Happy, happy day. Yesterday and today I have been out on the town, hunting and searching for a number of sci-fi classics from authors I have been following lately, and at the end of the day I am reflecting on the great success I have been able to find. Here they are:
Extremely happy to now possess these in a format that no company, no contract, no media rights garbage could ever take away from me. They're mine to the end of my own life and for that, I praise and adore physical media.
In addition, I am simply gassed to proudly own the physical works of Harlan Ellison. He is my hero, in the literary realm as well as (selectively) in life in general. I dont' follow all his ways, but the man had a veritable slurry of things to admire, from personal ethos to ironclad attitude towards the industries of media. A lot could be said about him but he will always have my infinite respect for standing to fight for his right to so eloquently voice his infinitely unique visions of the world around him.
Today I also saw a early-print copy of The Word for World is Forest, by Ursula K Le Guin. If not for the $100 price tag I would happily have that in my little budding collection as well. Doing some research on it has piqued my interest and it'll be one that, sometime in the future, I will probably acquire.
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In other news, it's been a good weekend. I heard from a friend I lost contact with recently, one whom I was very happy to have known in a very hard time in my life. I also had another horrendous dream about my cat, this time having to desperately run through a ramshackle waterpark in the midst of a monsoon to find her trapped in the roof of the entrance building to a jungle-themed waterslide. Upon getting ahold of her she assumed a rigidly upright position and began crying like a human child. Again, I woke up to pet her and banish my dream-begotten mental maladies. She is doing just fine to this very stoke of the key, I'm relieved to say. I hope the dreams bear no meaning.
I've also been contemplating religion lately and will likely have another post up in Reflective Writing that pertains to that. Thus concludes this entry.
I'm finally deciding to write blog entries here. Attempting HTML even in the most barebones fashion in which I intend to use it has proven to be quite the mental block. A larger mental block even still is actually sitting my ass down and writing. Motivation has been scarce and what's worse is that I'm becoming addicted to these daydreams of one day achieving a career in writing, maybe even a well-known one. Dreams of fame can end up being toxic to a fledgeling interest that one would pursue. When you daydream of being this famous writer and having a backlog of absolute gold, sitting to write and not liking what comes out destroys that illusion which, for me, is like sticking an iron rod into the spokes of the entire process.
I need to stop doing that crap. Daydreams are the enemy. They are the forces that bind one to eternal obscurity, never once truly extracting from themselves what it really takes to be not good at something initially, then improving, and slowly climbing the mountaintop. Someone who spends their entire life climbing from mediocrity to one day reach a height nobody would've thought possible at the start has infinitely more value than a talented do-nothing.
Anyway. It's not over yet. But that's something I'm going to start doing for myself. Dreaming of that book signing I may one day sit at, to a roomfull of adoring fans? Shoot it down. Wishing for the interviews, for thousands to hang on my every word? Shoot it down. The money? Train circle and fire, that shit needs to end desperately.
It's honestly extremely pretentious, too. This is my shadow, as Carl Jung would call it. I consciously desire to be humble, virtuous, honest and simple. Fully ensconsed in a pool of admirable traits. And yet this too feeds the shadow. I long desperately for approval from people at large. I crave it, I desire it, I fixate on it, against my strongest wanting not to. It's embarassing, and yet, here I am, even in this moment, writing this so that someone will look at it and maybe endorse feelings of admiration at my deep levels of honestly and bravery at baring it all here.
Well, you know how they say the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference? Such is the case here. I think the only real way to get over these pretentious and self-obsessed feelings is to stop caring, and just pursue the medium for its own sake. Maybe a trip to Nepal is in order. Desire is truly the root of suffering, the Buddhists know well and the rest of us would be wise to seriously consider that thought.
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In other news, today I went running and feel good. My addiction to nicotine usually has me feeling like crap but with a bit of exercise I can be rid of the bodily pains it causes. I may elaborate more on that another day, denial of inner feelings takes on a whole other level when it comes to medical concerns. But let that not worry you, dear reader. I would not be able to get moving and run a mile and a half in roughly 11 minutes time if I were at serious risk of anything.
My sweet cat, Terra, just nimbly jumped from the edge of my bed onto the armrest of my recliner and is now laying on my torso. I love her very much. I had a nightmare about her recently that involved her getting ran over by a vehicle, after which she took on an appearance of having the front part of her body look distorted and mangled, as though it had been compressed and crushed, her forelegs completely missing. She was desperately wandering through an unfamiliar yard when I found her, and her meows sounded weak and frail, and as though being passed through a long metal can. It made my heart unfathomably ache to see her like that, and then she hopped onto a fence post and began to stumble, then fall off. I reached quickly and desperately to try and catch her, but she wriggled as I tried to grab her and fell directly on her head. Her skull cracked and she remained alive, but only barely. I picked her up and began to wail and wail within the dream, screaming "Why, why, why" to a bleak world that would not answer. It was overcast.
I awoke in a terror and immediately reached for her, and thankfully she was right next to me, safe and sound. I got up and held her close, banishing the terrors of that awful dream, until she would have no more and hopped off the bed.