Klingsor's First Winter

To preface, I try to always make sure I am writing about me and not you (even if I use the proverbial you or the proverbial we). Any opinions I am not prescribing onto others. I do not talk of any masses, or at least I try not to. I am talking about little old me.

I often feel that a lot of pop-science words and concepts make simple things cloudy. For example, tricks to get your serotonin up, or figure out what you need to do to have more dopamine. Or perhaps what is causing dopamine, so that I can be careful about, because dopamine after dinner isn’t good. For me, this is clouding things with pop-science. It is much easier for me to say that I feel good after I run. I am more motivated when my room is clean. Being nice to people makes me feel good about life. Simple simple things. No need for naming chemical reactions that go off in my brain the same time that I do them.

So there’s needlessly complicating, but with pop-science stuff, there is also (to me) concepts hiding other potential truths. I am not a man of metaphysics I don’t think, but with wording like controlling your midocondriates, (to me) it infers a causal relationship. If our phase neutrons are of X value, then we will feel Y. As opposed to Y being the cause and the raise in phase neutrons being the effect. Maybe artificially raising X makes us sense a bitter emptiness of life that is a phantom in itself because it is akin to Y, but ultimately not? What if there is Z? What if Z does both AND MORE? I think saying things make you feel warm and fuzzy inside doesn’t hide away these possibilities, and saying that you need a dopamine rush does. To me.

Z was conspicuously, but secretly the soul in the last paragraph, but it can also just be anything not individualized. Family, friends, society, etc. If I’m home all day, I feel better when I walk around an area with lots of people. It’s nice being close to people? Evolutionary predisposition to those of similar species to increase levels of picobitters in the duodenum? I prefer the former.

Lastly, all of it seems to be saying to me that we don’t know ourselves, and we need some grifter to tell us how to know ourselves. I don’t need a pop-psychologist Canadian grifter to tell me cleaning my room is good for me. I know that already. I know water is good (not too much). I know walking is good (I guess not too much?). I know leafy greens are good (except the ones that are bad, and probably not too much as well). I know dancing is fun (there is no too much for dancing).

What I’m trying to say is that for my run this morning, it was the first time in a long time I set an attainable goal for myself, made the attainable goal for myself, at a speed faster than I expected, and it made me feel like a million bucks, like a real super star just being on top of the world. And then I thought of grifters and science words, and then I said “pwah”.

I will run again tomorrow with the same goal, and with motivation to make that goal.

a quick edit: Just in case it is not clear, I am not in any way talking about people’s experience with mental illness, nor am I putting forth something that is anti-medicine.

I haven’t read them all. By that I mean I haven’t read War and Peace. I think I’ve read the first 50 pages a million times or so, and the first 100 pages two or three times. I don’t read much these days due to unlimited short form videos turning my brain to mush, but I do dream of reading it. What would my unborn son think if he saw this on my bookshelf and knew I hadn’t read it but meant to. He would say “man up dad”. Or he would internalize that it’s okay to say you want to do something, but just do nothing instead. The horror.

Anna Karenina has to be the greatest novel of all time, right? I had thought the Brothers Karamazov was an all encompassing treatise on the human condition, but no! Does it touch love in this way? The core of Levin’s plight is what it means to be human? I have two pages on this book on my wall, framed. A cheap frame, but effort was involved nonetheless.

Crime and Punishment as I mentioned makes you want to kill yourself for 200 pages. This is the original Final Fantasy XIII’s “it gets good after 20 hours”. They’re not a bad 200 pages. Just man… It feels like a very different story at the end, and I guess if I looked it up, it may say it was published in bits and perhaps over a long period of time. The man talking about his daughter, about how he ruined his family… was rough.

The Brothers Karamazov has the Spanish Inquisition chapter and the chapter where Ivan talks to the devil. Two very powerful chapters. Each brother took on a characteristic of man to me (I’m not sure if that’s the consensus, I forgot what the wikipedia page said) and the bastard is man, shit-stained and all. This has to be the second greatest novel ever.

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Rosshalde is my first early Hesse book. The child’s descent into sickness is brilliant.

The Magus (barely seen) is a book I hope and pray never gets found by the douchebags, because I fear they would love it. That would be more painful than when some Gen Z Tiktoker called Pinkerton “Incel bullshit”. Leave The Magus alone. Stay away.

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I like Penguin’s clothbound series. Makes me feel like a big man.

This isn’t really an uplifting thought, and I want to stray away from negativity, but I think it can be a springboard to positivity.

Growing up, I heard about dehumanizing people: if you dehumanize people, it is easier for atrocities to be committed against them. I heard dehumanization was a tactic to get people to do these horrific things.

Then, a few years ago (or longer perhaps, I’m old and time is what it is), I heard that this was not true, and that people who have atrocities commit against them for the most part are not dehumanized, but if anything super humanized. So we lovely human beings enjoy seeing humans “fuck around and find out”. We are not dehumanizing people who we feel get what coming to them. We are hyper-aware that they are human, and hyper-aware of how what is happening affects them, and we enjoy it, that look on their face and all that… is what was said. I’m not sure if it is true, or if it’s any more or less depressing than the idea of dehumanizing, but it is food for thought. Not at all dinner party, or anything like that though. Maybe online, with other people who are horribly depressing with their potentially deep thoughts.

So anyways, how can this be a springboard to positivity? I think it is perhaps an obvious cliched way, but I am not really sure what is obvious or cliched.

The thing is that we lovely humans should be aware of our horrible areas, and if we are aware them, and disgusted by them, then we can keep them in check. I think I always use the example of the alcoholic. An alcoholic is still an alcoholic if he or she has quit drinking. Because of their alcoholism, they have to approach alcohol a certain way, and perhaps constantly remind themselves that they need to be careful around it. I know very healthy people with depressive tendencies who are very open in saying that they shouldn’t do X because they worry it may put them in a bad headspace. So likewise, us humans with our vile tendencies should be aware that we may get into negative weird ways of thinking, and ensure that we don’t go on X to make us prone to such things.

So let us embrace the hideous imperfections we have, and build defenses against them to be the best possible humans ever.

Or something, I don’t know. Let’s just not be dicks by enjoying human failure, for fuck’s sake.

Do you ever disdain with love? I don’t want to give a preface for ordinary time.

I am having wine now.

I’ve contacted a lot of monthly mansion places for work. Short-term furnished apartments. Not for me. I work in HR and I set things up for people. I am the setter upper.

I’ve ignored phone calls that I think are from the driver teaching guy I inquired to a few days ago. I want him to teach me how to park in my driveway.

I had an inappropriate dream the last night, and the big issue here is that it wasn’t even fun. Just guilt ridden. I would like a guilt free inappropriate dream.

I put on the Policenauts record today. I listened to Side B more than A, but Side A is better.

With the snow this morning, I didn’t cycle to the store to buy breakfast for my wife, I walked. Both ways. In the snow. No hills though.

Crime and Punishment was delivered today. Clothbound classic. I like the book. The first 200 pages or so make you want to kill yourself though. Russian literature, eh? That Mountain Goats song references the book. You know, Love Love Love.

I drank a lot of tea. Most of it Earl Grey. Some of it decaffeinated. I’m sensitive to that after a certain time of day, and like a good night’s sleep.

I’m going for drinks with colleagues next week, and in my head I imagined we went to karaoke and I sang cool songs, and people thought I was putting on airs and then I got in a huff. Wowzers. After thinking that, I took a chill pill. And listened to some cool songs.

Denouement. Denouement.

Thus ends the first day of ordinary time.

Except a preface when the mood hits me. Summer is sometimes strong.

My wife is currently 7 months pregnant.

So I thought from when she was 6 months pregnant or so, that it would be the perfect time to start reading to our unborn son.

I bought a version of the Chronicles of Narnia that is hardcover, huge and has those pictures that are in the novels, but in color.

The pages are quite huge, and probably have four regular pages worth of words on them.

I read to my unborn son one page a day, usually at night time.

I put my hand on my wife’s tummy as I do, so I can feel our son when I am doing so.

I’m currently about a third of the way through the Magician’s Nephew, which is the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia chronologically, but the fifth book in the Chronicles of Narnia that CS Lewis wrote.

As my unborn son would be able to tell you, the first book is about the dawn of Narnia. Not to spoil anything, but it may involve the lost continent of Atlantis, but that also may just be a red herring, there to throw us off the scent. But as I say this, dear reader, I believe you know I am being a little silly. The mention of Atlantis did surprise me though. That may just be because I am old and forgot about it from my previous times with the book.

I don’t know if there is any meaning to any of this reading, and the last thing I would do is try to verify if there is or not, as that seems like a total waste of time. I hope the vibrations of my voice through my hand are felt and are calming. I hope my reading voice and the regular interval that I do it is soothing. Regardless of any of that, it makes me happy to do it. I think my wife likes it too.

When my unborn son is older (likely after he is born), I hope that he can form opinions on Narnia. Does he find the Calormen to present Muslims in an unfair light in a Horse and his Boy? What does he think of Digory, not Polly giving into temptation in the great hall? What lessons on faith in the underground in the Silver Chair are there, and are they relevant for today? Is CS Lewis being a misogynist in the Last Battle?

That’s for another day though. As I’ve mentioned dear reader, my son is not born yet, and I don’t want to be too unrealistic with my expectations for him.

As a man who shouldn’t be called young, I only have one concern about this. If my son tells me one day that he doesn’t want me read to him anymore, that is fine. The concern I have is that I lose interest in this. I start something with passion, and then get bored and stop. I make an excuse to not do it. May my reading not come out of passion, but out of dedication.

It is winter after all.

Please note, dear reader, that my refusal to reference the three most well known Narnia books, and to reference the four lesser known Narnia books was not on purpose, but that it is key to my soul. I have shown myself to you.

This is my new blog.

My last blog I believe was just called chestnutvinegar, which is an alias I use online so that the crazies don’t stalk me in real life.

The name of this blog is inspired from the short story (or novella perhaps) by Hermann Hesse called Klingsor’s Last Summer. I flipped it on its head, and made a last summer become a first winter.

I haven’t read it in quite a while (despite having bought a physical copy of the book last year), but to summarize, it is about a painter’s last summer alive. The painter is engulfed in passion and spontaneity for life and love and all that jazz. He dies. A similar thing I have heard about is a “Dance of Death”. I’ve heard about that from 1980’s DC band Rites of Spring, but I think it’s from something much older than that.

In youth, there is something so attractive about frantic undefinable self-destructive passion for life. I first read Klingsor’s Last Summer on my Amazon Kindle in a Saezeriya drinking chilled red wine alone, eating salad with little shrimps and Cobb salad dressing. I felt self-destructive passion in my own way at that time.

But then something changes.

Perhaps you pull a Klingsor and die, so nothing really changes except that you die.

Or perhaps you don’t and you live, and you did not self-destruct and you continued to live after the story is over.

This to me is Klingsor’s First Winter. If summer is spontaneity, then winter is ordinary. When Klingslor’s Last Summer failed to burn out life, Klingsor’s First Winter begins.

As you may know, I am still alive (as of this writing).

So the idea was perhaps to document that.

I don’t mean to be a slave to ideas though. I’m drinking red wine as I write this. But it is true to say there is nothing desperate about the wine I’m drinking, if that makes sense. It’s calculated. It’s part of a budget.

It just is what it is, and we best not think too too much. Don’t want to go crazy about it or anything. Just felt I better explain the name of the blog, because it may not roll off the tongue for some.