainGirl]

Just finished The Mace. Great job, MG!

Now that you are settled in at Ten Oaks, are you going to take up the pen again?

Thanks sweet friend.

I truly don't know. I enjoy writing - but I'm really tired; these last few years have taken their toll and it's nicer than I can describe to just be here, with an incredible man, enjoying a relaxed life.

So glad you enjoyed the read; hope all is going well with you.

[MountainGirl]

Ok - I'm posting this here. Jordan Peterson is brilliant, imo, and this is worth a watch; mostly because it explains the difference between a constitutional republic (US) and a constitutional monarchy (UK)... i.e., we have 3 branches of govt, they have 3+1 (the same 3 and the symbolic 4th, which tempers the 3). He also details why he believes neither the monarchy, nor the Commonwealth, will survive QEII's passing.

[StratBastard]

Requiem For A Midlife Crisis

Epilogue

Part 1


Time is a bitch.

Humor me here for a moment, if you would, and I'll come to the point.

The amount of time which passed before we humans came into existence is staggering, even unmeasurable. Sure, with the science of geology we can utilize the radioactive isotope method of dating both earthly rocks and meteorites (think of these isotopes as "clocks in a rock', whose radioactive half-life and relative decay can help to identify their age) to determine the minimal age of the universe as best we can; at least 13 billion years old. At least this much time has passed since the "big bang", resulting in the ever-expanding universe we currently reside in. But it's also entirely possible that the universe itself has expanded and contracted billions of times, in an ever-repeating cycle which our very short lives and perspective cannot discern. Did time itself, reality itself, begin with the single explosion we posit several billions of years ago... just because that's about as far as our science can see? I somehow doubt it.

We look at "ancient" buildings with awed unawareness, thinking Holy Jeez... over 4000 years old! Amazing! It certainly can inspire thoughts as to our mortality, viewing structures which remain thousands of years beyond the life span of an entire culture. But the stone itself, from which these ancient people built these monuments, is the real wonder. This stack of sedimentary stones would laugh, if they were able, at our foolish arrogance with amused disdain. You think you know about time, my friend? We were formed from other more ancient rocks which were worn away slowly over an incredibly long period... after which we laid in beds for an additional several billion years to compress into our present form. You think you're seeing something here, but you see NOTHING.

The evidence of this fact is all around us, often just under our feet; our specie's entire existence is not even a single sip of air in the epic span of time which came before us, and which will likely continue long after our eventual demise. Our individual lives - a span, if we are lucky, of 70 years or so - are smaller, even infinitesimal.

The Earth has already experienced, before our arrival, 5 or 6 planet-wide extinction events, and they will continue to occur... a virus, an asteroid strike, or maybe a protracted ice age turning our little cosmic rock into a twirling snowball. People worry about overpopulation, pollution, climate change, and other similar concerns... joining recycling programs, buying electric cars, or limiting the size of their family and carbon footprint. I try to tell them the truth: that 1 billion years from now, the Earth won't even remember we were once here. Have 10 kids if you so desire, buy a gas guzzling SUV, and litter with impunity. Consume. Time will invariably make it all moot.

Nuclear waste? Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea whatsoever of the incredible amount of radiation released when the universe, and eventually the Earth itself, were initially formed? Yet enough time has passed it off as a mere memory to the Earth, and it certainly can easily recover from anything we might do. Dump that shit down the storm drains. It won't hurt the Earth, I can guarantee you.

When we worry about the planet, what we are really worrying about is ourselves, our civilization, our continued existence. It's a pointless endeavor which is destined to end... that's just the way it is. It is not merely a mathematical probability, it is a certainty; given the many opportunities over a sufficient amount of time, we are someday destined to experience extinction. A cosmic Santa, whipping his compliment of plasma reindeer mercilessly, is driving his sleigh relentlessly and inexorably... to deliver his malignant present to all of Earth's good little boys and girls: oblivion.

In my region, populated with hippies and new age spiritual aspirants, this perspective is usually met with stony faces and silence.
Their narrow perspectives in these matters render them disinclined to participate in such debates, so heavily invested as they are in their endeavors to "save the Earth"... with recycling, with solar panels, with committees. As you can well imagine, I haven't made many friends in the neighborhood.

It's just too big to wrap our heads around, and not very reassuring. Our existence is a mere drop of water in an endless ocean of time... a small and brief spark in the darkness of forever. An eternity passed before we arrived, and another will resume when we are gone. Who will remember?

Do I have a point here, you ask? I know, nobody really wants to hear this stuff... not even me. I've never been able, however, to really help myself.

Like everyone else, I suppose, I want to feel like my life had some meaning, some point. Has anything I've done had any impact on anything... considering not just the brevity of my own life, but also of the life span of our entire species? Was it all pointless? Or, conversely, is it even more vitally important to make a statement of considerable impact, considering our brief appearance upon the stage? I still don't know... and it vexes me terribly.

But I do know this; we are, all of us, going to be dead a very long time... eternities upon eternities. It's so vitally important, therefore, to know what it is you want and to try and hold onto it as long as you can... because there is simply nothing else.

Because time is a bitch.

[StratBastard]

Part 2

I am nearly 50 years old, approaching that venerable middle-aged milestone with the jaundiced eye of indifference. To say things have not gone too well would be an understatement indeed. I am aging rapidly, my illness preventing routine exercise or maintenance. My body has grown soft, my will to endeavor against the tide weakened. Regardless of any similar horrors possibly encountered by my contemporaries, there once was a man residing in me who would not have bent to these indignities. I find now that I simply don't care.

I think of her daily. Despite the years which have passed, I am often startled into the moment with a desperate angst; my woman is gone. She is no longer mine, I am no longer hers. The emptiness this brings will consume me for long moments, vanquishing from my mind whatever enterprise, great or small, I am attempting to endeavor.

I dream of her frequently, the scenario playing out similarly each time it occurs. In these dreams she resembles nothing like her actual beloved persona. She is instead resolute, even uncaring, preparing to either leave or commit an act which will induce me to make her go. Dreams observe no universal laws, and do not ask Einstein if it is possible to travel through time. Emotionally, they drag me back completely, with little difficulty, to the actual moment when my world caught fire. I awake weeping and heartbroken, my worst fears confirmed; I am alone here. She is long gone.

I have had ample time to consider how things might have been done differently, and certainly acknowledge my own culpability in bringing this about. I no longer torture myself with what might have been, or what avenues might have been left unpursued. The end results remain, like those aforementioned ancient stone ruins stubbornly resisting the millennia. The rest, for me now, is so much useless and irresolvable speculation.

I do know that my love frightened her in some manner which, perhaps, even she could not articulate. It was far better to relocate me to any number of realms in which she could find me more safely quantified. I was, she would sometimes say, merely sexually obsessed with her. Other times, she might say I was simply in a reckless stage. Finally, she would insist me uncapable or unwilling to understand that she was valueless, even execrable... and that I deserved much better. She held, at the core of it all, an unshakable certainty; that in time I would discover the flaw within myself which allowed me to love her.

My every fervent attempt to discredit this tenet would only serve to again assert my commitment and adoration, thus increasing - rather than decreasing - her level of alarm. A self-fulfilling prophesy, this conundrum defied my every effort to unravel it, becoming a wheel which would turn until it inevitably found a terrain which could not be traversed. Having declared my love a thousand ways, manifesting it in nearly everything I endeavored while with her, it remains to this day invalidated and unacknowledged. I am still denied that one small and miserly comfort... she never really knew. She never dared to believe how much I truly loved her.

Paradoxically, it was often very apparent at times that she did, indeed, love me. Forever scribbling in her journals, she would leave me lengthy missives describing her amorous investment and intent. Many were incredibly long... single spaced, filling both sides of the pages and into the margins as well. I received these all too frequently over the years, and for the longest time my heart would swell while I eagerly read them... her affirmation so precious to me, so needed. Towards the end, I would read them terrified, more and more certain they had become a hedge of sorts against her secret trespasses.

I do not think they are lies... at least not lies meant for me. Far too much effort over too many years was expended to produce these; something was at work here, some need to be fulfilled, a genuine intent. I know she has harbored suffocating guilt over her many transgressions, both real and imagined. Perhaps each new written declaration of her love and devotion gave her permission to stay, to start over with me and try, again, to be a person she thought might be lovable. They may have chronicled her inner struggle to become worthy of trust, while trying to reconcile also her inability to trust herself. It is unclear if the devoted woman she described in her many pages over the years embodied the person she wanted to be, or the person she thought I wanted her to be. I sometimes wonder if she ever knew herself.

I have kept them all, both the small notes and the thick letters. Handwritten in her unique signature, many are beautiful and deeply touching... so much so that I dare not look at them again. They are sequestered away, stored in an old trunk like rusting atomic warheads... too dangerous to touch, yet they can't be thrown away. Yellowing by now I am sure with time and despair, they will likely be thrown out someday by same casual hand sifting through the various articles of my estate.

If on that day I could only somehow be granted a small appeal, I would pass from this often abysmal life quietly and without complaint. To whom I might petition this plea, or, for that matter, might be inclined to grant it, I have no idea. There is no harm in asking for water while, say, crossing the desert... as long as you keep walking. It's just a bad idea to sit down and wait for it to appear. Such is the lesson from Water of Love.

I do not ask for Heaven, Nirvana, or any other such hereafter... nor would I plead for immortality. I wish for this and this alone; that the same force which transports me repeatedly to that aforementioned desolate dream be utilized, just once, to take me elsewhere.

There was a place once long ago, a simple city park... unremarkable as parks go, but pretty nice all the same. My beloved and I had gone there on a whim very early in our time together. She wore a long, thin skirt, a t-shirt, and nothing else... the weather unseasonably pleasant that day. I remember lovingly admiring her beauty as the afternoon sun shone through the thin fabric.

We walked some distance to the center of the grassy area, putting as much space as we could between ourselves and the peopled walkways, and stretched out entwined on the grass. She lay atop me, her lovely face framed by an impossibly blue October sky. We kissed, whispering our desire to be together always, preparing our plans to do so. I made her laugh as I did frequently... my jokes so old as to be fresh and new to her younger muse. But mostly we marveled: the impossible, the unexplainable had occurred. We both knew we had found, inexplicably, a treasure so profound and precious as to often render us stunned and mute.

She would look down on me, her emerald eyes returning my amazed regard for long and silent moments. Turning it over again and again in our hands, we remained simply astonished to merely be touching it.

Love perhaps had made us bold, or maybe we just wanted one more secret to share outside the awareness of others. Sprawled above me, her long flowing skirt obscuring any possible detection, her hand disappeared momentarily to loosen my garments. Her eyes became liquid green dragon's fire as she maneuvered me into her body. I looked up at her and was lost forever... as I so remain.

We eventually came to regard our mating as a macrocosm of that single day... we walked together with our bounty heedless and unheeded. No one, not anyone we knew intimately, not complete strangers passed on the avenues, NO ONE had any perception of what we held together in our hands and hearts. It was not our secret... it was much more than that. It was simply imperceivable to others, unknowable, intended for we two only. Nobody understood why we were together, or what it might mean... and we simply did not care, all such concerns becoming mere trifles at best.

Just that small handful of moments, that momentous and blissful single day, when I could see in her eyes that I was no longer adrift alone in the universe... and that through her eyes and her love I could share it with another.

It's such a small thing to ask, but I know to just keep walking.

[MountainGirl]

Strat -

Back in 1991, while attending UNL, I was responsible for procuring materials for a large NSF grant for a 2-week summer camp designed to keep young girls interested in science & technology. One of the perks for the girls was they were to be able to keep the provided computers, to continue their studies & keep in touch with other participants, etc. At the end of the program, the University decided no, they didn't get to keep the promised computers after all. I was livid. So angry in fact that I resigned from the project, withdrew from UNL, and wouldn't even drive past the University for two years. It was my first experience with large-scale institutional insanity and the anger consumed me.

A few years later (and the reason I'm telling you this) I ran into my mentor from UNL, who was also part of that project, and told her it was difficult to not get pissed every time I thought about it. What she told me in reply changed my life. The essence of her words were precisely what you have conveyed in your Part 1. For me, then and there, the penny dropped. Perspective returned, the anger was gone.

Perhaps others have benefited from your words as well. I'm guessing yes.

Like everyone else, I suppose, I want to feel like my life had some meaning, some point. Has anything I've done had any impact on anything... considering not just the brevity of my own life, but also of the life span of our entire species? Was it all pointless? Or, conversely, is it even more vitally important to make a statement of considerable impact, considering our brief appearance upon the stage? I still don't know... and it vexes me terribly.

But I do know this; we are, all of us, going to be dead a very long time... eternities upon eternities. It's so vitally important, therefore, to know what it is you want and to try and hold onto it as long as you can... because there is simply nothing else.

Because time is a bitch.

Time is also a gift - because it is the great leveler.

Every action and reaction, every moment of change, in this universe, whether it's ours or geologic, is one of simultaneous creation and destruction; both, same time.

Because of this - there is no stagnation and our ability to perceive time enables us to understand the truth of your words: It's so vitally important, therefore, to know what it is you want and to try and hold onto it as long as you can... because there is simply nothing else.

Or so it seems to me.

Shortly I'll read your Part 2 ~

[MountainGirl]

Strat -
Before I read Part 2 - I just want to say how good your writing is. The flow is awesome, direction kept, nothing tedious whatsoever. You are either a natural writer, or a natural editor; likely both. Really enjoying your words here. Thank you.