I bought Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. For a moment there I couldn’t remember why.

But the film version from 1949 was shown on TCM and this has perked up my in
interest. Always better to act on it now. The theme of Bovary’s craving for
experience, for excitement and affairs reminded me of Ruth. I sit here writing like an
old man reminiscing and at not far off 50, I suppose that’s how it would seem to
many. Writing is interesting. On the level of form, one paragraph or page of writing
looks much like another. The level of experience, the writers’ state of mind, and level
of emotionality can’t be immediately discerned, except through reading it. Every
author uses much the same technology, whatever he or she can afford or is
comfortable with. The past and future need have no bearing on what he chooses to
write. He need only state whatever he wants and his view of the world.
And I’ve just discovered this keyboard is much faster and smoother than the
computer I was using. I was going to stick to the earlier model for the sake of
continuity; whatever I mean by that exactly. I set this computer up to get onto the
Internet, but it isn’t happening. I’m waiting to catch my downstairs neighbour do he
can sort it out for me, if he can.
Anyway, I’ve given up on the notion of what I’ve written so far as being fit for editing
into a novel of any kind. Or if any part of it is, then there’s going to have to be some
drastic editing. I’ve said this numerous times in the text itself and this is why I come
to keep considering the possibility of using what I’ve written so far. That I would be
reluctant to scrap what I’ve done so far is understandable. But that’s to miss the point
of why I’m doing it and have come this far. To tell a no frills story of where I’m at
and what’s been going down over the years, as I see it. It may stem from an immature
impulse, the wish to tell tales. That’s up to me to find out. This is the purpose of it I
would say. I just have. I think there’s an imbalance in how the world condemns
others, for their supposed sins, but refuses to take into account it’s own. In fact,
seeking out sin in others is its way of brushing far heinous behaviour under the carpet,
all the better to carry it on, in the guise of altruistic motives. This is the sort of thing
that’s worth saying and probably needs saying, but as most people seem to fall into
the “Gaslighting”/crazymaking mindset, you can feel yourself to be very much in the
minority on a planet invented by Philip K Dick, or straight out of a Hollywood or pulp
horror story. So an interesting and directly relevant and pressing question is how the
fuck has such a state of affairs come about, and why are people like this – maybe the
same question but in a different way, but also, now that it is, and may well have
always been like this, what are we going to do about it, if anything, and do we really
need to?
And who is this “we” anyway, if I see myself as working in so much isolation and
often feel it? But isn’t that a typical consequence due to interpreting existence in the
usual linear way, through the brain and its perceptions that positively encourages that
sense of isolation, of being alone, struggling in the dark?
I’d also like to try making stuff up, by which I mean of course, writing fiction. What
I’ve been writing is autobiography of sorts, and thoroughly disorganised at that. My
dreams make clear there is no problem with my faculty of imagination. I might be
another PKD, but with my own particular slant or signature. It would be interesting to
make things up for a change. It’s also true that the autobiographical material I can use
is as interesting and far-out as any SF story. A sentence that stops me in my tracks.
Am I supposed to discard it before I use it? Why do I feel the need to include as
many aspects of my life as possible, much of which is not directly related to many of
my numinous experiences and even perceptions? It may be my way of making sense
of it all of course. But does it follow I need to include it all? If I want to write about
it, then I can do it here, see what I think of it, though I’ve had 1000’s of pages of that,
the bulk of it in longhand. At the moment, I’m over 500 pages. I’ll no doubt transfer
to here what I’ve done on the other computer. Above all, or almost, I’m just glad I’ve
written. What I really want to do is get down the essence of me before I die – not that
I’m in any hurry to – die that is, but I’d prefer it to be sooner rather than later; getting
it down that is, not dying. And it’s legible for a change. And it has the immediacy of
now. I’m right here, as if still in the dream, like a piece of music or a painting. And I
do feel like getting back to a bit of painting, because it’s been a while. I undoubtedly
enjoy it, when I’m not trying to interpret it intellectually. Let’s rephrase that. When
I’m not over intellectualising and just enjoy it, I don’t feel I’m wasting time that
would be far more productively spent in writing.
Another thing; I really would like to focus on making my way to C., not wasting my
energies on feeling I have to reconcile myself to the secular world if you like. Not
that C is any escape, but the ego keeps tricking one into seeing the immediate
environment and situation as real, the closer one comes to focusing on the apparent
sources of guilt in order to dismantle them. It uses the apparent specificity of time
and place to reinforce itself in the mind, where after all, is where the source of it is
and nowhere else. This of course, indicates there is no need for any real escape if the
source of guilt isn’t real. On the other hand, staying put can be a bit of a bit of a
provincial bore, and anxiety inducing for that reason. Do I really want to churn out
more Edinburgh scenes for the sake of blending in and “making it” here, and being
“accepted?” In a narcissistic culture and city it would only be thrown back in my face
anyway. One ids dealing with many people who have no wish to see you successful
in their town on their terms. And their terms are the means to make sure that doesn’t
come about, or die trying. So fuck them. And isn’t this what’s been happening
anyway, in a sneaky and unacknowledged fashion. Whether for reasons they see as
legitimate and deserved or because on some instinctual (ego) level, they recognise that
to help you is to hasten their own demise. This operates on the most mundane of
levels of course; artistic jealousy over my abilities. But I’m focusing on the aspects of
specialness; the unconscious hatred that motivates such behaviour.
I see it there in the personal level all the time as with having spent years being
hoodwinked emotionally, by the narcissists, who of course, once you cease being a
source of – I’ve forgotten what Sam Vankin described it as…Narcissistic supply, they
drop you like a stone. Whatever time and effort on any level you may have invested
in them is now irrelevant when you refuse to play the game. They don’t want to know
any more. And this is a person you couldn’t seem to get rid of, and who had no pride,
no awareness or concern over their pathetic dependency and clinging. They – she –
seemed to really believe it was love and professed to buy it as long as you bought it,
all the simpler to confuse you with. The commonality with the psychopath is they
seem to genuinely believe their own lies up and until the point when they stop getting
what they want, then the apparent anguish – that you were leaving them, the rage, the
jealousy, whatever the pathology of the situation contributed to bringing about, is
turned off like a tap. The rage is still there, and you haven’t got rid of them at all of
course, as all they’re doing is distancing themselves from you now, all the easier to
see you as the stranger you always were to them, and the all pretext they need to step
up their harassment in a colder, nastier and more methodical manner. All an
expression of the hatred that underlay everything, and permeated the involvement
from the outset. The goal was always destruction and the ultimate expression of the
need to triumph over the insignificant others that stray or are enticed into their deadly
orbit.
Here’s The Outer Limits and Valerie 23 – the perfect homicidally inclined companion.
Aren’t we all. The actress who plays her, Sofia Shinas, has a definite resemblance to
Cameron Diaz, especially when she smiles, she of…There’s Something About Mary.
I was only ever involved with one Valerie, and attractive she was to be sure, with nice
big tits and the usual unconscious attraction to death; just another narcissistic clone
for all her intelligence, hopelessly enmeshed in her own passive aggression. Married,
she talked about getting a small flat in town where I could visit her. Of course as soon
as I pulled her up on her repeated and tedious BS, the relationship, such as it was, was
over. And yet, she genuinely believed she cared for me, offering me her journals to
peruse, her ego no doubt feeling wounded by the encounter.
This seems to be my subject; this is what I enjoy writing about. I find it as
compelling as it is interesting. And my ignorance on the subject as maddening and
infuriating as ever. But it’s PKD ands Blade Runner all over again. Valerie 23 and
the experience of involvement with the emotional zombies. Oh it’s clear they feel
emotion and intensely so; but is it real? It brings into question the validity and
apparent reality of all intense emotion and of course, what we think it means to be
alive. These people are as illusory, as subjective as their emotions. Through them we
can learn to question the reality and validity of our own seemingly real negative
emotions. If they stem from an unconscious association with death and death is an
illusion, then these emotions are equally illusory. Clearly I’m writing with the benefit
of more than passing hindsight here. At least I’m writing. I spent most of my life
before I was 30 only writing spasmodically. It was when I was separated from the
narcissist, however short the period, I would immediately write, or just about. I was
writing before, at the age of 19, and I was writing after, as soon as I got the chance.
Living with a narcissist was existing, not real living. You put your internal sense of
self on hold, playing this part that suited their purposes. If the creative frustration
came to be a cause or contributory factor to screwing up in any way then all the better
to tighten those bonds of guilt they would wrap you in, whether now or later. They
could bide their time in the name of love to be reinterpreted as it suited their insanely
unconscious purpose. Fucking writing. This is the only thing worth writing about; of
not allowing oneself to be hoodwinked and taken in and emotionally blackmailed by
the fanatics of whatever persuasion.
A band on MTV2, Cat The Dog – pretty good. Reminded me of Nirvana. What
would I do if I went for what I wanted with no regrets? Aside from it sounding like
the MO of a serial-killer, this includes reading and writing and much as I ever fancied
doing music and fucking lots of women. I’m not sure where the money has gone,
though a good deal went on food, and more so on books, as always. The reason I
never got any music done as I seem to prefer to spend my time with deluded fools like
Richard Dawkins for example. I’ve already spent a good deal of my life on CW, who
has his limitations, his rejection of the Course, being a metaphor on a wider scale for
the same dynamic on a more personal and provincial level, though it helps to know
one needn’t take it personally. But the metaphor is accurate, no question. What is
wrong with this city is that it’s essentially trivial, provincial. You need to be of that
same mindset or it won’t let you in. They have their means by which they know their
own and by which they recognise who they believe is a threat to them, however
imaginary. They are of course, insane and paranoid, using the very same accusation
against whomever isn’t of the same mindset and who might expose the dynamic.
Incredible and frightening, really. And why operating on that level is no life at all,
and why writing is the answer for me. Through it I can expose this weird and
pathological mindset and make some money in the process, as well as carving out a
vocation for myself.