What roles and functions are served by things like:

major guiding beliefs and self-identifications, as in
–belletrist (as opposed to litterateur/auteur)
–anarchist (green/primal/paleo/whatever, and ‘rewilding’ too)
–hérétique (to grasp upon a heresy is literally a taking/choosing enabled by oneself)

and

minor crystalline images, like
–tears in rain
–šrdnn
–raggaðr

and

things in between like the synthesis of the word and image “Anaprim”

?

The playing hypothesis is that they are ultimately all only organizational tools.

***

I had a whole pile of links collected to throw at you about Mr. Hillbilly Elegy.

But I threw them away instead, last night, in my moment of slashing sorrow, and replaced them with two words.

“Yup. Alrighty.”

In the Algopoison video I preached a sermon about being simultaneously at peak happiness and more filled with the deep sadness of this world than ever before. (I have no clue how anyone else in the whole world feels about that or really if anyone felt anything, about that.)

Was it a rationalization for depression? Possibly. But I still think it’s closer to truth than to blindness or self-delusion.

In the slashing fit, likewise, I told myself a similar story about living profoundly alone in most every way now, without quite tipping over into feeling lonely as a result.

Bullshit? Again, possibly. Probably true though, I maintain, based on my felt sense of things and doing my best to be authentically honest. (Parenthesis: I’m honestly happy too, that you’re playfully happy, loves. But I can’t even pretend to care about ice cream or any other consumerist sugarpoison, and nothing you playfully say will change my heart about that, alas.)

Solitude/Alienation is on the ascendant for me in this moment as a ‘major guiding belief/self-identification’.

I think that’s as close as I can come to the hot summer truth of my being in late July.

In the parkinsonian word of Joe Biden … anyway …

I was taking a break from working all that out and I came across the best link yet, to share with you on the subject of JD.

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Is JD Vance Going to Transform US Foreign Policy?

I am warily daring to hope so.

Unlike good Dr. Doctorow, I am not going to become a ‘supporter’ of the new VP, at least not in the way I passionately and even financially supported The Bern before he took the last train to Shitlib Seniorville. (I won’t vote R, either, or D …).

But I agree with the learned analysis here.

And I do plan to be just a little bit hopeful, and to keep monitoring the condition of that hope religiously, because that’s another bit of self-identification, which is to say another organizational tool I habitually use and routinely abuse.

That is “who I am”.

Who I choose to be, or … something like that.