So, a little about the intervening time period. I spent a lot of time questioning reality and belief, partly for my own sake, but partly for my novel as well. There were a few times I got drunk with Brent and Dirk that I ended up on the balcony with Brent discussing belief. I've also had a few fairly heated discussions with Dirk about reality and personal reality; heated because I thought he was being unnaturally stubborn about his worldview. It took me a long time to realize that people with a fairly set view of reality don't rush up to embrace alternate interpretations of how this mess works.
It seemed as though I always woke up more tired than I went to sleep, due both to the dreams that consumed me and the frenzied activity in my head trying to make sense of everything. I didn't stop with belief and reality, you understand. I started questioning good, bad, and how those terms related to me. I spent a long time agonizing over the fact that my mother is even more vile now than when I moved out, but her poison is aimed at someone else: my father. I also spent a lot of time figuring out how my relationships with both my parents affected my current actions/reactions.
Conclusions? I haven't come to many firm ones. I already knew that my mother is a nasty, self-centered bitch who shouldn't be allowed around decent folks. I already knew that I never really had a father, only a younger brother. I've been focused on being a sickenly good person in everyone's eyes that I forgot something important: nobody is "good". We are the heroes in our personal stories, and we can justify an incredible amount of things to ourselves based on that. We are the good guys, fighting the good fight, always. So fuck good. I'm generally about as right and justified as anyone else, and that works for me.
So, having covered that, what else? There's been a lot of frustration, a little starvation, a lot of times when I thought I'd lost touch with reality. But when I look back, at the past few months, I mostly remember laughing so hard I almost peed myself. All of our plots, plans, and schemes were mostly intended for our amusement. And, oh, how they did amuse. Even the term "we" denotes something different now. Dirk, myself, Katie W- and Brent are the group now.
There was one scheme that we didn't cook up merely to amuse ourselves. We managed to put together the Jello Biafra Benefit Compilation (a lot of stuff on that doesn't show in Netscape, so you'll want to use MSIE). You can read all about it from that link. It's selling pretty well at local shows, but I'd like to boost our online sales. I drew up the permission agreements with the various bands, which I am justifiably proud of, and Dirk did the contacting and design work. If anyone has any suggestions about selling this bugger online, I'm all ears, really. If anyone wants to buy it, e-mail me.
More tomorrow.
