There is something disturbingly comforting about being in a drunken haze. Not that I miss the drinking in any way, but there’s a darker side of me that misses the option of blacking out on occasion. An unflinching look at the world presently around us, and what’s going on in this country in particular, invites the notion of such glorious oblivion.
In place of drink, in place of drug, in place of meditation and mindfulness and mourning, I offer this winter theme to act as a balm upon the callous, cruel, ruthlessness of the world at this moment: this is our Winter Obscura.
Haze and smoke and obfuscation.
Backlit-befuddlement hopelessly and intentionally out-of-focus.
A veil, a scrim, a cloud – perpetually out of reach, out of touch, out of the realm of what can be seen or contained.
A screen unseen, a film of gauze, a filter that removes the very soul of a subject.
This is the unsettling landscape of Winter Obscura – less a place and more a delirious frame of mind, where our main purpose to is to stay hidden and safe behind a smokescreen of abstract notions and obscure philosophical meanderings.
There is mystery and confoundment in these parts, and a road that splinters into trails largely untread – in so many ways I’ll be walking new paths right along with you, and putting it out here as it unfolds is treacherous work, risky in all the worst ways. That will make it difficult to read sometimes, but seeing me in difficulty is what the world seems to enjoy most. As I said, we’ll go through it together, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what the repercussions, no matter where it decides to take us.
Won’t you pull the curtain of obscurity around our four-post bed, enveloping us in a cocoon of winter fuzziness? Confusion bleeds both ways. There is no mystery in the relentlessly hyper-focused clarity of this overly-documented world. That which we need to see shall always be hidden – that which we don’t want to see parades before us at regularly-promoted intervals.
The beauty of our messy lives resides in the blurry haze, the peripheral vision, the exact moment that focus recedes and mystery begins.
A mad professor, a homeless person, and Albert Einstein on a decent day – my gray hair is a combination of all these archetypal idiocies, and I’m not mad about any of it. On the contrary, I’m rather happily befuddled by how to even style such a growing monstrosity, simply running my fingers through it with some leave-in conditioning cream, and calling it a day. I peer at the bedraggled results in the mirror, the slightest bit dismayed but mostly bemused. Equal parts frightful and frightened, but unafraid to say as much. Bleak and blunt too. A strange start to a New Year and a new winter, and somewhat powerful in that. A man with nothing left to lose is still just a man. Power comes from something more.
What you are about to encounter on this website as it turns the page on the calendar year may be a stark and shattering change – with an emphasis on words over images, structure over surface, and subtle shading over colorful saturation. Bleak of vision, blunt of delivery, and devoid of sugar-coated sweetness, all I can say is that the new year of this blog will not be for anyone of honesty, truth, and the raw, messy reality of this moment.
I’ve always been rather revealing here – literally and figuratively. I’ve delved into stories in which I don’t always come off as heroic or even basically decent. I’ve shaded the hurtful actions of others so as to protect them, putting a rosy tint on events where others could have and perhaps should have come off as the thoughtless perpetrators of inadvertent cruelty.
It’s not even clear to myself why I felt such a need to turn bad experiences into something good, to turn a shitty moment into something golden, but it’s an art form I’ve come close to perfecting. I can take a cutting instance of wrong, attach some pictures, and write it into a moment of prettiness and beauty – a lesson to be learned, wrapped in a lovely ribbon and packaged with the most exquisite wrapping. There are times that call for such a re-framing, and perhaps that was my purpose for a whole; there is certainly more than enough ugliness in this world wide web of social media mayhem.
But it’s not my job to make your world pretty. I don’t get paid to put a handsome spin on things for your enjoyment or ease. I find greater peace in stating things as they are and portraying people by their actions, not how I want them to be or what my feelings or personal interpretations of them may be.
This reads, on the surface, as a very good shift. For those whose actions mirror their intent and line up with their proclaimed values and words, it will be. For those who say they care but whose actions repeatedly hurt others, it may not go as well. Happily, there is no point in getting mad at the truth.
Too many of us operate in that hazy, obscure shadow of emotional confusion, creating obfuscating distractions to get away with questionable actions and behavior. I’m simply not tolerating that anymore, and the wild sort of abandon and freedom I feel is going to be the messy sort of fodder that often results in some must-read blog posts.
Hold onto your hats, Winter Obscura is here…
