NEVER STOP IMPROVING

(so I guess this pic is property of Lowe's. Ummmmm, you knew that right? Okay, moving on.)

It has been a day. I went to work where it never stops improving. People greeted me, and I greeted them back. Cash was exchanged. No one ever stopped improving, and no one discussed how the improvement kept going exponentially until, well, everyone that enters is a god. Literally, that's what Lowe's sells, deity-hood. Yes, come and you too can experience the omniscient and omnipotent powers of a fierce Norse GOD. You too can smite the unbelievers, bring on an era of never stop improving, ever never stop improving, Fenrir eating the sun in his snarling maw as the earth goes pitch black. That's the end of the story. I came home. I sat down on the couch. I creaked my back, and I have been in a great deal of pain since.

I have writer's block. I have been working on a story-- it's a long story-- it's unsellable-- it's brutally sad and depressing, but it's also happy. A lot of people die but it brings out the best in others too-- and that's the whole point of life right? You need to conquer the shit that you couldn't control that happened to you. We have all lost someone or something. We have all had pasts that were too hard or too easy, have these problems that we could blame on ourselves or others. Well, I wrote this part in my book. Here it is:

She cackled again. "Damn your God, boy. Do you think it was God that gave me indigestion earlier this morning, or God that made that dog fart as I bought an apple? Magick. It's all about perspective, boy. Rafael, Michael, Gabriel, and Oreal-- the guardians of the four corners of the universe. You think they are God's heroes? Or do you think they are your warped gods on Granite Peak? God? We live in a universe without a Father's guidance. He left us long ago, child. We are a home abandoned. He left us for a better woman, a younger, fitter model. He chose someone else."

"Don't make me sick." He grabbed the back of her chair tightly. "That is heresy."

"It is also truth," she said and laughed. "And an idea you preached yourself years ago to your old friend. Those gods you both hate so much-"

Rosse growled, "Do not mention that back-stabber's name."

"The gods are just reflections of what's already inside all of us. They are only as real as we imagine them to be. They were laughed at, chained up, spit on, and look what happened? They came back angry at us. Are you really that surprised, Rosse, the born-again Christ? The more you try to control, the more it comes back ten times worse and in unexpected ways. Sigmund Freud, that old German, said 'unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.' That's what happened when we turned the gods into demons, when we turned some emotions into negative and some into positive. They get resentful. They strike back."

So yeah, we are all screwed and feel abandoned. We are all getting over something. It's the human condition-- and in the end we love others because they are broken, because they are weak, because they are human.

Kurt Vonnegut has a hilarious vid on story structure-- it can all go on a graph, this line that goes over and under our average state line. And that's what make stories awesome: the ability that we all have to overcome pain or to fall victim to it. I am no religious person-- that's why Jesus resonates, but a God that is all powerful is too alien to identify with. We connect to Jesus' pain on the cross because, like all of us, he can feel the pain of this world.

So here is the vid right below. Watch it. It will make you love Vonnegut a little more than you already did which was a lot if you were me.



If you are interested in reading more of my book, I will reveal it little by little eventually. I still have a lot to say about the process of story creation-- the process of universe creation really. You can never stop improving. Believe me, I work at Lowe's.