Angelo Caroselli: Summer (1620s)

Downward And In
I cannot decide whether I'm aging or just imagining myself aging. I have so far failed to convince myself that I'm growing any older. I see old classmates pass by, obviously aged in my remarkably youthful eyes. I should know, I submitted to cataract surgery ages ago, but I survived. Nobody ever very well remembers the struggles they endured, just the moments within which they surprisingly managed to convince themselves again that they were probably not aging.

I continually need to resolve some fairly obvious deviations from expectations. I'm convinced that my father peers back at me from the shaving mirror each morning. I imagine my dexterity preserved regardless of the difficulties my doppleganger experiences when tromping through windfallen timber to access wild berries. I write almost as well now as I imagined myself writing when I first imagined that I might become a writer. My attention span seems better than it’s ever been, though I try hard to be in bed by nine. My experience-base from which I draw my stories approaches infinity, or so it seems.

My aches and pains still seem imaginary and, frankly, I pray that they always might. I can tolerate almost anything but bald-faced truth. At least paint a mustache on that baldfaced sucker, if only to render it baseline believable. I swear that I'm aging backward, feeling a little more innocent every morning and a tad more Clueless with each passing afternoon. We do not grow up and out, but downward and in.

——

Weekly Writing Summary

This FollowingChapters Story finds me overseeing the Disintegrating of our incumbent's grand vision for transforming our nation back into the Nineteenth Century again. It couldn't happen to a nicer person.

John Martin: Fall of the Walls of Jericho, from Illustrations of the Bible (1834)
"It would never raise a credible head again. It's done."
—
This FollowingChapters Story, Prafussee, finds me criticizing the "God Made Me Do It Defense." I'm offended when anyone attributes their sins to direction from their personal Lord and Savior. It seems equivalent to "The Voices In My Head Made Me Do It." How credible could that defense be?

William Blake: Frontispiece for "America a Prophecy" (1793)
"Anyone claiming today that God directs them has forgotten their history lessons, or they might just be a charlatan."
—
This FollowingChapters Story finds me watching a CityOfCards implode, and with it the illusions and lies that built it in the first place. Good riddance!

Lucas Vorsterman: Fighting farmers after a card game, 1619-1675 — Gallery Notes: Fighting farmers, after a card game. One holds a threshing flag and hits the other on the head, while another man tries to stop him. The other farmer has a pitchfork in his hands. A woman holds a jug and is prevented from hitting it by a man holding her wrist. In the foreground, a fallen bench, a jug, and a scattered deck of cards. In the background, a village.
" … the future refuses to disclose which castles topple next."
—
This FollowingChapters Story describes what inevitably occurs as a result of inflicting AntiPolicy on any complex system. AntiPolicy reliably produces only one result, the opposite of whatever it might espouse.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: A Cuckoo Against the Moon (c. 1843/46)
"They are their own worst enemies …
—
This FollowingChapters Story finds me focusing on the FalseFlags our incumbent uses instead of truths. He speaks exclusively in mirror images, meaning almost the opposite of whatever he says.

Johann Sadeler I: Micaiah and the False Prophets (16th-17th century)
"We're not quite there yet."
—
This FollowingChapters Story tells the tale of how I happened to become a writer and how I found myself Rediscovering a manuscript I thought I'd finished seven summers ago.

Ammi Phillips: Harriet Leavens [1802-1830] (c. 1815)
"…the direct eventual result of this writer writing."
— —
This was one curious writing week! It's never news when I find myself stumped when deciding what to write about, but mid-summer brings a special sort of mystery to people like me. After a long build from Spring, suddenly everything's no longer maturing but inexplicably mature. I suppose everything matures too quickly, like we fall in love too easily for it to ever last. I hustled my sorry butt and pulled a few stories out of the ethos this writing week. It felt like real work. I tried to shirk and, as usual, failed.

I began this writing week by noting that whatever edifice our sorry incumbent believed he was erecting has already begun inexorably Disintegrating. He squandered his last chance, thank heavens, and will not be recovering.

I next poked at the prophets who also seem too full of themselves to notice they're espousing shit. Anyone earnestly believing themselves to be a prophet might reasonably seek professional help interpreting their sorry Prafussee.

I then described the CityOfCards our incumbent has been attempting to construct and somehow preserve. It's crumbling.

I noted that those who oppose as their primary strategy tend to produce the opposite of their intentions. AntiPolicy most satisfies opponents.

I wondered what happens when an administration bases its efforts on FalseFlags. Even The Ancient Greeks understood that this was the reliable recipe for producing the opposite of whatever they intended.

I ended my Writing Week to revel in Rediscovery, reading through a manuscript I innocently believed I'd finished seven summers ago, only to find it back and delighting me for the first time all over again.

Thank you for following along as I wend my way through this scorching summertime!

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Tags: #FollowingChapters, #PureSchmaltz