Should I Make It?
I am not good at following through on my efforts.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to answer phones for my day job if I had been able to complete a few of my abandoned projects. Certainly, if even a couple of them had been completed, I would feel better about myself and my life.
I am grateful for the opportunity my day job affords me to do effective good. My work is serious enough to make a material difference in the quality of peoples lives. I have the responsibility to use my creative freedom to decide how best to communicate with the people I serve and the people working in various parts of our complicated system, and my success in doing so can very directly help people’s literal lives. When disappointment disturbs me, I tell myself that I’ve learned that I need to be doing something serious and real, that I would ultimately respect my self less if I got to do fun creative work for someone else’s petty commercial purposes.
Still, I’m frustrated by my inability turn my thoughts into external realities. There is a reward to creating something that is not tied to its popularity or to any benefit that may be earned from it. This is why I cannot, as someone I respect once suggested, be satisfied with writing my thoughts in journals and then leaving those journals in a dark drawer. I don't need to pursue recognition or money with my creative projects, but I need them to be real. They need to be completed and have a full existence outside of myself. They must be joined to the world, indexed and filed away among the thoughts and expressions that have come out from humanity.
Practically, this means that they have to be at least published on the Internet, even if I am the only who would ever look them up. It matters tremendously that someone hypothetically *could* find my creations and consider my thoughts, even if no one may ever do so.
It matters more to me that my ideas and unfulfilled dreams are unambiguously made real than that I have close friends to talk to about my life. Commiserating with friends can be a form of despair, wherein we affirm each other in the hopelessness of our dreams. Furthermore, I am always gripped by the fear that I continue to be a burden to those who have made the mistake of trying to really listen to me. Experience has taught me that I need to avoid confiding in people, because I simply don’t experience the natural sense of boundaries or innate measure of appropriateness that characterizes most people’s conversations.
That is why today I find myself in a familiar sprint. It’s morning, and I have to be at work in an hour. I had awakened reasonably early and had commenced a search for some information that I’m going to need to make progress on chores during my lunch break, which means I’ll be spending the time in more hateful phone calls in the unnecessarily bureaucratic systems that companies both large and small use to marginalize people and avoid their real needs. As part of such a company, I will be doing my best to be the difference, to pull strings for people however I can, to leave people with a tangible sense of a way forward and to follow through on my word. It’s so exhausting, and I don’t always live up to my resolution. I wonder whether or not the people I talk to on my lunch break are really trying to help me, whether anyone else really cares.
My motivation to persevere is strongly influenced by whether or not I have succeed in creating something real out of my life during the blurry smear of time that I have between clocking out and clocking back in. Whenever I successfully create something that is full and real, I receive a jolt of motivation that can help carry me through another draining day and the shuddering uncertainty of my life and personal security.
Publishing something on the Internet is not quite the only thing that makes me feel good in the morning. Other things help, such as practicing my Spanish or Esperanto. Yet finishing something and putting it out there is the most reliable and strongest motivational power-up that I know, and it is a benefit that I can give myself.
The ending is always ambiguous. In this fact there may be some hope. An incomplete mess is a failure. The failure to count the cost of idealism is a true failure. But when time has been spent creatively, and an honest thought is consequently given form and expression, then no doubt will ever be cast upon the completeness of the endeavor.
Maybe I'll even take a shower.
All That Memes
https://soundcloud.com/user-879896003/all-that-memes?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Engaging shadowy darkness again,
The captain of an enterprise
considered hope abandoned
When alien forms of plasma
ate the narrow bridge
That crossed the expanse of expression
for creatures somewhat like you,
Reluctantly daring to accept
the loss of a time of legends
To certain assimilation.
Seven rings’ burdens
Weighed upon the crew,
as the Watchers awakened to the ruse.
Red alert commences
as reactor cores heat
Beyond the melting point
of yellow dragons’ gold.
“Make it so,” commands
the man on the granite bridge,
And we shall simply walk.
This original poem is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The lead image is a screenshot from *A Plague Tale: Innocence* by Asobo Studio, 2019.
Naked Tree, Remember Me
I have a petition for you. I hope you will forgive the impertinence of this request.
I’ve come to you this morning, walking the forsaken paths, footsteps against the craggy ice. My face is veiled, and my wet breath clings to me. Twice I’ve fallen, my feet betraying me, and nigh again.
Now my knees bend, your bare branches covering my head. Here your high body rises from the frozen land receding around the circle described by your reach, the withered fruits of your good days preserved in their earthen encasing, mixed with the crumbling solid snow.
Dear Tree, please remember me.
Remember me, when you come into the Kingdom.
Remember me, when the cold is confined to its right place, when a permanent spring arrives, carrying the heraldry of the coronation of the Lord of the lands. Then the little birds will sing with words, sharing the sky. Even the broken stones of the ruined cities will take up their lofty mountain siblings’ shout, that the Messiah has returned.
Brother Tree, remember me, for the kingdom is of you. For you were called to secure the dry land against the boundaries of the lower seas. Late on the Third Day your ancestors received their domain, and rather than fading into legendary time, only a few junctures on the Tree of Life have mediated between your sapling ascent and the first dawn.
For the Jinn of the East and the Elves of the West have been named by my mortal ancestors, who from the wild-lands’ crabbed and fickle hands pried the sighs of death and life. When cruel Nature with her reedy voice ensnared the hide-bound footsteps of the dawn treaders, their dying gasps stirred the dust they returned to, and from the displaced earth arose the shapes of nymph and dryad, faërie and leshy and sidhe. These spirits of the primal Forest walked with the near descendants of Enoch, whose isolated longing was shared by the specters, while mortal dread wore your unchanging harmony. Thus we designed our elder brethren, and you lead us to our dreams.
But as long ere humanity’s first breath the elder forests grew in God’s sight, so you have ever remained—when the full corpus of human endeavors has been measured by its weight in timber, when the contorted remnant of the Machine has seized in comingled smoke and fog, when the great Wheel has spun off its axel and fallen into the Void, then the trees of the primary creation will by patient ascent reach eternity.
Then the King will walk down the highway maintained by mountain and forest, and so one day will step into this hollow. Therefore, my friend, I beg you to carry my mark, secured safely in your trunk, so that you may express my words to the Word Himself, although they are murky.
Naked Tree, remember me to God.
Remember that I existed, called out from Adam’s abashed lineage.
Remember my agonized examinations of forbidden sky and trodden ground.
Remember the home where I grew to be a man, between tree and stream.
Remember how my parents loved me, how their tribe came to be here within these aging Young Shores, where folk from all four lands have come to build houses.
Remember how I walked the river paths, from west to east and back again.
Remember how I loved the old tall tales and their little young, how I found them all contained within the old blue hymnal from the rack on the back of the pew by the side-aisle, when the sanctuary was still.
Remember how I feared the lack of need. Remember how I trembled at the laughter that echoed from stained yellow linoleum floors, which the glowing green stars could never reach.
Surely you do remember our good Earth, and this old and weather-beaten sod, our homeland. Please also remember my people.
Remember our fathers. Remember how they struggled to build upon this cold sod. Remember their poverty and their earnest rejoicing at the first foundation, before their pride.
Remember my father, and my grandfather, and his father before him. Remember how we used our small name to transnavigate valley falls, carrying obsolete calling cards to the silent generation.
Remember my mothers. Remember women who dared to live, though weeping in this valley of impossibility, bearing innocence in their arms though stabbed by sorrow through the heart. Remember how they continued giving until the docile hour of death.
Remember my grandmother, whom this last bygone year I lowered into this earth.
My fingers are stiff like the freezer sticks we sucked on her patio, ensheathed in frigid drained casings.
Flexing stiff joints, I numbly thumb open my father’s pocketknife. My breath mists on the stainless steel blade as I hold it before my blue eyes.
Dear tree, please accept this hypocrite’s mark. This small aperture in your flesh contains the symbol of cold iron, hammered into the wide embrace of your famous kinsman’s blade-wounded horizon-span.
I am not reconciliation of Law to Will. Rather, I’m a colloidal mixture of cowardice and exaggerated judicial care. I am not a word-sword, flying out from the mouth of Eternity to hack the mangy fruit of soul off of the untamed vine of spirit, or to uproot it from the soil of perception. I’m a page of the sleeping knight, attending by midnight the ghosts of insubstantiation while by day trudging through the snowstorm to catch the bountiful monarch. I am not a martyr, giving heart-blood to fertilize the flower garden in the baron uncle’s manor.
Memory retains medallions stamped by the imprint of possibility, corroded by the green tinge of the other sun. Grander landscapes await my little cousins, who will use old maps to discover a new valley and may conquer the highlands beyond. Here your long shadow points the way to a land beyond yesterday’s frost, promising that the days are lengthening. Please lend me your barren serenity.
Remember my dream of the Rood.
*Voice narration:*
https://soundcloud.com/user-879896003/dear-tree?si=b3b542b97ea64e8f8f95fc6a3660b21a&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
The text content of this work, as well as the audio recording, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Walking the Shadows
I see the shadows move around the bend.
Without an origin, they lack a destined fate.
I follow the street where pools of light meet
With depths of virginal darkness, late at night.
Inky blackness makes the forms
Shaped from gradients of Void-substance.
Nothing self-negates by making Being.
Creatures coalesce and scramble in periphery.
They swarm in the shadows and cover me.
Further along the dark-way.
Repeating patterns of motion lead me silently.
Unacknowledged, untouched, but surrounded by companions—I am.
A millennium elapses as the creatures impatiently squirm.
The night is old, as old as heathen folklore.
Discreetly the street has disappeared, drowned by abyss.
By darkness incarnate, creeping dogs and wyrms.
Time itself is motionless, however.
Night neither awaits nor consults it.
Anxious for nothing, the shadows sigh.
Communication builds into a wall, and I hear:
`I WAS NEVER YOUR GOD, AND YOU WERE NEVER ALONE.`
I look above the void at the voice’s compulsion.
There stands the Monument, crowning the hill.
Avenues of dark retreat, heavier than
Surrounding light. I walk the line.
Shadowlings diversify. They change but do not leave.
Glancing below, I see darkness lingering,
Knowing its hidden potential is wasted.
Each footstep sinks forward.
I come to the intersection of darkness and light.
They cannot unite for love or war, except
For the places where my footsteps have stirred them together.
I sit at the bank and dangle my feet, while I watch.
A Beginning
My words are the best that I have to give, and my ambition is to find a place where I am granted the people’s blessing to offer them.
I’m a thirty year-old man from the eclectic, chaotic, lovely little city of Utica in the middle of upstate New York. My homeland in the west of the Mohawk Valley, along the Eerie Canal, has got to be one of the most diverse places in the world, offering a home to many immigrants and refugees who speak many languages. My parents, however, are both from here, and I consider this region the most authentic and self-evident part of my identity.
I went to college for technology and currently have a clerical job with a hospital.
I am endeavoring to write in order to add my perspective to the accumulated human mythology that we have authored together since the dawn of time and that is now becoming increasingly tangible through the Internet. For that reason, cryptocurrency and the blockchain are yet another step in the development and material incarnation of existential meaning into objective life. To participate in these new technologies is not only to be a part of the tide of the future, but to participate in the continuing semantic legacy left to us by cultural narrative as that legacy moves forward into a new expression.
I consider myself to be a Christian existentialist. To me, to participate in the application of the blockchain and other new digital innovations is one way to plant seeds of glory that will grow up to be materially real in God’s kingdom. According to my belief, God’s kingdom will be really material and will be constructed out of objective scientific and cultural progress that has occurred in these eras of recorded human history as we know it, these ages of the world in which we are continually missing the mark and cannot realize the true potential and meaning of anything, these times in which we are constantly haunted by the sense of deprivation and insufficiency.
And so I will publish whatever fragments of my thoughts may be granted the grace to receive an expressible form, so long as my conscience allows me to do so.
I’d prefer to write fiction and poetry than to write articles and ruminations, since fiction and art seem to be often more honest than philosophy. I’d also like to write in the Esperanto language. The goals of the Esperanto movement accord with my own desire for a fair and neutral language where all the peoples of the Mohawk Valley could share their cultural heritage equally, even native English speakers like myself having something of specific character to offer. Esperanto is good for English, because English’s position as the *de facto* universal language robs it both of the use of its more elegant natural phraseology and also of its moral integrity.
Because of my belief that people’s expressed ideas are sacred, I always endeavor to support independent writers and creators. Since my early days of reviewing interactive fiction games and independently published novels, I’ve developed a long-form analytical review style that I’ve used to write about various kinds of media. I particularly like to discuss the implications of science fiction and fantasy story worlds.
Some of these reviews I have published on my static site blog that I have hosted off of my GitHub account. Web development has been a personal and professional interest of mine. I like to try all the different publishing platforms on the Web, trying to understand the most appropriate utility of each. https://www.transcendentdestinies.net/
Hello, **Read.cash**.
Here I am, as seen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-lee-7b6a46159/
Let’s help each other to contribute the best and most worthy of our ideas to this fantastic science fiction serial drama we’re all writing together.
What’s your powerful idea that you have never witnessed anyone else express properly anywhere? Express that truth if you can. At any rate, I’m wishing you every grace to live that truth as authentically as possible.
@strivenword
