For 2026, as a form of literary cleansing and letting go, I’ve decided to go back though my old, unpublished efforts and either put them to bed, rework them for submission, or post them here. Finding the following piece – written some 21 years ago – is rather illuminating to my character. Fear has long been a constant – indeed, it may be the longest running constant in my life. Not normal fear, but overwhelming, debilitating fear – of just about everything. These last few months alone have been so consumed by fear that my body once again has revolted against me, my nervous systems being a mess, destroying any sort of healthy homeostasis in my body. I still enjoy this piece greatly, but screw fear – or, more accurately, screw the fear merchants, all those who seek to make a cheap buck (or gain power) by keeping you in fear. That’s where true evil lives.

On fear

The futile, furtive body running on slams into a self-erected brick bodice sought for an end, but, with no preconceived notion of an end, it simply allows confusion to reign. Opaque, yet translucent to the rest, it surfaces from time to time in a mocking fashion, only to recede with as much advanced notice as its arrival. There is no concrete end to reach, which allows for every facet of desire to enter into the mind if it sits passively even for but the smallest increment of time. A mind burning with an overwhelming degree of directions and paths to lead to sparks that ignite the fire. Pursuing the current course until the wick burns out or the gunpowder explodes – one false step allows passivity to creep in and for another desire to add itself to the already drowning abyss and pull everything else into it, and no end has yet been reached. Is it a fear of what attaining an input actually brings? Is it the fear that a concrete end tried for but lost would bring? Is it fear at all? The only thing that is understood (if even that is to be true) is that the mind must burn, with one or with a hundred, it matters not, but it must continue to burn, otherwise all systems would fail to function in a spectacular meltdown of the senses, of the body, of the mind, of the deep driving core that produces the individual, and losing that, would lead one back into the black mass consuming everything served up to it. Be it served willingly or passively, it will be consumed nonetheless, without the possibility for redemption. The dilemma between a thousand dead ends or an assured consummation/denigration appears practically one and the same. Both exist and survive only through fear, but without fear there is no reason for existence at all. Fear has led to all the great ones who think, who produce magnificent works of art, who live daily with an attainable or unattainable goal driving them on (unfortunately it all too often drives them backwards or forwards instead of simply driving them). Fear is my leader, my example, my teacher, my pupil, my self-destructive force escalating the breach of a crescendo; the skip placing a hole in the (self constructed) unity as it appears to destroy fear. In that space which we cannot conceive of (so we cannot destroy it) is where fear lives, alongside its counterpart – love.

– April 5, 2004