RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Friday, February 4

Friday Love/Hate

I hate, absolutely hate being incapacitated like I have been. It has been nearly three weeks since I first bed-ridded myself, and my nature is not to sit still much at all. Today I was feeling better, and walked through the yard twice, plus stood around the house inside a lot. Tonight that made me feel like parts of my organs were falling south through my crotch. I am done with it. But I’m not. Frustration is a motherfucker, and I am a frustrated motherfucker.

I love the strange world we live though. I have a friend dumpster diving for my pigs tomorrow. That’s really the only thing I could think of. People are bringing us food, which is really great and I appreciate it, but I am craving all the bad things in life. I want to wander back roads to weird defunct steel mining towns and eat at shitty Chinese buffets and take pictures of railroad tracks beside smokestacks. Shit man, I’ve started taking pictures of things from my bed, which is a very difficult canvas to continue to find inspiration. At least my narcotic prescription ran out so I have my brain back to full functionality, though this boring as fuck love/hate probably is not a testament to it. Oh well… I thought I would’ve wrote 9 novels by now while laid up, but it’s been physically impossible to stay comfortable for more than an hour or two on the best days of the past three weeks. I ain’t bitching, because most all the world has it worse than me. And this whole thing had kinda been a test for me to make sure the path I’ve chosen to switch up on in the past three or four months is the path I really want… and it is. Fuck you World. I’m gonna take your ass down. Bully me all you want, but I got you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my water bottle is empty, so I’m going to take four minutes to wiggle my way upright off the couch, take four minutes to walk the twelve or so normal steps around the corner into the next room to the refrigerator, think how I want something to eat but not be able to bend down to open the bottom crisper with baby carrots in it, so I’ll eat a cheese stick, take four minutes back to my couch aka nighttime bed, position myself to be barely comfortable, click the button on the remote to see what time it is and how long it’s been since I took Advil or Tylenol, focus on whatever Iron Chef episode is now on my TV screen… (By the way, BIG motherfuckin’ UPS to Russ Mac in Georgia for sending all those DVDs a while back. I never actually watched too much of the Iron Chefs, but have been working my way through them all this week. I want to have that book out too, to full-on nerd out, but I only remember at night when everyone’s asleep and it’s in the peach crate by the toilet below where I can reach. Yeah, I can’t even put socks on right now.) Then I’ll sleep uncomfortably for a little while, wake up, let the internet make me a little stupider for a few minutes, click the Iron Chef back to whatever episode I fell asleep on, and repeat it all, in a slightly different order. In the morning, I’ll be really afraid the toddler is gonna come running in and Superfly Snuka me (like she has done already) so I’ll wake up with the light outside the window and uncomfortable wait for everybody to wake up, when I’ll relocate to the bedroom bed, read a few short stories, think about how awesome this short story I’ve been planning in my head is about someone doing asemic writing in an abandoned school, think about how I’d like to just do that in that old hospital in Staunton by the Frontier Culture Museum rather than write a story, then I’ll think about the hospital and how awesome old abandoned mental institutions are and why they intrigue me so much, which is probably because in the olden days they would’ve just put me there, which would probably be cool because then I could just draw pictures with soot like James Castle or actually do asemic writing all over my walls except I’d be restrained physically so they’d give me paper and probably an electric pencil and I’d make weird drawings like that instead. I actually filled about ten pages of a notebook trying to work up a new personal graffiti font because I don’t like the one I naturally have developed as it’s not cholo enough. I got some good things going on early, but was having trouble with the second row of letters (H-N) from that toy I learned my alphabet from as a kid, which I still divide the alphabet up by (A-G, H-N, O-T, U-Z). And I really didn’t want to skip rows, so I just worked on A through G a whole fucking lot because I just couldn’t wrap my head around a good way to do an H. That’s part of the problem right there, trying to “wrap my head” around something instead of letting my head unleash itself upon the dilemma. We are too filled with false knowledges about minor things to really allow ourselves to unleash anymore. I am not sure where I am going with this – probably nowhere, just rambling, like always, but without a point, like often. But my ass is starting to hurt so I’m going to shut down the laptop and shift myself painfully about two inches one way, an inch back the other, and see how Hiroyuki Sakai and this French dude do in this lamb battle. I’ll probably fall asleep and wake up craving Aladdin’s from Richmond circa 1996, but hey, my mind, it’s a fucking thing, what which lets things in and shakes around like Boggle and then things come back out and I just go, “Hmmm, intriguing idea,” and then worry about work because there’s so much to do when I get back.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I feel we should consider the way we may die as that may foretell the way we are next alive.

Anonymous said...

And that makes me think of owls

Anonymous said...

I spose I meant determines whether if we live. Unfortunately I am Ernest in frame of mind

Mike Porkchops said...

Shut up. Death is final, fag. So do what the fuck you have to do here, now.

Anonymous said...

Haha that's the attitude I'm looking for right on