beset by confusion, despair, and sadness. the operations of the Family have worked once again to thwart any efforts to step bravely into the future with a clear mind and a full heart. the details are of no concern for this; besides, who couldn’t guess, given that all happy families are alike insofar as they don’t exist. bad parents; distant siblings; tensions denied, for the sake of what limited time there is, that inevitably break when the slightest excess stress is applied. and now, even with several days remove, the resultant inner turmoil, always present but usually imperceptible, will not settle.

or perhaps the operation known as the Family, despite all appearances to the contrary, are actually aimed towards some improvement? there is no escaping the saṅkhāra of familial influence. what if, instead of pretending that unhappiness doesn’t lie beneath all this flailing, it is better to keep unhappiness firmly in mind? wouldn’t it, by definition, make it easier to be fully present if the facade of cheery friendliness were dropped and a surly discontent allowed to shine through every action–which it does, regardless of whether the ego acknowledges it as such?

enough of this vague suggestion. ahead still lies confusion and despair. it’s best to admit it. the labyrinth of fate and free will isn’t navigable by reason alone.

I want to learn more and more how to see what is necessary in things as what is beautiful in them—thus I will be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on! I do not want to wage war against ugliness. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse the accusers. Let looking away be my only negation! And, all in all and on the whole: some day I want only to be a Yes-sayer!

The Gay Science (276), Friedrich Nietzsche

recent things:

The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, Brand New I loaded up my iPod with whatever music I still had from years ago, back when I managed my own music library before Spotify. as of Saturday I will no longer have a paid Spotify account. petty as it may be, the latest $1 hike in subscription rate was enough to get me to finally cut ties to the satanic company that’s pureeing the popular music industry into grey goo and ruining everyone’s ability to meaningfully listening to music. it’s forcing me to revisit albums I haven’t heard in many years, already a kind of radical change, since the instant access to ALL MUSIC EVER had me relistening to things less and seeking out new but ultimately ephemeral things more. The Devil and God, despite (or because of) Jesse Lacey’s failings as a man, still scratches deep into my soul, with acute observations, daring turns of phrases, and way more Kierkegaardian angst than any of Brand New’s 2000s emo compatriots ever mustered. it’s a truly breathtaking record–and now I can listen to it without that 15 cents ever making it into Lacey’s pocket!

Almost Killed Me, The Hold Steady this album is good, some of the songs are great. Craig Finn’s got a short story writer’s sensibility for detail and place. but some of his lyrical tics get tiresome: saying someone “looks just like” any number of famous personages, the accumulation of which never quite add up to any gestalt; too many oh-so-clever plays on words like “I’ve been trying to get people to call me Johnny Rotten; but people keep calling me Freddie Fresh.” Separation Sunday irons out a lot of these more precocious tendencies in favor of more focused character development.

Warlock, Oakley Hall one of the best novels I’ve read in a long while. it’s not often nowadays that I read something and immediately feel the characters carving out space in my mind. the intricate snaking of the three male leads, Tom Morgan, Johnny Ganon, Clay Blaisedell, who each quaver around and yet never succeed in being honorable men, is a thing of beauty, to say nothing of how carefully rendered the politics of Warlock are or the wide-screen documentary perspective Hall brings to the near-mythic story of the OK Corral. Blood Meridian may lay bare the occult strangeness of the American West, but Warlock gives us the hard, dusty truth it. I can’t recommend this novel highly enough.

Happening, Annie Ernaux at the start of this novella I was like “okay, yeah, story bout a girl who has to get an abortion, I think I get it,” and by the end I was like “Jesus fucking Christ this is brutal.” which, very typically male of me, I know.

Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa

In addition to the actual script, Kurosawa at this stage often produced extensive, fantastically detailed notes to elaborate his vision. For example, for Seven Samurai, he created six notebooks with (among many other things) detailed biographies of the samurai, including what they wore and ate, how they walked, talked and behaved when greeted, and even how each tied his shoes. For the 101 peasant characters in the film, he created a registry consisting of 23 families and instructed the performers playing these roles to live and work as these “families” for the duration of shooting.

wikipedia