2025-12-14 Journal Entry

One thing I ponder a lot concerning my own politics has something to do with frame-setting. I get some sense that most people’s frameworks regarding oppression, race, privilege, economics, and taxation, etc. have excessively small frames. I can’t articulate exactly what it is – perhaps for many on the left there’s this feeling that one has not asked to be brought into existence, therefore they should not be tasked with the responsibility of their own survival. On the right, that framing seems to be weaponized as a way of forgetting that we are a social species, and that helping others is a way of helping ourselves.

At an even braoder level, there seems to be a self-seriousness about the whole thing.

9:00PM

re: self-seriousness, I suppose to some degree I find it difficult ot empathize with the serious political views. It feels like it’s a game, but a strange game in which you are aware it’s a game and your own self-stated goal is to win over the hearts and minds of huge swathes of others who perhaps don’t see it as a game but see it as a matter of life and death. And for some it perhaps is such a matter, and for some specific policies. But for many, the act of politicking is indeed a show, and it’s unfortunate that one unifying trait of many politicians is that they enjoy winning.

I am also keenly aware that such a position is in its own way privileged – that is, I can in some ways “opt out” of discussions since I’m not someone affected byt the most contentious issues of abortion, immigration, etc. – but I also feel a bit beyond the point where I feel the need to advocate for the prepackaged viewpoints of large groups.

Lately I’ve been fantasizing about moving back into the house. What I fantasize about most specifically is not my bed or my warm shower but my books. I think often of my tall bookshelves nearly full by now, stacks strewn around fro serendipitous re-discovery. Perhaps all I want, really, is a traveling library that follows me everywhere.

What else is on my mind? Precious little. I’m sitting here in the dark, Strong Zero in hand, poking around. I listened to an interview with R. F. Kuang and now feel jealous. Would that I could be so prolific.. I have never read any of her work, truthfully, but to be my age (a mere few months my elder) and to have multiple bestsellers under your belt. An externality of some of my own occasional self-loathing.

I have an image in my mind. I wrote about it the other day. The trains. The trains in the late evening dust-clouded air, scarcely visible as night begins to overcome them. In my mind they are simultaneously a collossus, huge sprawling metal monoliths looming over some huddled crew with only a plate of tin for shelter. The rain falls evenly, tapping hard and distinctly on their brief home. The air is warm and thick with humidity. The boy has fond memories of moments like this, but for now he feels uneven. His legs feel restless after the day’s walk. He had intended for the group to make it beyond the ridge today to the camp on the slope, but the others seemed on the edge of sleep.

The boy prodded the green jacket against the stone wall. Dark eyes leered back at him. The boy nodded towards the hills, but the man closed his eyes again and shook his head. The boy looked out from under the drumming roof and saw the collossus overhead, metal torn and spread in unnatural shapes like a mysterious fish flayed open. Arcs and frayed edges reached ever skyward, hands reaching up to receive their blessings from their ancient gods long dead, and the boy understood it as ar elic from when men still aspired. He eyed the green jacket again. Outside the rain continued. The air shifted on his skin, moving from cool to iron hot. He kicked the man again who only pulled tighter his fraying army coat. The boy looked again at the collossal hands and saw their fingertips stretch ever upwards, more and more, and he felt alone and helt the air burn on his skin and he felt his legs run into the rain, hands shielding his eyes as he dodged and ounced over the uneven field. He saw one of the arms turn his way and reach his way and he looked back and saw the green jacket standing to watch him. And he saw the heat this time before he felt it, saw the white-hot flash before his eyes and felt his eardrums pound and felt fire, fire, the burning of the sun at his fingertips as the gods provided their gift: a lightning strike blinding and hot through the tin roof. And when he could once again see, his eyes still stinging from the serrated image, he saw the same blue-black mountains and green-brown grass but saw too flames a singular dancing flame dancing this way and that, flame of a human kind dancing and waving and striking itself, a horrible dancer of the most aggressive sort, swinging and rolling until at last it collapsed in the mud, still burning. The boy stopped and watched and thought for a moment if he could save the green jacked but thought better of it and kept on his way lest the collossal gods visit again.

I think as long as I keep listening to rain sounds while I write, I will inevitably put rainy scenes in my writing. Lightning is such a powerful thing, surprised I’ve never thought of using it like this.