So let's get to some catharsis.

My mind has lately been a house divided.

On the one hand, things are ideal. Well maybe a few traumatic brain injuries of semi-hated creatures short of ideal, but about the closest this one recollects. Work is good, play is good, hobby is flowering, lust without love meanders playfully with only mild neuroticism, money rolls in via various schemes and IRS direct deposit checks. It does make me wonder where the hell all of my friends went, but I'm sure they're either poking around or otherwise disposed to whatever people daily do.

That I'm keeping one eye open, while giving life all the mouth and tongue of a spanish flotila upon the thighs of fate, is a given. But inbetween nibbles and moaning by the numbers, there is that same old unsettled darkness. The white-eyed steady breathing across the room, keeping some part of you cold and aware, patient and taciturn in movement.

Myself and I never did fully resolve the oldest debate. I'll make that clear. When I first started down the path of studying things no one in the modern era really should ever bother with, I was given a choice: use what you know to manipulate people, or use it to help them. Dutifully masochistic, low on self-esteem, and above all wanting to prove myself capable, I did the latter almost exclusively for a long time.

Yet in the many moments I found myself alone again, I listened to that white-eyed man of ash, and he made good points. I began to see that it was necessary to cultivate some degree of personal power to be used for one's benefit. They were such darkly rich and pungent metal nails, each of those inclinations and mood forms. But I was innovative and, rather, decided that I could benefit myself by benefiting others. No more and no less.

But lately I've seen the creeping vine of a once distasteful tea seep back into my mouth. Once bitter upon a child it is only cold and odd upon me. The scenarios are cliche: collecting blood dolls for occasional domination that works around my schedule; investing in ritual reagents and seeing if the other side could do a favor or three for me for once; slowly and inexorably dehumanizing someone through mental chicanery and emotional torture for the sake of study. Somehow this also involves periodically wearing a pink hello kitty t-shirt, black leather pants, and a gas mask to chill the soul of barren creatures at various locales.

All of this is inexcusably maudlin, as much fun as some of it does actually sound.

What I ultimately can't deny is that I remain steadfastly and increasingly more intrigued by not healthy things. I keep considering whether that abandoned house and others like it were trying to tell me something. Not a day or half a day goes by that I want to travel back to Detroit and find my way to the places that call out to me. There's something to be learned there which is not at all good, some melody that laddles ice against the spine and brings back that familiar feeling I sometimes get. Part of me has something beyond a death wish, to bring some light to bear on these sensations and completely out of place experiences. And somehow through some action or other, I can bring up a pail of water from this strange well that has made the fields of my life periodically patchy or overgrown.

Part of me just wants to equalize the playing field and find those forces, people, things I've only briefly touched on so far. A realm entirely foreign to the sorts of vices most people sweat and some lick. I suppose it would be no less than a crash course in the corruptive and decay-oriented aspects of human transition and experimentation. I suppose it could be just as useful to learn to tie a noose as it has been to untie one, so to speak.

It may be thankful that I'm a consummate pragmatist in everything. As unholy a little trill of happiness as I may get at the thought of most of this, it serves little every day purpose.

So I guess if, for people, giving in to one's demons ever becomes more popular than some suffering shamble for the sake of progress, I may have to try this whole "being evil" thing.

Of course you know it's Starbucks and Tiffany's from here until peak oil and beyond, so I think I'll drink some juice, shut the fuck up, and go to bed.

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