Sometime during January of 2025, I wrote a list of resolutions. It’s not something I do often because I am aware that I will follow them for only a short period of time before falling into other more, for lack of a better word, comfortable routines. I feel now that I should go over them to see if they pertain to my current situation in life.

1. No more than 1700 calories a day until February.

This can be easily modified, of course, to read No more than 1700 calories a day until August or somesuch. It’s most probably not doable, however. Several factors point towards failure. We’ll certainly be traveling in July, at least twice. We go to Berlin to see Marillion and possibly to hang with Jayrope. Traveling is the antithesis of discipline in a dietary sense, especially when said diet tends towards ketosis. The sheer proliferation of sacharidy in foodstuffs distributed to shops small, large and everything in between is staggering. In fact, I shall stand up and stagger now in honor of how staggering the fact truly is. I suspect that humanity is addicted to sacharidy.

A few days ago, I met with a fellow denizen of Mastodon appropriately named Lee. I also met with his woman (I believe it to have been his woman, but one can never be sure and I did not ask any specific questions concerning their relationship). We sat just outside the café along the street on an uneven wooden table of the sort one sometimes sees in public parks. A portion of our conversation centered on contrasts between hunter-gatherer “cultures” as opposed to those imprisoned in rigid hierarchies birthed from the dawn of agriculture. He seemed to agree with my tenet about the consequences of the agricultural revolution. It was the step that humanity never should have taken - at least on the scale that it did. It signaled the death of cooperative cultures (the hunter-gatherers) who lived in small, intelligent, mobile groups, and prompted the rise of despots who snatched at any opportunity for power. A hierarchical system arose from the stagnation of a culture being rooted.

Lee did inform me, however, that there still exist, especially in southeast Asia, multitudinous disparate hunter-gatherer clans peppered through the mountainscapes. I was surprised and somewhat gladdened. Therefore our Ouky Douky rendezvous ended on a positive note and not in a circular discussion about how humanity is a seething morass of cancer engulfing itself and the planet. Not that it isn’t, of course.

What was the purpose of this detour in my writing? Ah! The hunter-gatherers, as opposed to the ones rotting on an echelon loosely bound to an arbitrary branch of the festering weed of agriculture, certainly had an easier time avoiding sacharidy. It was just part of the lifestyle, volečku, or perhaps still is part of the lifestyle for those peppered amongst the mountainscapes of southeast Asia.

2. Write something every day

I currently do not have a problem following this resolution. I have been semi-consistent about Daily Notes in Obsidian, plus I scribe from time to time directly to my Nostr account which is tied directly to my personal Nostr node which is a part of the infinite branching structure that glistens through the cosmos unlike the drooping, pestilent weed of agriculture.

Of course, without the drooping, pestilent weed of agriculture, I wouldn’t be sipping on my delicious ranní napoj. Or, rather, my delicious Ajran from Hamakom. Also, had the drooping, pestilent weed of agriculture never sprouted from the kind earth that was never keen to birth it in the first place, I’d’ve never existed at all! How delightful!

(Ajran from Hamakom)

3. Practise or improvise something every day

There is a distinction between working on a piece of music - a process that may include learning and then repeating a guitar part twenty seven million four hundred eight thousand two hundred and eighteen times in order to play it correctly into the virtual tape machine - and actually placing oneself into beta state and practising the guitar. I must admit that today I have not (yet) placed myself into beta state and practised the guitar. However, I intend to do so, and even before this abomination of a blog entry is complete! In fact, I’ll do it now!

(Two days later - of practising constantly - no food - no sleep - naturally!)

4. No new equipment for at least six months unless it is to replace something vital

The question that is begged in number four is what equipment exactly is vital? I lately found that my tone is most probably the most vital thing of all and since I do not use an amp, I have to have a certain collection of pedals in a certain order to maintain the tone that is important to me for the timbrel thurk of my compositions. Currently, and all of these are absolutely vital, the pedal chain that creates my tone is thus: Basic Audio Scarab -> Spaceman Redstone -> Fairfield Circuitry Shallow Water -> Zen Drive -> Empress Compressor. I’m sure multitudinous other pedals in my vast array are also vital, come to think of it. El Capistan, Red Panda Particle, to conjure two from the void of my mind.

All that being stated in a ponderous paragraph, I should do my best to heed my past self’s advice. I recently purchased a Bass Guitar that I’ve yet to give a name to and a Hydrasynth, also still without a moniker. I have a persistent mental itch to just say fuck um and also buy an Isla Electronics S2400. I have however so far resisted raking my ragged fingernails along that itch.

5. Speak my mind to my parents always

This is moot, as my mother kicked it last July and my father a month ago. Honestly, it was a resolution that was very difficult to keep during my time in the eternal cleft anus that is Seminole, Texas. My childhood and teenage years weighed heavily on me during the eight months I was “stranded” there. I suppose that in a way, my childhood and teenage years will always weigh heavily on me. One can never wholly escape from a time in life when one was constantly berated, perpetually castigated for being nothing but who one truly was - a soul searching for its own direction in the universe within the context of an environment that was dreadfully hostile to creativity, intellect, and any behavior that made one stand apart from the flock.

My parents never wanted me to speak my mind. My parents wanted me to speak what they expect to hear. They never cared for me. They cared for an eidolon of me that they constructed when I was very young, far before my early teens. That was the Bob they loved and certainly not the man that Bob evolved into.

6. Have a concrete plan for the next step in life by March. Remember this is a fresh beginning

When I first wrote these resolutions, I was waking up at five (approximately) every morning and immediately studying Japanese. It was fun. I was happy. I was in Seminole, yes, but during those dark early hours, I was happy memorizing Katakana, Japanese vocabulary and even a few Kanji. It was my pytel. I lay in bed with my neck skewed at an angle that Ivanečka would surely (rightly) criticize now. I studied. I was happy.

My next step in life was to the north-west. I was saving money, slowly but surely. My goal was Sitka, Alaska and then eventually across the Pacific to Japan. What were my concrete plans? I know some sort of boat was involved. I had even begun learning the basics of sailing, at least theoretically. I planned to take a course in Seattle before heading to Alaska late one evening to watch the reddening twilight never quite end for the second time in all of my accursed years. I imagined myself in Sitka. I imagined myself setting up a rudimentary studio there and eventually having a primitive studio on a sailboat. I’m still not sure how realistic that would be were I to actually use the sailboat to spend time on the open ocean. Salt could play hell with electronics over time.

None of this ever came to pass.

I was still thorax deep in my relationship with Martin and the work we were doing together. Oh! The Sperm Bank. I still have the code sitting around somewhere. Amusingly enough, they have since gone bankrupt. It doesn’t really surprise me given their disorganization and general ineptness with technology. Idiots. “Business men” with no technical training or know how or, better yet, no direct programming experience have no business telling people who actually know what they are doing what to do. It’s been the same story since I began my career as a developer in the 90s. The idiots who managed to talk some other semi-rich idiot into investing in their idea have dragged a troupe of developers along to carve a swath of their own failure through the decades. Idiots.

I was still thorax deep in my relationship with Martin and “work” we were doing together. We talked every day, in fact. I called him my friend back then. I’m not sure what he is now. Who knows? Most people in life simply come and go. The few that stick around through one’s torturous mood-swings, ups, downs, sideways sprints and dark downward spirals are the only ones in the end worth their gristle. Their thoraces smile back to you no matter the shambles of the situation.

I was still thorax deep in my relationship with Martin and the Sperm Bank. Somehow, he convinced me (or I partially convinced myself) that the correct direction for my life was to return to Praha - or, rather, for him it was move to Praha, as I don’t know how aware he was of the years I spent previously decades ago in this city. And so, slowly, I abandoned my Sitka and ultimately Japanese plans. I began replacing my morning studies with Czech. I found a Czech teacher online on a site called Preply. Her name was Ivana. We’re getting married next week.

7. Remember I have the right to be happy

Since childhood, I was told by my church and my parents (who were informed by my church) that I was meant to suffer, that my happiness was not a priority in anyone else’s point of view. The fact that it was important from my point of view just proved to everyone (especially to my parents) that I was a selfish, Godless wretch. It’s an awful way to grow up, but I think it is more common than people here (in the Czech Republic) might realize. The contrast is stark. I know that it does happen in the United States, too, but I believe it is a rarer phenomenon. Parents here openly encourage their children to pursue the goals in life that make them happy. They aren’t insistent on the old traditionalist ways of Son follows in the footsteps of Father or Son (or Daughter!) must go into a profession that is financially successful with the emphasis on exactly that: financial success. Though money is still relevant under the oppression of capitalism, it is not the driving force behind practically everything like it is in the hunk of pestilence that is the United States of “America”.

It’s directly against the tenets of my upbringing to be happy, or more specifically, to place my own happiness first. I realize there are compromises all humans must make to their own happiness so that other humans living with them, in their vicinity or on the other side of the goat-yard from them are also in some equalized state of happiness. But even in such cases, unless one insists on surrounding oneself with humans who amass misery and distribute it to themselves and upon all those living with them, in their vicinity or on the other side of the goat-yard from them, mostly mutual happinesses can be easily maintained.

So fuck you, Mom, and fuck you, Dad. I have the right to be happy.

8. Less TV series. More books. Two novels a month minimum sounds good

My reading style of late is one of creeping examination. I enjoy going over sentences and paragraphs again and again to taste the words and especially to taste the syntax and morphology of the expression. I don’t think I’m actually capable of reading two novels a month in this manner unless they are both particularly short novels. I just started something new, in fact. It’s by the Japanese author Kawakami and its name is Heaven. Or, rather, that is the translation of its name into my mother tongue. I began this novel two days ago and have only read perhaps six pages as I am tasting the syntax. I realize that the syntax I’m tasting is possibly more the translator’s syntax than the author’s syntax, but I’m still finding it delectable. I’m certainly gargling both of their semantics. It is a short novel. The other one I have by the same author (Breasts and Eggs) is also short. Let’s see if they both get read by the end of July.

I’ve begun a number of series over the last month and a half, but I’ve not finished them, excepting one German one whose name I refuse to reveal. The raw, reeking fact that I usually do not finish a series points blatantly towards what this resolution itself commands: read books instead of having some story thrown at you at the pace it dictates.

9. Be ruthless, even if it means at times being heartless

I created this resolution in the context of living with my parents. This ties intimately back to remember I have the right to be happy. During that period, which, as I’ve stated before, lasted eight months, I spent quite a bit of my energy every day maintaining patience. It was grueling. And yes, I did lose it a few times, but only a few. Mostly, on the outside, at least when I was with them, I maintained tranquility whilst fury raged in my mother’s chemically imbalanced brain.

A phrase I began using in my early 20s (or even earlier?) that described my mother’s treatment of other people (including my brother, my father, and me) was assassinating their personality. She spent more energy than I thought she had in her tiny body doing that very thing. She assassinated the personalities of pretty much everyone she came into contact with. Of course, she didn’t assassinate their personalities in front of them (unless the subject of the assassination was my father, my brother or me), but instead slandered them behind their backs. She even had stock phrases for people that she used to write off what they said or did. Doing such things is a logical fallacy - one of labeling - the act of dismissing the entirety of what a person says because they can be labeled a certain thing, regardless of the actual validity of what they state or represent. For example, my friend Acy was (and still is, I assume) big on researching events, situations, ideas, etc in depth and then drawing conclusions from that research. So, whenever my mother and I were having a discussion on anything, be it a rule at university, a traffic law, the way to prepare a meal or the more modern method of doing taxes (or paying bills) online and if I EVER brought up what my good friend Acy thought, she’d immediately follow up with a quip about Lawyer Acy. And that was that. It was as if saying Lawyer Acy completely dismissed anything Acy had to say, no matter its relevance.

At least I encountered this behavior early in life. That way I could suffer for a longer time under its oppression. Also, I instantly recognize it in other people, which can be a further source of suffering, especially when the labeling fallacy comes directly from someone I care about. When this happens, I further perpetuate my own suffering by flaying the perpetrator. I suffer whilst performing this act because I care about, or even love the perpetrator. After flaying this human whom I love alive, I place the jerking, quivering, and still mostly living body into a sarcophagus filled with photographs of various goats that I fancy. I seal the sarcophagus and then sit down in the vast cemetery to read a few pages of whatever novel I’m in the middle of.

10. No alcohol unless it’s an aperitif, and those only rarely. Especially no beer

This is genuinely amusing since yesterday, the day of my wedding, I drank between seven and nine (inclusive) beers with Michal whilst Ivanečka and Mirka enjoyed our company. It was thrilling! I had that amazing feeling I used to have back in the good ol days when I was in a semi-daze as I walked the infinite trudge between our place of residence in the “restaurant” and the toilet to empty my swollen bladder. Oh, nostalgia! But that was only a minor detail. That Ivanečka can coexist with mine and Michal’s ever joking state of tipsy mind for so long and honestly enjoy it amazes me. Looks like I found the best woman in the extant universe.

As for aparitifs, I really don’t do them and I am unsure why I even included that word in my resolutions a year and a half ago. It’s actually a filthy word used by wanna be tyrants to attract wanna-be apostles of tyrants. I shall do my very best to never use it again in my existence within the extant universe. My take on beer these days is that having a few during the day (probably not between seven to nine inclusive) is not particularly damaging (except to the general creative productivity of the day), but one must cease before evening and not fall to slumber before the alcohol has completely worn off

11. Less coffee. More tea

Yesterday I imbibed Lapsang Souchung. This morning I imbibed Genmaicha. I have not let the putrescence that is coffee pass between my lips since mid July last year.

I have noticed during my meandering existence that many of my friends, acquaintances, goat-buddies and parasitic hangers-on have quite the “time of it” letting go of their daily culinary luxury items. Yes, I dub coffee a luxury item. It is certainly not required for physical or mental survival in any meaningful sense. Of course, one can become addicted to caffeine (and become addicted quite easily, it seems, for some) and then coffee (or an adequate substitute such as cocaine or strychnine) seems to the addicted “individual” to become a necessity. Yes Ja Ano. But in my burbling opinion, it is still only a luxury. Addiction is best broken by abstinence unless the addicted one will stuff it by not continuing. If that’s the case, well, then the “addicted one” is in the hands of The Great Mamba, the ceramic goat sitting on the night table or the clairvoyant neighbour’s effigy of Ba’al. Said addicted varmint may choose from the three deity-ish entities.

Každopadně, many humans have a “time of it” letting go of their daily culinary luxuries. For example, I am greatly amused when a human walks into the exquisite dining hall of The Great Mamba, the ceramic goat sitting on the night table or the clairvoyant neighbour’s effigy of Ba’al and declares to all seated there the beginnings of, say, a ketogenic diet. Well, actually that is not the part that amuses me. I’m all for humans declaring any number of things in the exquisite dining hall of The Great Mamba, the ceramic goat sitting on the night table or the clairvoyant neighbour’s effigy of Ba’al. The amusing part is what comes afterwards. Many of these humans spend chunks of their day searching for or preparing foodstuffs that closely resemble or in some-way imitate non-ketogenic foodstuffs. An obvious example is anything of the sweet variety: sugared chowders, flapjacks, candied hamster kidneys, or any beverage that “requires” a “sweetener”. For myself, it seems much more simple to, for the duration of the diet, just eat meats, eggs, cheeses, lilek, cuketa, zelí and a hromada hnoje of greens and oils. The willpower of the masses seems to be a shallow splatter of liquid on the sunken floor of the public lavatory around the corner.

12. Patient, but ruthless

Living with my parents for eight months was always a balance between these two seeming extremes. I never wanted to openly fight with them about what I wanted in life and what my future would be, but it came to that a few times, as I mentioned. Mostly I had to insert into random conversations details about what I was about to do with my life. Absurdly, this even included when Bender-boy was visiting the “neighbourhood”. Our trip to Carlsbad Caverns nearly gave my mother an embolism. Or, rather, the idea of us driving for a few hours in highly dangerous West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico nearly gave her an embolism. According to her, the roads were swarming with drunk Mennonites. We would be lucky to get past Hobbs without being crushed by a pickup crossing the soil, weed and gravel space that divided the highway at an unmanageable velocity. I decided to just not mention that we were taking a road trip to Marfa, four and a half hours (or more?) distant from Seminole. The family drama it would have caused would not have been worth it.

In the end, I had to choose my own happiness. I was drowning from the moment I stuck the disfigured “index” toe of my right foot into the red, dusty gusts of West Texas on whatever day it was mid-October 2024. I am not a nurse, though I had to act like one more and more the longer I was with them. They came to expect it. By the time I departed for Praha on 15 June last year, the situation was dire and one could cut a rill through the tension in the air with a comatose yak.

13. Lakife

I have not done anything at all concerning Lakife since last spring. This is unfortunate and must be remedied at some point soon. The most direct solution to the problem is to just write some lyrics in Lakife or translate something into Lakife such as A Fool Fancying Cliches, an old song I want to recreate.

That brings me to the problem of current musicking. MUSICKING. That’s the way I spell it, vole. The Dissolving Pool album seems to be stuck. I am reorganizing my thoughts concerning how exactly to finish it. My conclusion is to excise a few pieces and use them for another album, leaving only the following ones:

• The Fen
• Hela Strolls Through the Botanical Gardens in St. Johns
• Řeka
• Molju Fekli Tzikon Xaj Mapu
• Gibbet

All of them are in some state of completion or at least progress. Their structures exist and most of the composition has been done. I just have to sit down with my more putrescent self and concoct a sound and / or timbrel idea for the album as a whole, then replay, perform the parts that need to be completed to that end. I’m sure I’ll end up abandoning the original TR-808 idea, except perhaps on parts of Gibbet where the bass drum timbre itself is essential.

The excised pieces of music will reside on the new album. New album, you say? Oh! What a surprise! I have spent monolithic chunks of my time “perfecting” Dobbs but as it seems like Christian is having a very difficult time completing his own parts, I shall pause my efforts, though there is not much to pause. The only piece that really needs anymore work is A Continual Undermining… and Christian has no part on that one. I’ve mused to myself time and again about possibly finding another vocalist, but without Christian, the album loses some of its identity in my mind. I just wish he would get to it. His desire to make music may not have waned, but his impetus has, for sure.

Každopadně, the excised pieces of music will reside on the new album. New album, you gawk? Oh! What a malodorous event! Many new pieces (some based on old ideas) have flowed easily from my hara of late and I have been quickly sketching and in some cases practically finishing them. It will therefore be:

• Protivný Pták nad Bouřičím Oceanem
• Sandra (excised from the aforementioned album)
• Sketch #1 (based on something I began writing at the beginning of 2019)
• Qat (excised from the aforementioned album)
• Shambal Drained of Fluids
• Tundra
• Encima de Gallarza (excised from the aforementioned album)
• Song for Ivanečka

14. Physics

I had a university textbook out and I was going through it like a klíště in a fat woman’s underpants. I wanted to relearn everything I had forgotten. Sadly, I shall not be getting back to this. Life requires narrowing. Hobbies require being consigned to the pit. One only has so much time for one’s passions. I choose the few that are the most important and everything else falls away. Fuck um.

I am so tired that I am sweating somnolent tears.

Trips of the length of the one I am currently on are extremely unpleasant. Hopefully I shall only have to go to Seminole at the most one more time in my life. From my point of view, living in a distant city with clear and easy connections (travel wise) to most other non po-dunk habitable zones, my father chose one of the worst possible places on earth to live. From his erstwhile point of view, of course, and existing in a tiny bubble, his life in Seminole was perhaps everything he ever wanted. I recall him telling me once that he regretted ever taking Ben or me on any trips at all because those trips put in our heads the desire to explore the “outer reaches”. He would’ve had to shield us from all media and literature, as well, however. But - naturally - there are people who do desire to remain in the shithole where they grew up or in another shithole that resembles the shithole where they grew up.

I’ll possibly be ill again once I’m back in Praha. I need rest. I’ve been awake for 21 hours. I miss Ivanečka. I miss Peiločja.

• Sleep
• Slumber
• Restfulness
• Inactivity that doesn’t involve sitting na letišti nebo v letadle.

Scratch my sticky brow / with maladroit pinkish paws / squinting stickily

My brain is clouded from lack of substantial sleep over the last two weeks - not just from the last 21 hours - so I am aware that making any decisions, and especially decisions of the variety that affect my immediate or even not too distant future in drastic ways is not advisable. However, the thought of moving to Munich at this moment seems both absurd and a little stupid, especially after being in Praha for less than a year. I know it is important to Ivanečka to be close to Luki during his initial stint at university (not everyone is like me - able to relocate and adapt within a few days to a wholly foreign environment), but uprooting myself again after all my careful considerations involving (finally) a semblance of stability feels almost physically painful. I’ll mention once again that my mind is a bit clouded by sleeplessness.

Over the endless epochs since my arrival on the planet, I have grown quite tired of a concept that many humans feel is somehow absolutely necessary. This concept is consistency.

Christian and I have talked over the years about a concept we call mental modules. Our mind is made of myriad modules that take turns as the protagonist in our consciousness. Some are more extroverted than others. Some are so introverted that they only carry out their meanderings backstage. But they all have influence on our so-called personality. I have mentioned the idea several times before, including here, tady and femole.

(here)
(tady)
(femole)

Given this idea, we consist of multitudinous selves that may or may not interact with one another. It sounds scrumptiously colloquially schizoid! My module with a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder is getting all sweaty as I type this, even if it is not the protago-module at the moment. The key is that the module that is mostly in the forefront should be able to keep competing (read - contradictory) modules at bay. One doesn’t want to never be able to make a clear decision, of course. Or, rather, I don’t want to never be able to make a clear decision. I can’t speak for all humans, all of which have within myriad modules swimming in their subconscious soup. Some may be just fine not being able to ever make a clear decision. But I find myself at least to an extent drawn towards the atrocious word I mentioned earlier: consistency.

The problem which really isn’t a problem because it is the way humans’ consciousness works is multiplicity and the impossibility of unity. I consider the “science” (I laughingly call it it a science) of psychology an abomination for the following reason: psychologists seek to draw forth from all the modules the, um, “true” module (read - true self) and consign all other modules to the pit. They do this with emotional manipulation and drugs. Hooray for them! The result is a person who perhaps fits into society like a lubed up amoeba into a stagnant pond, diluted and filed down, devoid of the tang and pointy edges that gave that person’s personality a unique character. Psychologists need to die. It’s the only solution.

Multiplicity is the natural state. This “demand” for unity of “self” is basically a type of social violence. The answer isn’t subduing the majority of modules out whilst letting one reign almighty, barely allowing the rest to get an idea across. Awareness and co-habitation are the way to go. A community of modules! A culture or society of modules, even! Right there swimming around in the soup of your personality. Imagine that! Imagine that.

I read somewhere recently that a good credo in life is Supress it, but don’t deny it. Note it. Name it. Laugh at it. Continue. In fact, I think some other version of myself actually wrote this credo in a slightly altered form. And, subsequently, it is a credo that I have mostly lived by since I was in my mid-teens. Well, perhaps I wanted to live by it in my mid-teens, but was unable to because my emotions ran rampant and flatulated upon any attempt to put the credo to practice. So, truthfully, what I did with said credo is that, initially, I walked at its side until it was sort of a familiar and I understood its ways enough to mimic them. It then became more of a constant companion, merging fleshily with my bodily presence so that its ways were more intimately my ways. When finally epochs had passed and its essence was itself my mind and I grew into decrepitude, I could finally say that I was the credo. Oh yes, on the way, there were setbacks, as with all credae. Sometimes our mental models refused to mesh. Sometimes our fleshy substrates violently rejected one another. But, at last I feel I am content sitting inside the same mind as the credo. May its benevolent spirit fester in me evermore.

The membrane

Better known as the bubble. It is the permeable, semi-permeable or impermeable tissue that separates communities from their outside. These bubbles are sometimes overlapping. They lurch to engulf and retract to expel. They can also be personal, or, rather, individual. They enclose certain communities of thoughts and ideas and accumulate like minded thoughts and ideas from their outside over time. Personal bubbles tend to be self-reinforcing.

The membrane implies enclosure and isolation. The degree of a membrane’s permeability defines its evolutionary form. Those that “breathe” normally flourish from their outside’s influence but simultaneously maintain an “identity”. Hyperventilating membranal communities (as I type this, I realize how fond I am of that juxtaposition of words) over time become diluted by their outside while their protějšek are locked in feedback loops of questionable health.

The cost for an individual to be a part of a membranal community (I know this is a redundency, but the juxtaposition of words is delicious) is different depending on where that individual is on the axis:

nonpermeable <----- semi-permeable ------> tattered

One must always point themselves towards certain courtesies, ranges of thought patterns, behaviors, formalities (or lack thereof), foodstuffs, posture, belief systems, hygiene and goat worshiping practices when part of a membranal community, to some extent or other, or perhaps to no extent at all. As the plumpest humorist of our time sometimes tells me: There are RULES, vole.

The archive

Record keeping! Imagine that! Christian told me once, epochs prior to this moment that I sit on this couch scribing these words, around 2006 or so, that the only reason he owned the small, cheap, greasy digital camera that he held perpetually in his grubby paw was because he needed something to record the sequence of moments we were living through because otherwise he’d forget. The fact that we were sucking down cubic meters of beer every evening that wiped myriad details from our collective memory probably justified the camera, as well.

I wonder if he still has it. I suppose I could ask!

I’m not sure if I ever directly told him that it was something I could relate to deeply. Perhaps at that point he knew about my quotebook and about the extensive writing I did myself - an analogue to his camera. If I didn’t back then, I should have told him, yes, directly. In those dark days of Polo and evenings of jellied, pliable atmosphere sometimes chances to be earnest were skipped over.

In fact, that is what The Archive is, and, I should add, I’ve been reading through The Archive extensively during the last few days. It consists of the Martenblog. It consists of many other journal-like writings that have not been “published” on the internet. There are also reams of poems - far more than I have displayed on flavigula.net. I have emails and chat logs with people dating back to 1992, and not just of casual hey, let’s meet at Zarape’s and plan the deboning of the latest herd of goat-children sort of communications. Extended conversations about living deeply both intellectually and emotionally and ethical concerns of doing or not doing one, the other, both or neither are contained therein.

(flavigula.net)

The Archive is an enlightening place to hang out and a portion of the last days during which I was, as I said, perusing the whole mostly unorganized heap of writing, I was considering an important question:

What shall I do with The Archive?

I think that the act itself of “faithful” (I laughingly call it faithful) record keeping is a form of ethical seriousness concerning the value of individual and collective existence. This may seem like an evident “truth”, but to do so as an individual about a single life that has been patterned by every interaction with another being that single life has encountered is not a small “feat”. It is momentous.

Displacement

I’ve tagged more martenblog posts than you or your stumpy uncle can shake an obelisk at with the word displacement than with any other term. It’s a concept that has both haunted and intrigued me since my early teens. There were a certain few turning points in those early adolescent years that gave me the impression and then convinced me completely that the mental or physical act of being unloosed from a fixed point (again, mentally or physically) that one could refer to as home base is preferable to the contrary. I’ll probably go into some of these turning points in the future, or I may already have done so to an extent. Who knows? Certainly not me, the writer of this filthy hadr.

Another way to look at this concept that I apparently hold so sacred is that what I call displacement is the state of permanent non-arrival. Yes, permanent. It is not a temporary condition at all. It is not a transition between two points of “stability”. It’s a perpetual cognitive, existential state that creates a distinct form of perception.

What kind of perception?, you ask.

Well, the kind of perception that I have, of course!

Can you please describe this so-called “distinct” perception?

No! I shall not! I’ve already elaborated multitudinous times. You are, at this moment, reading the collection of documents that contains these elaborations. Were I to choose a specific blog post, however, this blog post would be a good start, especially the arrow / blunt object contrast.

(this blog post)

Peiločja cleans herself on the corner of the bed as I lie supine typing this. I suppose typing this requires me to lie supine, actually, so my redundancy points its double jointed fingered stare at me and fills me with the icy knowledge that another evening is wilting. The air is dissolving from clarity into haze and soon the singularity of sleep will cast my present and my memory into pitch.

Peiločja lept away. Were I to summon the strength to look, she’d possibly now be curled on her chair, her bed, her blanket, her place of security where she purrs and kneads in the midst of the pitch and in the midst of the light equally. The flickering moods of my fickle circadian rhythm have no effect on her.

The dimming is almost complete and I shall pass into what Christian calls nightly death. This room is my membranal community and I shall shortly and for a brief time die within it. Peiločja will be the only living entity within its breathy, perforated walls. Or perhaps she will pass another way, as well.

I sometimes play a game with myself when I am walking long distances. I did the same in the past from time to time when I was driving long distances. I imagine a past version of myself, for example when I was seventeen and cloistered in the nefarious Fort Stockton, Texas. I imagine this past version of myself occupying my current self’s senses for a short while. I choose senses instead of mind because it makes the whole fantasy more intriguing. This ancient me experiences everything I am experiencing during my walk without the experience of the intervening decades. I ponder the bewilderment at having skipped those steps.

One specific facet I pondered this morning during the walk z Narodní Třidy přes Vyšehrad a domů was the bewilderment at an alien language surrounding my ancient self. How would he approach finding out what this language was once he returns to his own time? I lived in a world without instant access to the sum total of human knowledge held in the palm of one’s hand during my high school years. Would he go immediately to the Fort Stockton High School library or the Fort Stockton Public library and scour books on foreign languages until he found references to words he briefly glimpsed? And what would those words have been? Street names? Na Pankráci? Brand names? Škoda? Words or phrases repeated in advertisements or grafiti? Šetři peníze. Jdi do prdele, pičo.

It’s a fun game.

Yesterday in the early morning hours, meaning not approximately three and a half or four hours after midnight, but instead approximately an hour an a half or an hour before noon, we set off in the “car” from Praha to Jena with intent to see Gong play an intimate concert in a strange little “club” called “KuBa”. However, Before setting off from Praha to Jena, I had to set off from my flat to Ivanečka’s flat, which I did at approximately two hours and a half before noon. And, additionally, before setting of from my flat to Ivanečka’s flat, I spent some time with both my guitar and with Peiločja. I’ve been rather worried about her, in fact, as she seems a bit listless of late. I shall carve out larger chunks of time for play with her and insert them into my routine.

V každém připadě, yesterday, in the early morning hours that weren’t actually what most would term early morning hours, we set off to Jena from Prague in order to see Gong. We listened to Bright Spirit, Unending Ascending and Pulsing Signals on the way. Ivanečka was slightly amused at the lyrics of You Can’t Kill Me. It’s a telling song and it is, indeed, amusing! I am a fan of this combination in all sorts of art. During her early morning hours, she created for me hummus. I consumed it happily with chunks of celery, fennel and s červenou paprikou. It was delightful. We sped around the outskirts of Dresden and through a city that some might still call a just an open stretch of land called Chemnitz. One must remember that any “city” with a population of less than 750 000 (human) inhabitants is not worth living in or even considering in the terms of existence. Veering to the right, northwards, our destination grew closer and as we drove alongside a wide forest bordering a river, we knew somehow that we were in another open stretch of land called Jena.

Our vehicle descended into a subterranean parking crypt lined with metal teeth intended to devour unsuspecting automobiles whilst their owners slept in sterile chambers upstairs. We made love on the fluffy, contoured “thing” the developers of such building leave in the chambers, then gazed out the window onto what we suspected was the limply beating heart of downtown Jena. There was a Dmko. We bought dates, as usual, as it is Ivanečka’s preferred snack.

We explored the open stretch of land and in doing so encountered a university in front of which yakking and bellowing students gathered to parade their bravado at being chosen to study in such a metropolis. Two in particular were extremely loud. This disproves what I was taught by the monks of my youth: that Germans are without exception demure humans.

As an aside, I believe that in this section of my life, however slight, small, thin or diminuative that it is, the main purpose is not to necessarily be content or happy or jolly, but to make DRONES. I am, as I write this, currently creating a drone. It’s point of reference is the non-demure faces of the people we passed in the streets, in the squares, in front of the university with open mouths, screaming their vacant passion into the confines of the universe. The drone is them, in Jena still, as I sit před počitačem forming art from walls, corridors and oubliettes of sound.

We begin with a simple fourth - B & E.

I sip my ranní napoj as the drone continues. I’m at about fifty minutes now and for the majority of that, I’ve neglected to note here the details of the transition between A melodic minor to A melodic minor. It’s been splendid. Just marvelous. Static changes are the types of changes that the questionably demure student population of Jena could probably relate to. Although one of the warmest compliments that anyone ever gave me was When I’m talking to you, Bob, I feel like I’m on LSD, some readers of the nigh-eternal Martenblog might have noticed that I am not very fond of small membranal communities. Or should I say small membranal civilizations. I’ll call Jena a small membranal civilization because, in my estimation, it is, indeed small. The population is between one and two hundred thousand humans. There are far less statuettes of goats. I find this not worthy of any claim of pseudo-lsd nor even of the real thing, though the difference in negligible, I assure you.

Smaller membranal civilizations tend to have much less permeable bubbles surrounding them, though, I admit, the university culture does allow for slightly more breathing. The nigella seeds, whipped and mutilated in my new coffee grinder, are exquisite in the ranní nápoj. In my humble opinion, an equilibrium must be struck somewhere regarding the permeability of the membranal lining of such civilizations. Or, really, of any civilization. On one extreme, there exist feedback loops that breed hatred of ideas or humans or both that originate outside the membranal lining. On the other extreme is a flattening of what makes the membranal civilization itself, gives it purpose and identity.

But enough pigswill.

On our wanderings, we also encountered a botanical garden that we could not enter. Well, probably we could have entered it for a price, but who wants to go see “plants” for a price? They were probably all plastic, anyway. It’s Germany, after all. Finally, we walked up to where the concert was to be held, and the walk itself did not take long at all. Did I mention that Jena is a miniature of a “city”? Well, it is! It’s no bigger than your great aunt’s tooshie. The place in which Gong was to play seemed more like an abandoned refuse center or even warehouse than any sort of recognizable concert hall. This disturbed me slightly, but I carried on with my day without partitioning my consciousness with an osmium blade. So did Ivanečka. We were enjoying the walk, as we are wont to do. We had an abstract concept called “time” on our side, so we started back towards our place of residence. Our only aside was in a “bio” shop where we picked up datle. We consumed these on the way back. Or were they fiky? One of the two, both serving the same purpose, though Ivanečka usually prefers the former, as I previously mentioned, and especially of the Medjool variety.

At our place of residence, we quickly prepared for departure once again since I have a bizarre obsession with being early to any concert I go to. This possibly originated in Dallas when, every summer, we’d go see Kansas play live at some open air thurk. By we, I mean Acy, Lee, others and I went. There are plenty of stories surrounding those concerts, but they are for another epoch, another blog entry, another space-heater tale on a hot-dog-less autumn evening. Acy always did his BEST to not make us exactly late, but to certainly never make us particularly early. I was so excited about seeing the music that the situation caused me anxiety. I was not used to anxiety. I’m still not used to anxiety. I’m not one that copes with anxiety well. Anxiety is not for me. Happily, I very rarely encounter things in my life that cause anxiety. But, even after all the epochs since Acy and that bizarre clump of individuals I was intimately a part of, I still get a slight anxious rush when I am due to see a concert (or even a film!). So we were off slightly early to get back to the sprawling shack-like structure that was to house the concert.

After arriving at the sprawling shack-like structure, we were informed by humans unloading beverages that the concert was not to be. It had been cancelled. Bastards! As with most things in my life, I took it in stride. We returned to our place of temporary residence and went to sleep early after having an extended german lesson (as Ivanečka is studying the language) by watching a badly produced tv flick about coppers chasing robbers. The ironic contrast of an evening watching a B police TV series versus seeing Gong only amused me further. Life oozes on.

The next day, we awoke at six, cleaned the filth from our living corpses and drove to Leipzig where we managed to make love in a dressing room at Cos and snack on various edible artifacts on a bench sitting in the sun near the Steigenberger hotel. It occurs to me that one without a specific mission has nothing to accomplish and therefore enjoys each event as if it were a goal in itself.

This morning, as we walked a circuitous route to EduJoy, where Ivanečka works occasionally on Saturday and Sunday mornings to early afternoons, the subject of Switzerland came up and the fact that I have no intention of ever living there. Why, you ask? Well, that is a theme for another time, so you must wait. I apologize profusely. V každém připadě, the conversation drifted to the subject of change and more specifically to the fact that her sister almost violently dislikes change. Her reaction to change seems almost visceral. She swipes and snaps and claws. Her fundamental fears take control.

Ivanečka mentioned to her that we may move to Germany in the autumn because Luki will most likely be relocating there for University and it is not his wish to initially be dropped into a situation where he must cope completely alone - without a whit of family or friend around. Now - I’ve done this sort of thing multitudinous times in my life, but I realize that certainly not many people are like me. Being in difficult situations for the sake of being in difficult situations isn’t everyone’s cup of goat bile. Yes. I realize this. But back to the “story”. Lenka (Ivanečka’s sister) doesn’t think we should move to Germany, despite Luki’s need for a bit of companionship and / or moral support at the beginning of his journey onward into life. Why, though? Well, because she is shockingly against change of any kind. Any deviation from what she perceives as the norm rattles around in her head unceasingly until she is blithering. Her life seems to be propped up by rickety legs of others’ stability. She is used to Ivanečka being in Praha. It is an unmoving point on her mental graph of the way things should be. Even if it logically makes sense for us to go to Germany to support the nephew, it knocks away one of the struts holding up her sense of stable reality.

The situation reminds me also of Christian’s current lot in life, though I must admit that Christian deserves every bit of suffering that comes to him. He stole my green ethernet cable, after all. He is surrounded also by people who, from his descriptions over the years, object to change. He is surrounded by people who are mired in routine on a small and very large scale. His ideas of his place in life in the future don’t really suit their vision of what should be. They, too, cannot cope well with change.

Another observation is that after a certain point in life (an arbitrary number), one is expected to be settled and not bop constantly about as if one were in one’s early twenties and visiting the goat patch every evening. One is expected to stay put. One is almost expected to stagnate. The social norm is to, after a certain age, sit in a single spot and accumulate “stuff” until death. Everyone should pick up their copy of Grendel now and read the chapters concerning the dragon.

‘He shook his head. “My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.”’

Well, my opinion about following a social norm is fuck um, of course, and happily Ivanečka is of the same view. Whether Lenka or Christian’s family will ever be able to understand our deviation from the norm is currently an unknown. At times, thinking about it can be slightly distressing, and probably more so for Christian than for the two of us because he is constantly swaddled within it. However, in the end, it shouldn’t be such a great concern since, after all, the Heat Death of the Universe is right around the corner.

Christian Newman, the plumpest humorist of our time, sent me the photo of a t-shirt that states If life gives you demons, make demonade, or somesuch. It simply reminded me of a time during my first year of University. I was in Austin at the University of Texas and spending more time programming drum machines and playing Risk than “studying”. Black students were often seen wearing t-shirts that had variations of the slogan Black by Popular Demand parading upon their fronts in colossal, static letters. So, probably given to my mood and my seething hatred of anything pervasively popular, I had an artist I knew by the name of Amy Young create a t-shirt for me that paraded in colossal static letters upon its frontmatter the slogan Plaid by Popular Demand. Looking back, I’m surprised I wasn’t beaten up.

The aforementioned artist made me a number of t-shirts, actually, including a Hawkwind one based on the cover of Acid Daze II. I wish I still had that, though it surely wouldn’t fit now. She also created a few Sir Alfred IV shirts, most notably the three scoops of ice cream one with the Sir Alfred ship sailing upon the upper scoop. What happened to these t-shirts? They are lost in time.

I just walked home from Ivanečka’s place to my filthy domicile with the “cat” stowed “safely” in the backpack I use to transport her. It is supposedly especially made for transporting such creatures though I am uncertain that she likes the experience very much. Being “uncertain that she likes the experience” is actually greatly understating the rage she feels when she is placed in said backpack. She seethes! Or at least she does during the first seconds of being placed within its narrow confines. After we are moving, or, rather, after I am ambulatory, she seems to quieten, to calm, to seethe in silence. When finally the journey ends and she is released from the suffocating womb, she is, once again, jolly ol Peiločja.

V každém připadě, I just walked home from Ivanečka’s place to my filthy domicile. During the walk through Folimanka, which undulates at a glacial pace, across the small community “under the bridge”, under another bridge, then up countless steps, I listened to my most recent version of Protivný Pták Nad Bouřícím Oceanem. One of the greatest joys I have in life is the point at which I am working on a piece of music and, during a listening session, I am struck by the reality that both I created this thing and that this thing is becoming something that I shall soon regard as exceedingly fantastic. In fact, in part, it is already fantastic, even if all of the parts are not yet in place and even if all of the parts that are in place are not yet “perfectly” played. This joyous moment is when the piece of music begins to cast the shadow of the fantastic thing that it will become.

I had myriad ideas for additions (and even subtractions!), of course, but I have gotten out of the habit of stopping a walk every thirty seconds to jot something down about the piece. This is certainly a habit I should reattain. However, the main conclusion I came to dealt with melody and voice leading during the last portion of the piece. I wonder to myself, and now to the Martenblog in which I now write, whether I should write a simple part with fantastic voice leading (because I already hear a portion of it in my head) for Christian to sing or whether I should just go ahead and make it a vocal-like synth line. My original idea was to give him a clump of the chords and let him do some la la la over it and use whatever he came up with, but the voice leading possibilities are too amazing to not take advantage of.

I also have reached an ideal configuration on my pedal board with its two marvelous audio pathways that entwine within Herr Scarlett to paint wide swaths of primary colors and then jagged, geometric figures in rambling, fluorescent combinations upon the aural canvas of my filthy flat. This means that Drone Day approaches and I should begin creating the “material” which will spew from https://drone.thurk.org/stream when the, as they say, “time” comes.

That time is soon.