The Wandering Heathen

How many times are you going to change the title? How many domains do you own at this point? I don’t know and who cares? They’re cheap. I fiddle with shit until it feels right. I wish I felt right. Yes, I’m still bitching about the flu. I haven’t had a fever for two days now, but I still feel like microwaved garbage. The fatigue is profound. I can drink a cup of coffee, close my eyes, and almost immediately drift off. It’s a strange feeling. My sinuses are so fucked, it feels like I’m…

With every holiday on the Western calendar comes the debate over its origins. Pagan or Christian. Historians chime in, apologists spew their nonsense, and no opinions are changed. Personally, I’m tired of such arguments. I assume Christianity has tainted most things and choose to ignore it where possible. What I find more interesting is that Halloween preserves something much older than that silly death cult: the human tendency to treat seasonal transitions as spiritually significant. The…

The natural world is itself a revelation, without requiring a revealer. The sacred and the profane, a false dichotomy. It’s this vital principle that is worthy of worship. I remain open to its myriad forms, whether personified by human imagination or emerging of their own accord. We are all of us priests without a god, stewards of the essence. It’s a shame that so many never realize their vocation, choosing instead to remain subservient to death cults and colonizing forces. This path is one of…

At this point, I should just rename the blog The Plague Diaries and bitch incessantly about how shitty I feel. An urgent care visit confirmed Influenza A for the men of the house. The woman remains pristine and unaffected. She says it’s because of her pure Persian blood. We mutts are more susceptible to these pedestrian degradations. I’m ignoring work today. Everyone knows I’m unwell, so I think I can get away with it. I’ve downloaded a few movies. Subtitles on so we can know what’s going on…

Middle of the night. 0300. I wake up shivering and aching, the surreal images of fever dreams lingering in the dark. I stumble into the kitchen and down a couple of ibuprofen. I shuffle to the other side of the house and check on my son. He’s breathing and his skin is clammy, but he’s not feverish. I think he might be over the worst of it. Mei stares at me from her spot on the ottoman. Even she knows it’s a ridiculous hour to be awake, so she graces me with a dramatic cat yawn and is soon…

No sooner did I post yesterday than the slight tickle in my chest turned to body aches and overwhelming malaise. By evening, my fever was nearly 105°F. I spent the night tossing and turning, waking every half hour to drink water and wander the house in near-delirium. I'm maxed out on ibuprofen for a few hours. As I write this, I hear the Wing drone hovering over my backyard, delivering a bottle of rapid release Tylenol. I still think it's cool that I can tap my phone a few times and have…

I love a rainy day. I fucking hate the flu. Today, I get both. I don't do well with illness. When it's me, I assume my death is imminent. For now, it's only a tickle in my chest. When my son so much as sniffles, I'm an anxious mess. Today is his fourth day at 103°F+. I lost a sister when I was very young. I have vague memories of waking up in the middle of the night to find her being tended to by my mother on the couch in the living room. Small, sweaty face by the light of the Christmas tree,…

I am haunted by the religious impulse. A quirk of evolution, a product of childhood indoctrination? Attempts at uncovering its roots have been stymied by my own idiocy. Decades of study, practice, and reflection, all for naught. To be clear, this isn’t a question of god(s), or even religions per se. My antitheism is up there with antinatalism as one of the few ‑isms on solid ground. The Abrahamic god is an amalgamation of Near Eastern myths and superstitions. The resultant religions are…

It seems my misanthropy is contagious. I turned into the neighborhood to find the street lined with cars. Apparently, it’s the day of the Fall Festival, when people swarm the park to enjoy vacuous small talk and sketchy food safety standards. My first reaction was a quiet sigh and a shake of my head as I slowed to navigate the crowds. To my surprise, my usually outgoing and happy son echoed me from the backseat. I didn’t say anything, but it made me realize that I must exude this attitude like…

Philosophy is mental masturbation. Metaphysics, in particular, is closer to autoerotic asphyxiation. I say this as someone who wasted their GI Bill on a philosophy degree. It’s for insufferable types with a penchant for poverty and archaic diction to sit around and circle-jerk. Let’s be honest, Hegel is mostly incomprehensible, and you’re just pretending. Kierkegaard was a whiny altar boy, and Nietzsche was syphilitic. At best, philosophy is a personal endeavor, a hobby. You want to ask the big…

Assez vu. La vision s’est rencontrée à tous les airs. Assez eu. Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil, et toujours. Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. – O Rumeurs et Visions! Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs! — Arthur Rimbaud, “Departure,” Illuminations, translated by John Ashbery Vision. Possession. Knowledge. The human endeavor in sum, indifference upon its completion. The melancholy of retrospection, the paradoxical pain of pleasant memory. And still, the movement never stops.…

We’re making it up as we go along. Remember when you were young and you looked up to the adults in the room? You could rest easy knowing everything was under control. They spoke confidently and with authority. Declarations and admonishments had real power. Things happened according to their will. But now I’m the adult in the room. My son looks up at me with those same wide eyes. I sit in boardrooms and nod along to the corporate jargon. I feel like an imposter. I've no fucking clue what’s going…

A late soccer practice left me home alone to my own devices. Redbreast 12 from a teacup. I left the Glencairns in Scotland. Mei welcomed me into the big chair with a disinterested huff. I settled in for a bit of reading. Since then the Moon has heard jackals cheeping in thyme deserts,—and eclogues in wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the budding purple forest, Eucharis told me that spring had come. —Well up, pond,—Foam, roll on the bridge and above the woods;—black cloths and…

At least by American standards, I’m in decent shape. Military discipline and body dysmorphia keep me in the gym most days, fighting the natural degradations of age. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked in favor of entropy. Since moving back to the US, I’ve been immersed in the Standard American Diet (SAD). Sugar, sodium, saturated fat, preservatives, all processed to the nth degree for superior shelf life and addictive potential. Portions large enough to sustain three people. And after a year…

On an upper floor of the library at Sam Houston State University, sprawled out on a faux-leather couch, metal bars digging into my spine. Through the narrow windows, the sky is a putrescent purple, the fading corpse of a lazy Saturday. To the subtle buzz of incandescent lights, I page through William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Only the occasional graduate student, a dreary-eyed ghost haunting the stacks, disturbs my solitude. The night ahead promises debauchery. Soon I’ll be…

Dearest liver, when did you lose heart? You’re just going through the motions now, doing the bare minimum. I’m forced to start looking for a replacement. Black coffee isn’t the hangover cure it was in my 20s. I’m reminded this morning of why I don’t really drink anymore. A tiny bell choir in my ears, eyes heavy and dull, and a mouth stuffed with cotton—the approaching sunrise promises pain instead of beauty. My saving grace is that I’m allowed remote work again, so I can sit here alone to stew…

The blogosphere (stupid fucking word, by the way) is boring as hell. It seems to be inundated with AI or AI-adjacent posts. It’s a giant circlejerk of anonymous scribblers fellating each other for their valiant resistance to all things AI. If not that, it’s something like here’s my shitty TTRPG or blogging is so cool, so I blog because it’s good to blog, let’s blog together. Don’t get me wrong, there are some gems. I like Lili. I picture her as Faye Wong in Chungking Express. The neo-Luddite…

Today was probably the first day in five years that I’ve done a proper day’s work. During COVID, they forgot about me in Scotland. The US office assumed I was reporting there, and the Scottish office decided I was America’s problem. That led to years of collecting a paycheck while I took long walks around Edinburgh and had brunch. The gravy train is over, it seems. I’m in the thick of it again, LARPing as a project manager. Dealing with consultants and corporate employees seconded to this…

I suffer from Post-Christian Stress Disorder (PCSD). I made that up, but I have faith that it’s real, so you have to respect it or you’re a bigot. The quacks at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) continue to ignore my strongly worded emails demanding an emergency revision to the DSM. My ACLU lawyer just sighed and told me to stop bothering him on the weekend. I’ve been cursed with weekend work. Three standups a day with consultants—a desperate attempt to get a $100M tech transformation…

Everyone who bothers with this inevitably asks themselves, Who am I writing for? Many will answer, For myself, of course. But then why a public-facing website? Why the upvotes, guestbooks, Contact links? Be honest with yourself. Does knowing someone might read your writing change what you’re willing to say? Perhaps the for myself claim isn't really about the absence of an audience. Rather, it's about refusing to let that audience dictate what you write. L’air du temps, the hate mail, the…

Having children is immoral. It is better never to have been. But what of the joys of life, however fleeting? Only at the cost of immense suffering. Even before your first breath, sickly wet and ragged, your mother suffered for your pitiful existence. As you were manhandled by strangers, you were both a victim and a cause of suffering. Conscious existence is inflicted upon others. Ripples of pain and degradation echo through reality, each of us a selfish epicenter. If you resist the biological…

First outing with the new (old) camera. East End Park; a walk through the woods. First cool front of the season made it enjoyable, rather than merely tolerable. It’s funny how simply carrying a camera changes your perspective. I’m looking at light and potential compositions. Eyes drawn to the little pops of color amidst the weathered trees. Laughter in dappled sunlight, captured on 35mm. I’m still learning, so I left it in shutter-priority. The light meter is roughly fifty years old and…

Dead kids. I carried a rifle through a desert. Dismissed the other as inhuman for their barbarism, their pederasty. Bacha bazi and beaten wives. Not in my AO. Not while I still had control. And then I come home. Pedos in charge. Kids shot in classrooms. Now I sit in a generic suburban home. Armed, suspicious, and powerless. A cog in a machine generating wealth for technocrats and chomos. The news cycle continues. More dead kids. This is freedom. This is God’s plan.

Thinking of moves again. Avec kitty, PNW or Mountain States. Somewhere rural, on some acreage, but a reasonable drive from proper amenities. Maybe near a university town. Occasionally work as an adjunct, if I work at all. Sans kitty, the options open up. SEA and East Asia are top. Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam. Japan, but their visa options suck. Already lived in the UK and wandered all over Europe. I’d be poor there, and honestly, I’m over it. Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia are…

For all my bluster about the evils of consumerism and the meaninglessness of it all, I’m just as much a dopamine addict as the next guy. The Ring goes off, and there I am with the hobby knife, eager to carve out my reward. A capitalist caesarian. First, a new wallet from a leather shop in Alabama. Initials subtly embossed on full-grain. The smells. Definitely an old man thing to be excited about. Then I attacked a box from Japan to find a pristine Olympus 35 RC. As usual, it was beautifully and…

I see something that doesn’t see me. To call its indifference cold would be to turn the lens around, to impose my own meanings. It simply is. A mountain doesn't care whether you climb it. The ocean doesn't care whether you drown in it. The stars don't care whether humanity exists. Camus said, “At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.” When I strip it all away, the desperate need for meaning and purpose, what is it that I find beautiful? Could it be the emptiness itself? Perhaps words…

I have a soft spot for indigenous religions, especially the animistic and polytheistic faiths of pre-Christian Europe. My virulent anti-theism is primarily reserved for the prescriptive and oppressive cults of the Abrahamic variety. The old ways. Blót and symbel. People of the hearth. Legends and myths I’ve almost certainly romanticized into utter fiction, but that still manage to stir my bitter soul. In an age of reason, I like to hold on to some of the magic. Everything is so serious, almost…

My body and mind conspire to keep me unhappy. I’ve always dealt with health anxiety, but it seems to peak when things are going right. My brain says, No, slow down, big guy. Too much serotonin floating around up here. That ache in your side? It’s probably cancer. And thus the twitch in my lip becomes a sign of undiagnosed MS. The headache is an aneurysm, and my poor memory is probably early-onset Alzheimer’s. Reflux after a big meal? No, it’s a widowmaker. Now you’ve gone and left them all in…

I swear it feels like this life is scripted sometimes. A paint-by-numbers midlife crisis. A slowly decaying Rube Goldberg machine. I turn 41 in two months, and I’ve suddenly developed an interest in photography. It’s a thing, apparently. Nostalgia, a creeping awareness of mortality, and a desire to preserve ordinary moments. The tangible aspect of 35mm film. So, here I am in the dark, a belly full of Cafe Bustelo, looking up where to buy an Olympus 35 RC. I haven’t the slightest clue how to…

Another spontaneous excursion, this time north to Huntsville. I took the back roads through the Sam Houston National Forest. In the shadows of thick pines, windows down to enjoy the sap-scented air. I wondered at the unusual urgency, this need to maximize our time together. Where was it before? Perhaps it was the recent VA decision coupled with the increasingly frequent aches and pains of a fifth decade. No reason to mourn the time wasted, and no reason to anticipate the end, but every reason…