http://roadofentities2.blogspot.com/
Strange that found this blog interesting for a year or two. Going on and on about things that for the most part aren't actually interesting. Least I could see no reason to write of such things. Rambling on (and on) about spam email in a blog? Sorry but how is that not sad?

I had spoken to this person by email for more than a year. Then told her I wasn't going to email people anymore unless it was supplemented with some actual speaking. And sure enough, of course, I never heard from her again. Which wasn't even slightly surprising.

As such I'll give biting criticism if I want.

Somehow just perfectly represented a lost life, a life in the UK. With some focus on small things. UK bustops, etc. All about the UK. And a woman that... well does make sound files and is good looking. And does have deep thoughts, does like to think.

But still a total fail in my opinion.

I consider it unethical to speak by email with someone you wouldn't actually speak to. A dishonest act. A misrepresentation. An act of startling immorality.

And too much of my like of her was just symbolic, which is as I told her from the beginning, although not sure she understood. Symbolic of a life forever lost.

That should have been!

Like a ghost after I die perhaps I'll linger thinking this.

Represented by the one Hobb trilogy where at the end, he gets it back. The life he lost. He gets it back. Gets back his first love. 20 years later.

Hurts so much to read. Makes me cry. Because this never happens in the real world. In the real world it's always forever gone. Injustice is always forever. And the people who wrong us, never apologize, never see their mistake. So cruel to make a book where such incredible injustice is finally defeated.

Like holding some grand prize just out of reach.

See this?

You'll never have it. This is what will never be.

When very sick or very unhappy I like to watch a few certain fantasy movies and also now the two main Fitz trilogies by Hobb. The movies are The Dark Crystal, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, The Last Unicorn, Labyrinth, Python's Search for the Holy Grail and The NeverEnding Story. Childish I guess. As is rereading Hobb.

Have been rereading Hobb and watching these movies/having them play in the background as I'm very hurt by something someone did to me. Feel that a light in my mind has been switched off.

And what are the chances they'll apologize, they'll right their wrong?

I read Hobb's happy ending and it makes me cry. It seems downright cruel to me.

May have found a cello teacher. She wants me to go buy a 2000 dollar cello though. J wasn't happy about that. Started an argument, trying to portray me as a spendthrift when actually I have no debt and 10,000 dollars sitting in my checking account. This was while I was still feeling sleep deprived. Not having slept decently for days on end. And the resulting bad physical feeling was causing a heightened state of fear/tension/anxiety for day after day. Then her going on about a cello, when in a decade I've basically bought a computer and that's it. And sometimes I drive down the road and think how nice it would be if I just yanked the steering wheel... And finally, had enough. Shut up!

Bought a bike pump, bike rack, and non f me up the a bike seat. By the time we drove home I'm so tired I'm feeling delirious. So long since I slept decently. I lay in the passenger seat with the seat back all the way down and look out the side back window at the trees and houses. It's like being a child again. I've no concern for the actual driving of the car. Endless houses pass me by. I wonder who might live in these houses... It's like seeing what I see everyday from an entirely different point of view, seeing it brand new.

Almost half asleep I write a song. No plans to remember it. I write and forget all my vocal/lyric songs.

We get home and I stagger out of the car like a sleepy 6 year old.

J says I snored while sleeping. I don't normally snore and I would normally want her to wake me for her sake. But she figured for once that would be a really bad idea, and she's right, it would have been a really bad idea. I might have gone nuclear I think. (sigh) And I'm not that sort of person at all....

I have a nightmare where my current boss is teacher and I haven't done my assignment. And now it's due. What am I going to do!!! I considered running off and becoming a homeless person. I slowly wake still trying to figure out the answer. Totally awake and still I sit there trying to figure out what to do about this. Trying and trying and finally, what the hell am I doing? This didn't really happen. Quit torturing myself.

I want to lay there until it's time for J to get up. 10 minutes before the alarm I'm allowed to wake her up for snuggles. So I lay there for an hour. Finally go down, put bike rack on, put new seat on, then come back get snuggles. Then off in car to ride bike.

In the car I put in Skinny Puppy-Bites-Dead Lines. Haven't listened to it in so long. After finally sleeping well music sounds so good. Plus remembering the far past. Monterey, Calinfornia. The long runs out under the sun. I possibly didn't even have this particular album then, but it works for me. A nostalgia. Perhaps largely based on a faulty memory. But a past time when I felt such hope at least.

It's too cold to enjoy the bike ride much. The faster I go the more wind chill. Right thumb really starts hurting. But on the way back huge hill, push myself to the very edge making it up it. Wonderful feeling to be that exhausted. To push myself to the very edge. Then lay there exhausted. Outside.

I imagine something. Some place where this is a daily occurence.

Stop at very cheap restaurant on the way home and have coffee, OJ and blueberry pancakes. Read about WV in the final four. The coffee hits me so nice. I'm shaking slightly, so cold still from the run. Perfect. There's three somewhat distinguished older black men at this diner. That's so unusual for here. Black peope do live here. Do they normally just not eat out...?

They look like me though. In a way whites around here never do. Big boned. Sharp faces. Wisdom combined with tough lives. The whites generally look like puff balls. Like they've had it so cushy. Like they've got nothing in them.

Home. Another minnow is dead and this time it's confirmed. It's body has been snapped in half. The one cat is killing them. Have to go get the glass before she kills anymore. Down to 9 minnows in a 80 gallon tank. I feel guilty to stick large fish in only an 80 gallon tank. Not quite so guilty that I'm not writing this before I go get the glass apparently... They're just tinsy minnows...

The anxiety. The insomnia. The fear. The physical pain.

Robin Hobb's best book is the one where the main character is put through the worst hell of all. In reality she's a somewhat annoying cheery lady. Yet her characters are always going through hell. But Fitz the Bastard had a very special hell indeed.

At the moment I think I'll get through this life without ever having an actual breakdown. I don't think I'll start having actual panic attacks. I don't think I'll end up long term unemployed... Lately though having feelings that really do go in that direction. And I want to try to closely document them. For one thing, to try to head them off. For another possibly to someday help others understand these feelings happening within themselves. And finally because I want to blow Hobb and her Fitz out of the water.

8 days without a blog post. (80 hour work week+my marine brother visiting for the first time in 5 years...) A record.... Reading Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy and thinking about the need for people to focus on trying to please their 'over I' or super ego, or to have pride in following their own set ethical guidelines, or etc, instead of trying to please a parent, etc.

Thinking of how essential that is, that a person should question the authority of their parent (such Nevare's father early on wishes he would do...) and become something other than their follower. Neither a follower nor leader should anyone be. Except a leader of one's self. Trying to think upon how essential or not essential this is, to determining the moral character of a person...

Certainly in a dystopia questioning authority is crucial... If I ever have children, and it's looking very iffy... I do think this is something that will really stick with me. A child that still at 10, at 15... seems primarily concerned with pleasing me.... I would think that horrible.

I look at the people around me who have broken moral compasses... It is more complex. Hobb's world is simplified as most stories are. But this idea of having a strong authority figure whom you unquestioningly follow. Who's authority you obey. Whereby your only morality is to please them plays a role.

But comes a day where you become that new moral authority whom you think deserves to be obeyed without question. And your own ethical code is based on what? You who've spent your life trying to curry favor with whoever you perceived as having power over you... It would appear to be a morality based on power.

All that morality means is self interest with some long term forethought. Which is to say instead of just doing are own immediate short term self interest, we perform acts that appear to help the common good to our own detriment instead.

Those who believe in leaders and followers and believe their morality ultimately consists of doing what the leader says, actually do so because they understand that keeping in good favor with the leader is in their own best interest. It is a simple and practical short term thinking. The person who instead answers only to himself, to hell with the evil wishes of whoever has power over him, is actually practicing a much longer term self interest.

It is hard to explain. But within the difference between the two and so on. We have conflicts. Between the differences in moral codes we have the concept of evil and thus we have anger. As one person focuses on longer term good and sees another is ignoring it, they feel their is nothing for it then but force (and thus anger.) While another is focusing on short term good and sees another ignoring it and also feels there is then nothing for it but force (and thus anger). Etc.

So you spend your life trying to curry favor from whoever has power. You're practicing a relatively short term 'morality'. Then once you have power, what is your morality? What did you think their's before you was? Most likely you didn't really think much at all upon it. Mostly they weren't thinking. And neither are you. Following tradition is all. Whatever exactly you've decided to believe that tradition to be. Understanding your mind is like wandering through a mist. Coming here and there across a hodgepodge of somewhat random and contradictory beliefs. Glued together by short term self interest. And justified by a thinking which isn't aware of itself.

And I've no time.

Robin Hobb has taken the withholding of information by characters from each other to a level that is really getting just silly. Fitz has to hide his real identify from his son and daughter. The main thing pulling the reader along is just waiting for him to finally reveal himself. The first book of the Tawny Man trilogy was so much not revealing, not revealing, not revealing and then finally he reveals a bit and it feels like sexual teasing almost. Finally you stick it in! Ridiculous.

Finally he's clearly something more than just some servant. He's Skilled and Witted. He was a close friend of the Prince's father. But still so much held back. And thus one can be botherd to read through book two which is more of the same. The Prince not realizing this is the White Prophet and his Catalyst, the Witted Farseer Bastard. Plus Fitz's daughter. Oh just bring her to the castle and tell her the truth. But then there'd be no book three and really no books at all in the first place. Such is writing.

Furthermore, not quite getting around to having it out with Hap. Not getting around to Thick's Skilling. Not yet teaching Chade about Skilling, etc. Making up rather tired misunderstandings with his new lover. Ultimately it all hanging on the fact that Fitz lives in hiding as a servant when he's really the heroic savior of the whole kingdom whom possesses all kinds of magical powers and has even risen from the dead. No one but Chade and Kettricken realizing who he really is.

This is a test.

If it had been a real life, you would have received a cookie.

--

Finished Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy. The final book had an annoying couple hundred page stretch and then a let down as the hero is reduced to having no purpose in life anymore and living in some cottage doing not much.

Otherwise what I found most interesting was how especially in the first two books such awful things happen to the hero, yet it's still something to escape to. How can this be? Because despite all the awful things which happen, all the injustice, and despite all the insights about human behavior that Hobb shows (in an unpreachy way) it's still essentially completely dishonest. If all the rest were filled in that made it like real life with respect to how the characters thought and acted, it wouldn't be any kind of thing to escape to at all.

But it's essentially such lies. Such pretty lies... To write such a book, a book people could actually enjoy reading, it really seems a person would have to value fun/a good time so so much more than the truth.

Robin Hobb: The Assasin's Apprentice, pg 426.
Suddenly I felt such energy in me I managed to get out of bed.

The book as a whole has many important concepts about human behavior but I was too busy enjoying the escape and falling for all the tricks to bother taking much note. This is the rare book that if it were me I could see bothering to write it.

The only question that troubles me is I think I already read it just a few years ago but can't quite remember for sure. Definitely read Liveship Traders but not sure about this one. Liveship Traders though was a relatively unique idea combined with lots of emotional anguish. The idea of a ship being alive with the lady at the front being able to talk and all seems goofy and perhaps childish but it really worked.

All of her books really do go heavy on the villains doing awful things to good people. In this one the main character almost commits suicide from the despair he feels. Yet, somehow, there is something happy to the point of highly dishonest about it all.... Thus a good escape. And the worlds she creates are pretty real. Not the realist. But quite real enough while somehow managing to have a positive feeling despite heroes having such awful things done to them that they are such a nice escape.

-

Forgetting is definitely an essential thing to be able to continue tolerating life. Or at least life as it's commonly lived, amongst a bunch of other people who are doing such a good job of forgetting.

In the case of completely forgetting that I've read 400 page books it is a bit distressing. But maybe I got to enjoy it twice then.

Hey my wife does read my blog!

Or at least she occasionally does a control f search for 'wife'.

This line here:

I'm sorry I've already been married for a decade and unfortunately my wife would not like the thoughts in my head so much at the moment.

Would have been better phrased:

"I've already been married for a decade and I'm sorry to say my wife would unfortunately not like the thoughts in my head so much at the moment."

BTW, I've reflected on why I almost never mention my wife in this blog. And it's not because she means so little to me. It's because:
1. This is a blog about negative things and for the most part there's just nothing negative there... not much anyway.
2. To what little extent there is, bitchin about her in a blog would be ridiculous in that it would just be griping about relatively insignificant things.
3. I don't go on about the positives because that would seem like flaunting.
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Just bought 5 decadent books. Robin Hobb. I loved her Liveship Trader Trilogy. I think maybe I would be happy to write like her. Maybe that is someone I could write like and feel it worth the bother.

Robin Hobb: Comforting. Hm. Nothing. Exhilarating to be exploring new territory and setting up a fresh stage and getting to know new characters. 'Daunting' is always there in any book with any setting, old or new. I look at how far there is to go, how many pages, how many words, how many keystrokes, and the whole project seems insane. And sometimes I cross the safety line and say, "Wait a minute. Isn't this an inherently silly thing for me to be spending my life doing? Saying, 'hey, let me tell you a story about people who don't exist in a world that never was, and I'll try to make it so important that you'll spend hours of your life with me over the next three years?' I mean, if you really look at what writers do, it does seem a bit odd, doesn't it? So that can be the daunting part. If you let it. But I'm really good at denial.

Over all, I love to write, and read, and tell stories. Really daunting would be if someone said, "Nobody's interested any more. Go out and work for a living!"

Got another trilogy by her.

Then Gene Wolfe. A beautiful sounding book set in ancient times (Rome) about a guy who has no short term memory but can talk to gods, etc. So everyday he writes what happened to him then to read the next morning. Read a book about an executioner long ago by him. It seemed almost as if it were advertised as cheesy pulp fantasy, but I recall thinking... 'Geez this is really good.' Just found out recently he's actually very highly respected and not some Kilgore Trout.

I do seem to be slipping into a previous frame of mind. For the longest time I couldn't enjoy reading like I once did. But then immediately after getting the RN exam out of the way, I read some of Vellum while walking to my car. I had forgotten how strangely enjoyable that can be; walking while reading. (Dangerously unassimilated though it is.) Really being immersed. It was once such a nice escape. One that I effectively lost for quite a while... I was still reading here and there but not truly falling in...

I couldn't fall in while in nursing school. Previously I could while getting my BS and MS in engineering but for me at least those were easier degrees. Nursing was so much more subjective and had this annoying quality where studying didn't actually accomplish anything but one didn't feel like they could ever relax. So then, little time was spent studying, but I didn't feel comfortable instead falling into escapist type fantasy fiction. Could only turn to less satisfying diversions that were less likely to really pull me in so very much. Like surfing the vast internet wasteland. Which is ultimately such a pale world. Not the best use of time unfortunately despite the few interesting and nice people I've "met".