I have an empty cup that used to contain tea sitting before me. It was Earl Grey.

The confusion before the word / preposition before is astounding. Before it irks me further, I’ll expound, as it was fucking with my development of Lakife. In English, before can mean temporally in the immediate past of whatever temporal theme is being discussed. It can also mean spatially immediately to the front. This ambiguity is not amusing to me. It is an abomination. My solution for Lakife is to clarify the difference for myself and for the table of pre- post- positions.

Originally, the table had the spatial before and the temporal before in the same row, associated with the preposition tin. When I first began the design of the language, much of the work was done on 20+ hour bus rides around the southwest part of Australia. Possibly I was hungover during part of that time. Excuses aside, Lakife’s fur signifies before, in the literal aspect. Spatially, the English equivalent is behind. Fur … pot is the temporal version and fur … nis is the spacial version.

Etjo tex anja liz fur noz sopen pot.

I will eat her child before nightfall.

Since noz sopen (nightfall) already indicates time, the pot at the end there is optional. I suppose behind nightfall or towards the back of nightfall could be useful metaphoric or poetic concepts, but I’m sure you get what I mean.

Solan qotzifur neimolja tel topen.

They went towards the back of the boat. Nothing surrealistic in this one. I apologize if you were expecting otherwise. On the other trembling paw, expectations are poison.

Topen possibly is not required, either, since movement is obvious by verbalizing fur (with qotzi, which indicates past tense, perfect aspect, vole).

Similarly, potom, just like in Czech, indicates something that comes after something else temporally. In Lakife, it also indicates to the front or in the front spatially. I’m sure that toots the muffin of the universe. As it should.

Ambiguity in language is useful for poetry and quirky prose. It’s also useful for one of my most hated things - puns. Though I’m trying to create grammar that is very delineated in Lakife, quirks of vocabulary and derivation will surely make ambiguity reign. Ambiguity should reign. Let our queen by Sweet Entropy. She is an androgynous “queen”. We’ll simply use the pronoun an to refer to her / it, as it has no gender.

I’ve always been of the opinion that gender in language enforces gender roles and stereotypes in a culture. The machismo of Spain and the festering bowels of Latin America seems to support my view. I’m aware that linguistic gender possibly arose from actual roles that men and women played in society back in what a narcissist asshole would call the good ol days. Since I am unflinchingly progressive, I say fuck um to the good ol days and so-called natural roles of anyone. Let’s shatter traditions, habits and long standing prejudices.

Like Estonian, Lakife doesn’t really have gender. Certainly, there are no gender markers on nouns nor adjectives. Add -ju or -ja to the pronoun an to create “he” or “she” respectively, for convenience. However, those suffixes have very different meanings in other contexts, which is another break from gender roles. Specifically, -a (and sometimes -ja) shows an active state of an idea or entity whilst -u (and sometimes -ju) indicates a passive or resting state. These are not my personal commentaries on the roles of female and male. No. It just happened as such, as sometimes the development of Lakife feels out of my hands. I set many rules in place and continue to do so, and given those rules as, um, let’s say axioms, the whole system grows. It is, in a sense, generative.

What I have come to think of as the oblivious nature of the Spanish or simply the Spanish behaviour, just occurred outside my apartment, in the stub of a corridor, in front and partially inside of the lift. That last bit is very important. Our new neighbour, whose name is Juanco or somesuch, stood in the stub of the corridor speaking to another human who stood partially in and partially out of the lift. This latter human was therefore blocking the lift and preventing anyone else in the building from using it. The conversation carried on for at least ten minutes.

Since living in Logroño, I’ve noticed this type of behaviour in locals in general, and especially when it comes to the less than elegant process of saying “goodbye” to someone or a group of someones. An impromptu congregation manifests and seals itself inside a bubble. This frighteningly localised bubble does not admit any stimuli from beyond its membrane. A tendency also exists, when in a more public place, for this bubble to block or divert any pedestrian traffic in its proximity.

I’m aware that this behaviour exists in places other than Spain, but its existence has announced itself much more strongly in this country than in any other in which I’ve lived. I’m also aware that in my decrepitude I may becoming more easily irked by the ways of the masses. Enough of caveats, though. These actions are empty of empathy, show a lack of observation skills, and promote general bubble-thinking. My rage only intensifies when these denizens put on the mask of joy or drink and the excuse of fiesta to excuse themselves.

They need to die.

Speaking of Michael Achenbach, I should attempt to look him up. My first question to him will be Did you ever get around to making your own music? He was the intuitive type, musically, though he studied to be a mechanical or electrical or some other sort of engineer. He’d pick up a stringed instrument and it just made sense to him. Though, admittedly, I did hear him spending long hours practising in his disheveled hovel-room in the Enfield house. Intuitive contrasts with me, one who struggles with every phrase. Or, I could say that I am musically intuitive but not mechanically intuitive. I’m certainly intuitive with abstractions, and music appears in my mind as an abstract force. The truth sits somewhere in the vague middle, as always. Fucking axis thinking. Fuck you, Brian Eno.

Music is a process borne on wings of intellect but accelerated by emotive force - and the resultant vector is what I call the hara.

I finished the mixing and mastering of the tenth Noisevember this morning. A disappointment that runs in tandem with these “compositional” challenges is that it seems that the participants are more concerned with timbre and sonic variety than harmonic studies. This goes for the narcissist asshole who is my “partner” in diabolic deeds, as well. So, what happened to interest in harmonic diversity, or should I not be surprised in this case since the “challenge” is entitled Noisevember? Whether I’m surprised or not, I muse once again: What happened to interest in harmonic diversity? What I hear is incredibly creative in the timbral universe, and I do admit that timbral composition can be amazing. What I also hear is the recycling of suspended chord patterns and minor drones in the harmonic sphere. Melody, when even apparent in this realm of music, waddles along the same cadence paths as usual since baroque times.

It seems harmonic complexity reached an apex mid-20th century, plateaued and then fell into a gradual decrescendo. Pockets of creativity still exist. Hey, there’s Flavigula, for example! And I am always drawn towards those pockets and they exert powerful influence over my creativity. Run of the mill suspended chord patterns need to DIE. Or at least I really don’t need to hear them dribbling from every “experimentalist”’s corner shop.

A stalk of bamboo hovers over me in eternal vigil. Eternity is the span of its existence, of course. Isn’t eternity the span of any entity’s existence? Does it take eternity to pass from the burp from the womb into the sudden state of decomposition? Does it take an eternity to pass from a smooth seed cradled in sod into the sudden state of decomposition? The span of life, this eternity, passes in a flash. Every detail of its presence evaporates. He / she / it who perceived the passage no longer exists. So why my moaning about paying attention to each nuance in the wrinkles that form my day? When my conciousness decomposes or passes on or finally gets to hang out in that vast, yawning gulf between the walls of the edifice in which I live, surely my memories will pass with it. But even when I’m living in my mini-yurt in Mongolia and the only thing of note I do is play cribbage with Jeremy every few days, I’ll be able to pour through the collected details of my life and thus be in a state of evolution. Life itself is a composition. And compositions should always refer back to themselves. Otherwise, they are just a string of loosely connected riffs, themes, melodies and syncopations. Whether or not someone gets to experience the composition that is my life secondhand doesn’t matter. Fuck um. It’s the composing itself that toots my muffin.

Following that thread, at times I do muse about death. It’s a comfort. Upon this passage, I will no longer be dragged behind the will to be creative, or the will to do anything, really. A relief! A breath! There will not be competition, cooperation, absurd ambition or anything at all. When death comes, I’ll have time to sit around and listen to and read all this hovno I’ve stirred up from the mud of my lower mind.

Also speaking of death, I continue to take freezing showers to spur my telomeres into action! I will live forever! Actually, I’ve come to like the freezing showers. They awaken not only my telomeres, but send me fresh into my studio to dream up more noise, be it sonic or typewritten. From time to time, I also do work that relates to mine and James’s project, but don’t tell the Dean of Creative Science that. He’d have me flayed and tossed into the vat of kumquat juice he keeps handy in the smaller interdimensional place in the middle left-hand drawer of his oaken desk.

But, yes, I will live forever! I cry so like I am 16 again, or even 17. Immortality is only ever a very introverted goal. For narcissist assholes, this statement may seem counter-intuitive. They want LEGACIES, after all. They think that a LEGACY will buy them immortality. Bah! Immortality is an internal state that allows one to wander among the crevices of everyday invention. It is the passing of the dust motes and etchings on the walls of those crevices from short-term to long-term memory. It is a personal quest. It is life seen from within. Immortality is in the domain of the living, not the dead. LEGACIES! Bah!

The tea is made. It steams beside my telephone and painted fish. My palate and stomach awaits a plate of waffles I just concocted. Yes, on weekends, I abandon my “diet”. Fuck um.

Plan!

Does routine really unhinge time so it passes like a flutter in a 12 year old hag’s loins? It depends whether it is an ingrained routine or a “conscious” routine. And I think that even the former can be converted into the latter if one denies the random pathway module of the brain dominance during said routine. The random pathway module is responsible for daydreaming. Or, rather, it is responsible for the inception of daydreaming. Other modules take over, focusing a daydream, an illusion, a distraction from the details of the moment. Yes, habitual routines can be boring routines, but, as I discussed a few entries ago, concentrating on details of even scrubbing the filth from a fork or reorganizing the pinwheel collection one keeps in the vast, yawning, interdimensional gulf between the walls of the edifice you live in can become a zen experience. The focus trains the mind to recognize true insight when it noses out of the random pathway.

Letting the random pathway play constantly, and thus letting a succession of daydreams be the dominant mental state during ingrained routines, diminishes chances that one will recognize any unique insight in the random deluge of debris vomited by what I have come to call the accursed module. Focus should always be the goal.

This also goes for creative routines, such as writing in one’s electronic dumping ground. I consider Martenblog an electronic dumping ground. Though some of the ideas that surface are potentially brilliant, it’s really a distillation of another module that is associated with the accursed module. Most humans would name this module the stream of conciousness module. So be it. I consider it a narrower version of Herr Accursed. So, the focus argument also goes for creative routines, such as writing in one’s electronic dumping ground. A narcissist asshole might argue that I am already focusing because I am writing, but I refer to the details between the words, the act itself, which is below each syntactic and semantic structure. Since the original topic was remembering the details of everyday life, doesn’t the pressure of my fingers on the keys of my mechanical keyboard count? Don’t the gentle creakings from the void between my walls count? In the end, the product can endure in its electronic, typewritten, tattooed, painted, spewed, broiled titrated or composed form, and furthermore the details of the process itself can pass from short-term to long-term memory.

Thank you for reminding me that I should be steeping my tea. Today, I drink Touareg, which differs from my rough draft version of this entry, in which I was drinking Lady Grey. The contrast is sharp, or, as we say in Lakife, hele kotzom. Also, I commented in my rough draft that Lady Grey is tea for an elitist. In some way or another, I’m certainly an elitist. I also made the comment British bastards in reference to Lady Grey. I’m under the impression that all Earl Grey style teas originate from the seed of Sri Lanka. Or at least their idea did. Therefore, Sri Lankan bastards. What can I do, though? They are tasty?

Touareg, on the other hand, is the tea of the common man. In some way or another, I’m certainly a common man. In my universe of one, I’m as common as they come.

Today, I put on Distant Void by Dr Norah Lorway, who evidently lives in Cornwall, a place to my liking. I can see how living there might inspire this music. It’s elliptic, yawning and disturbingly tranquil. In other words, I like it. I chose it after pulling up Bandcamp. Instead of going straight to Puppy Bordiga’s page and listening to his Guitar Works, the feature on experimental music caught my eye and after sampling another that was not to my liking, I settled on Dr Norah Lorway. Yawning. Chasmic. Fuck um.

I caught myself earlier mentally planning what I shall do this morning and in what order. My first reaction was that creating such a routine in my mind for Friday morning was already extracting the morning from my life. My next feeling was that the details of the events I routinize will be lost. Naturally, the remains of the tasks (this writing episode being one of them) will remain to posterity. Well, they will remain in digital form until the heat death of the universe spreads the individual particles that represent them uniformly about the cosmos. That’s plenty of time for me to sit around, imbibe litres of vodka, and contemplate them. The details of the execution will be lost, drizzling trough the crevices of my short-term memory.

As an aside, Christián usually waxes obsequiously at length about the qualities of his dad. Lately, he’s been praising the old man’s organization skills. The guy does seem meticulous from my plump friend’s descriptions. I’ve known Chris for over 16 years and an adjective I’d rarely associate with him is organized. So, if he learns something from his father, good for him. Good for both of them. If his malady is anything like my ancient ways then the most difficult first step is seizing the impetus. I’m referring to the impetus to create, of course. Having my studio laid out before me so I can easily put any idea to “tape” is endlessly beneficial. My plump friend needs to get his fecal matter together and set up something similar, even on a tiny scale. Having one’s tools prepared to use at any arbitrary moment is mandatory for the creative spirit.

In relation to that, remind me to stick my handwritten journal in my backpack. Oh, wait. I never go anywhere excepting to Mercadona or Lidl.

Back to the current topic:

Details were slipping through the crevices in my mental edifice. Indeed. Though I know that the slippage will happen, has happened, is happening because my mental fondue is not capable of digesting multitudinous stimuli. Fucking subconscious filters. So far, I do not know many ways to capture individual details and pass them from short-term to long-term memory. One that does work is to immediately discuss the event with someone who is loitering in the area. That is, make it a more nebulous event. If the mind has further associations, the passage to long-term memory is facilitated. My experience bears this. An example that leaps to mind is a writing episode from 1993. I was sitting at a terminal set up by Craig in the house at Enfield. I typed some pretentious complex paragraph which could be interpreted in myriad manners. I then discussed it with Michael Achenbach, who was loitering in the common room.

So - to pass an event more clearly from short-term to long-term memory, not only notice the details of the process, but also discuss (possibly even with yourself) the process or content produced by the process. There is a difference, again, between the produced content and the process, but they are entwined, I’m sure, as far as fixing one or both in long-term memory. My situation with Marisa worries me slightly in this regard. I can’t really talk to her to any depth about my creative endeavours, as they are not her cup of Touareg. I shall continue the plan of writing every morning until I have seven days worth of dribble. Then I’ll compile it, as I’m doing now. From time to time, I must randomly select a Martenblog entry and consider it.

I put on the album Perhaps by Harold Budd before beginning this moment-dump. I glanced through the review at Samadhi Sound previously. It’s an album of improvisations, like some of Budd’s other work. I appreciate that. Of course, I cannot pay attention to the details whilst writing, but the ambience the sound-universe makes is splendid. I miss multitudinous details whilst attempting to commit the mortal sin upon focus: multitasking. Yes, listening to music during writing or programming or shaving the mouse found between the baseboard and the yawning interdimensional space between the walls of this edifice I live in is multitasking.

I’ve considered cutting out all background activities during my days to try to focus better. This includes removing all the autonomic functions in my living corpse, resulting in the husk that now sits before the “terminal” typing in elaborations to a stream-of-consciousness moment-dump from last week. You see, I decided, to eke along my dissolving habit of writing, to do these moment-dumps every morning for approximately a week. Afterwards, I take them, as I’m doing now, and reform them into actual entries for the Martenblog. So far, the idea is worthwhile.

I’ve considered cutting out all background activities during my days to try to focus better. My good buddy and workmate, James, has got it right. When I put on Aranis, for example, at his place in Praha, he cannot work. He’s not familiar with the music and since it is both rhythmically and harmonically busy, it distracts him. Much like the people I was ranting about in the last entry, James is also a narcissist asshole, but the fact that he spurns listening to Aranis is not a manifestation of that aspect of his personality. I’m even distracted, somewhat, by the sparse piano tones Budd put to platter as I type. The clustered, rhythmic arpeggios of the current piece ( Moss Landing ) are distracting because they have melancholic beauty (the best type of beauty, in my opinion).

In contrast, I’ve noticed that when I’m programming and no music is playing, my mind begins to become numb. I cannot discount habit, however. The mind loves latching on to routines. It may be complaining that I am not following a normal put on some background noise and program agenda. The lack of background information stupefies the environment. Or the lack of this information, though not analyzed in real time, diminishes my want or ability to function as a programmer, or even as a human, or mustelid, or interdimensional rodent. That being stated, I usually put on instrumental music because music with those pesky vocals is much too distracting. A comparison can be made to music that is simply a melody or sparse piano tones without an apparent harmonic backdrop. I enjoy this sort of music in isolation. That is, unlike programming, one of my mental modules does not get frustrated in the backdrop. That frustrated module (in the case of programming) without music begins to shudder and demand that the other mental faculties are taken down. It becomes a narcissist asshole.

I interrupted myself by answering Christián’s comment concerning his current listening obsessions. This time round, it happens to be Brian Eno. Good for him. Not for Brian, but for Christián. Brian knows nothing of Christián. Actually, this also may be a good thing. So good for both of them. I’m happy that my friend is discovering music that I have been talking about, indeed championing for decades.

Here’s my issue.

Some people have a manner of expressing themselves that rubs my fur incorrectly. Christián’s obsessions and his “excitement” in the moment about them is one example. Even if I’ve championed Eno for decades, when Christián discovers the music himself, it is if he was the founder of the ambient institution and must proselytize it to even me. Perhaps I am taking his “excitement” as the wrong thing, but my impression is a forceful “evangelist” attitude. I’m aware that advocating for Eno is not a bad thing at all, but it is the manner that bothers me. It infuses my friend’s personality in many ways. A long list sits in journals askew on my bookshelves detailing this same phenomenon in others, and in myself.

This an indicator of narcissism. Because of it, my friend will die horribly plump and alone in a murky house in South Carolina, surrounded by reeking empty cans of Coors Light and dried strips of his own flesh, clawed away during nightmares of being spurned endlessly by nubile chicks. The wasting away, this punishment for egoism, of course, will only happen once all of his tasks for Flavigula are complete. I will discard him like a holed dishrag.

I should be lighter on the imbeciles of the world. I recall when Lee (whom I still dream about frequently) discovered The Final Cut. Of course, it’d been in my playlist since I was 15 (or thereabouts). It annoyed me to no end that he obsessed about it. He played it whilst traipsing around in his underwear. He sang it ( The Gunner’s Dream, I think ) in Acy’s shower during the bizarre summer of 1991.

Possibly I simply have problems with people who are obsessive and what I see as narcissist outpourings are just a result of the narrow focus they have. What Lee was doing was finding joy in the discovery of something he loved. Or, well, being obsessed. Same thing? Similar? I should give even narcissist assholes their temporary bliss before they either shoot themselves in the head at McDonald Observatory in West Texas or die in filth surrounded by Coors Light cans in South Carolina. After all, I am a fair fellow.

I’ll return after I begin the steeping of TEA.

A concern I have lately is memory. I’m referring to the actual process of memory. It’s actually not a concern of just lately, but of most of my life. Unfortunately, when I address it, my strategies only work for a few days, maybe a week, perhaps an epoch or two, and then I lapse back into a malaise.

Specifically, I’m writing about short-term memory. I have always somewhat had my head in the clouds. Because of this, I miss details as I wander through my days. I’ve tried so-called mindfulness meditation many times. Again, I get into it for a few days, maybe a week, perhaps an epoch or two, but then lapse into my normal not practising mindfulness meditation routine. The new strategy, which is not new at all, but devised by one of the mental modules floating around in my mind-soup during the endless journeys to and from the outskirts of Munich during the summer of 2001, is to be meta-mindful. The process is simple and more reliable than actively trying to sit quietly and pay attention to surroundings. The key is to stamp out daydreaming. This is particularly important during mundane tasks such as washing the dishes, consuming vast quantities of vodka or planning the ascension of the mustelid regime in South Asia. Daydreaming is the assassin of attentive thought. Simply concentrate on the details of each task at hand. The expressive clankings of dishes of plates and glasses and subtle poppings of soap bubbles create a tapestry of sound. The wheezing and choking and burning burbling from your oesophagus are the last music you experience before falling into stupor. The chatter of whiskered muzzles and rustle of fur weave nuances into passing instants.

The space between moments is the space where a mouse hides between the baseboard and the cavernous, interdimensional gulf known only to the architects of this building and to me.

So, that’s the mindfulness of the moment. Whilst washing the caked filth off a lasagna dish or equally whilst shaving the aforementioned mouse, I can pay attention to movements of my wrists, the poppings of soap bubbles and / or the scrape of the razor and how they orchestrate to create an atmosphere. I am brought to the idea that I am mostly concerned with sound worlds. Mainly concerned with sound worlds. Since one of my concerns is creating music (in this particular infinity of epochs, anyway), it makes sense. Paying attention to ebb and flow of warmth in my muscles and currents of breeze on my skin could also be suitable mindfulness opportunities, but, then again, that’d be multitasking, the enemy of focus.

If the reach between what we perceive and what actually “is” is as infinite as it seems to me, then our perceptions during waking and our perceptions during dreaming are equally valid. It goes without saying, or writing, or squawking that our perceptions whilst flummoxed on some drug or another is also equally valid. As there are other shambling physical forms in the world, the way we perceive them during moments of wakefulness, dreaming, drugged out bliss or psychotic rage isn’t as important as the way we react to our perceptions of them during moments of wakefulness, dreaming, drugged out rage or psychotic bliss.

I posit that for the safety of all, each flow of mental information should be separated from its fleshy container. How this is done is irrelevant. Transfer these flows of mental information into digital form, giving each a universe created from all experienced whilst in fleshy form, including daydreaming, nightdreaming and drugged out bliss-or-rageful interludes. This way, since no fleshy forms are left, no fleshy form can cause damage to any other fleshy form. Each flow of mental information flounders or flourishes in a universe of its own.

I’ve always had the premonition that this is similar to what happens anyhow when one’s flow of mental information is about to cease. The brain constructs a completely new universe in which to live during its final moments. This universe is basically reincarnation, and time is stretched to the length of a lifetime for the dream during these moments. The process is, of course, also recursive.

So, see ya in the next life, brotha.

Instead of claiming that something is the best of some genre or other category, I need to remember to use my favourite, instead, not for political correctness, of course, but to tone down all things arrogant inside me.

Boorish when I awake. My nap was useless, of course, since now I feel much worse than I did before. Except for the fatigue, I am the same plus the added symptoms of too much sleep and not enough activity. I am very indisciplined. Solving this hateful aspect of my personality (which amounts to stamping it out) is a giant step on the way to enhancing my 1) creativity, 2) physical health, 3) mental prowess, 4) overall knowledge and 5) grades.

My vigor for school is vanishing. I must, starting today – starting immediately after I finish my morning pages and check my mail – get back into the groove that held my needle in January. I have to play the tune of commitment to many hours of study so I can put more and more chunks of classwork, insipid as some of it seems, behind me. I am awestruck in the sight of those capable of holding fast to a study schedule and churn out exactly what the professors who preside want. They are portentous in that they will get this behaviour pattern through with sooner than I. They are players of the pattern, shaped by the American way and what is right. As I might say, my pattern is smooth, rubbed off. The original was stamped somewhere in my brain, but my conciousness took a file to it long ago. I would not be who I am today if this had not happened; I would be a harnessed horse like the rest, surely, but my own state, on which as maze I must, myself, carve, prevents me, subtly, from obtaining by the same means, what others find natural: IE, the will to work and succeed in society’s mold. I must find a way to drive myself, alchemy myself some social gasoline so as not to jump into a pattern that I despise, but to run along side with freewheels (much like a car runs along side a train) to get to one or two of the same destinations – a diploma, a job and money enough to leave this fucking pit of a nation for good. I will have to borrow fuel from sources I can only barely imagine.

I am a fortunate soul (or rather, spirit flapping like a tattered flag forewarning of coming thunderstorms) in that I don’t have to worry about grades any longer. Regardless of the dribble I wrote on 27 March 1995, I don’t think I seriously worried about them then, either, because most of my courses were metrically valuable. There was a bit of creativity involved in the steps to solving certain differential equations, but not much. The resultant grade was clearly calculable. Life after university isn’t so.

My experience with professional work during the epochs since university can be summed up by what the lanky German dude whose name I forget told me in 2003. That company was Extech. He told me that hirings were made 10% by demonstrable technical merit and 90% by gut / emotion / intuition. I’m not surprised that the company ceased to exist shortly afterwards. That had nothing to with me, of course, or I don’t think it did, anyway, as I was only in it for a quick buck until they figured out I was only in it for a quick buck. It was the attitude of the owner, of the lanky German dude whose name I forget, that killed them.

I don’t have a problem, necessarily, with family businesses, per se, but think the concept shouldn’t extend beyond small, justifiably dubbed mom & pops and the apprenticeship model. When the family business mentality extends into technology or creativity oriented businesses, I’ve experienced nothing but direness. I’ve drifted to this topic because it is an example of hiring by gut feeling or, better, hiring by emotion (or emotional blackmail?). Hanging out in companies that brought in project managers and even programmers and graphic designers because they were family or old university drinking buddies has resulted in my own practically endless personal amusement. This amusement involved watching new compañeros de trabajo, some suddenly my “bosses”, with minimal technical or design skills but sizeable egos, slowly poison their departments. Developers and graphic designers began dropping out like runners suddenly realising their marathon is a farce. They dropped out not because of a sudden vanishing of their skillset. They dropped out because of a occlusion in the workflow of the department and of the company as a whole. The friends and family new hires and their unchecked egos wreaked havoc. Fuck um.

At least I only have one fuckup to deal with work-relatedly during this epoch, and I know him strictly on a professional level. Oh, wait.

This morning, which is several mornings after I first started this entry, as the vim process sits open on the Raspberry Pi I call Yak and therefore I intermittently add to it, helping Christián, as foul a person as he is, with his website reminded me of something Craig used to do, repeatedly, during that other epoch which was my time at Texas A&M university. Were Craig asked for help in something programming or system administration related, he would gladly help, but only to an extent. One, if not several, of the puzzle pieces would always be left undone for the asker to complete. The puzzle would be simplified, sure, but asker for help, in the end, always would have to help him / her / itself at least a bit. Craig would have made a great teacher. I respect my old friend’s behavior emanating from that ancient epoch more and more as I grow into decrepitude.

Concerning the harnessed horse: Since I am currently a form of harnessed horse, I need to sculpt the routine into a path as productive as possible. This is a time of transition in my life, a time that began roughly at the end of 2015. The harness solidified from steamy potential into something that drove me, though I was partly the one driving. My living situation was the other driver. It still is. In a way, it is frustrating and confining. On the other hand, I have had the most creative years since the late 90s / early 00s since the purchase of my blue Telecaster, which I have failed to give a name to, in November of 2016. Fifteen years of debauchery puro, of the so-called bohemian life is exemplary of where a big part of my mind still wants to be. Oh, and Sweet Entropy will take me there again one fine day. Let’s just see how many albums I can churn out before that one fine day comes around.