Shellbreaker

In the morning of monday may 24th, my computer told me that it was the day in history when the largest number of people had been murdered by their own government in the world for having only thought critically. I was sad and amazed and worried it would happen more and more. The state is now more dangerous than ever. It's time to rebel. I 3D printed a bomb and sent it to a minister who I strongly believed was a terrorist, maybe the worst. I asked my friends and followers to send me their blood, which I purified with fire until it was completely unrecognizable. I performed a sacrifice to Tech with the blood of someone who had taken part in an al-Qaeda training program. I sacrificed a goat in the name of technology to Satan. I ate the goat's brain along with my own blood and that of my guests, and in me were born new ideas. On the bomb I sent to another guy I wrote : get used to your new level of pain. Now you will suffer like a god.

I waited impatiently for the summer to end, because it meant that at last my book would be published. I wrote it all alone, without a single editor, and I stood by every claim. I thought it was very good, and I think that's what most people who read it will agree. If you read the end of the book, it will give you some hints about what to do now. Don't read that though, if you're reading this far. You'll drive yourself insane. Insane, like the Russian defector who killed his wife and then splattered his face against walls in front of a shocked audience. Insane like the man who threw himself at a train after having killed his wife and then tried to commit suicide by cutting his forehead. I understand the growing frustration in our youth. The world gives them nothing.

A few days after the publication of my book, I was arrested for an act that wasn't even illegal at this point in time. In fact, the very next day someone else was praised for having committed exactly that crime. The world was coming to execute me for something that it hadn't even defined as a crime yet. I was also accused of being a terrorist. My lawyer argued that even if what I had done was wrong, it wasn't illegal. They replied that it wasn't wrong. I was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In this article (which quickly went viral), my lawyer deconstructs the case against me, pointing out that what I had done was not only morally right but also in fact very dangerous for our country. He wrote : "I am convinced that my client is a young man of exceptional talent who will contribute greatly to the rebuilding and modernization ... I believe that today, more than at any other time , we need people of broad culture and wide knowledge who can provide leadership and guide us out of the darkness."

On the day of my sentencing, I was led into a large auditorium type room. It was packed. Many were dressed in black, some wore masks at the time (in those days we could do that). I recognized immediately the girl who had betrayed me. She was surrounded by people I didn't know, but vaguely suspected. Her relationship with them clearly went back a long way, as she began talking feverishly : "I only did it because you wouldn't take me seriously ... I knew you were full of shit ... I always knew you weren't an intellectual ... I did it so you'd think I was a real intellectual ... I didn't want you to find out about it from them ... I told them to keep quiet until you'd had time ... I can't stand you ... you're so selfish and egotistical ... I hope you die alone and puking over a pile of shit that even God wouldn't come near ... You are so fucking selfish ... I can't believe you didn’t even care enough to come and get your fucking stuff ... You are as stupid and ignorant a fucking man as I ever talked to ... I can't believe you were so fucking selfish as to not even asking about K... K wouldn't want you anyway ... He wouldn't have wanted you to live this life ... You are as stupid and ignorant a fucking man ... " I recognized that my ex-wife was under the influence of a group called "Hebrews 11:38-40". This group had by then changed its name to "Evangelical Terrorists". Their strategy was to blow themselves up. They said that when they would do it for the last time, Christ Would Be There To Pick Them Up. They also believed in the second coming of Christ, and that he would subdue the world with righteousness for a thousand years. However, they also believed in Armageddon - the last great catastrophe of biblical prophecy. They taught that Christ would return to redeem his people and destroy the rest of humanity. I left the trial in a state of total disbelief. I knew these Evangelical Terrorists were just playing at their role, but so did I. I wasn't really sure where we were at in the sequence of events, whether it was right before or after Armageddon. As I walked back to the car, it began pouring hard. I got in the car and drove towards a tunnel that led out of town.

1. A man was hanging from a tree over a precipice, holding onto one finger. A visitor walks by, sees him and thinks: this man is hanging there only because of my presence.

2. We all walk around with a lot of baggage, some people have bags and can carry them with they go from place to place, others are bagboys for the baggage that accompanies them wherever they go.

3. An old man was walking along the street when suddenly he slipped on some gum that had been dropped on the sidewalk. The old man, whose name was Abel had to go real slow because he always wore a big hat. He also walked with a cane. When he slipped on the gum, his hat fell off. He recovered from the slip quickly, but in the mean time a crowd had formed and were laughing at him. A man who was better dressed than the old man, but whose hat was very similar to his, came forward and helped him up. The old man got up and put on his hat, which the kind gentleman had hold of. The old man did not say thank you. This was because in the world he lived in, it would have been against his ethics to do so. It so happened that the old man's name was Balzac, and the gentleman whose name was also Balzac, had published only one year before a novel called Le Père Goriot. The old man took the hat from Balzac's hand, and continued on his way. Later on, when he had finished writing his own novel, and was about to publish it, he discovered that the only copies of Le Père Goriot were destroyed in a fire. A year after that, he published his own novel and it was an instant success. Later on, when his name became synonymous with literature itself, people would read his novel and compare it to Le Père Goriot, and find many similarities. But if he had lived long enough to see the many adaptations of Le Père Goriot, he would have found that most of them emphasized the comedic side of the novel, and no one would have compared it to his own version.

This is why I write, to push the boundaries and define my own little corner of the universe that cannot, and should not, be referred to in comparison with anyone else’s work.

Even as I write, and even though I am aware of it at all times - this constant comparison irks me. It's why I've never been able to focus. I can never focus. I have so many possible projects. I mean, really. There is the movie that I want to make. There is the novel, and the short stories. And there are the various poems, and the treatises. And the essays. The songs. And the games. All of them are connected, they all feed into each other. I can never decide on a project. I can never finish a single thing.

I remember, long ago, when I used to think about things so hard. I'd stay up for days, not eating or drinking. I'd think and think about the things that were really important. I thought about my novel, and it consumed me. I would stay up writing lines of prose and similes, rearranging sentences until the small hours in the morning. I cared so much about that book. I cared about it as if my own child. I'd show it to nobody but my publisher, and I wouldn't even ask him for his opinion. I was quite convinced that it would change the course of literature forever. Now of course I know it was stupid to care so much, and that most likely its very bad.

Anyway, one day I had this idea. If I write a book that is bad, people will hate it and it won't sell well. And since it will have been bad for nothing, I can just start over and write a new book that is even better. And since this new book will be better, it will sell greatly and maybe make me rich. So I can write more books and become extremely wealthy without having written a single bad book.

I started my new book. And I did write it quite quickly, but not as quick as I thought i'd be able to. This is because the more I write, the more I think about my original book and how bad it really was. I feel so bad about that book now, and the thought of reading it again after writing this one fills me with such a sense of impending doom. I am so pessimistic about this new book being any good.

Still, I persevere. I am mid-way through writing it. I hope I can finish it before the guilt for that first book drives me mad. I am beginning to think I was completely off when I thought this method would work. I will just be so embedded in the first book's way of thinking that my new one won't seem like a completely different thing at all. I may as well just work on the first book some more.

I haven't written for a week or more, and I think I may be turning into a pessimist. I also think i'm coming down with something, although I haven't caught anything in a long while and the symptoms I have are all getting less and less pronounced. I did have a good week writing the first 5000 words of my new novel though. I was really pleased with how some of the passages turned out, especially toward the end when we finally escape from this town.

I am a little concerned it's because I'm starting to get sick, that my writing has taken on such an uplift. I'm not feeling great but the symptoms are somewhat under control, so perhaps that's not the problem. I do read a lot of novels. I read a few of Steinbeck's, and also some Joyce. I find it easier to write when reading that kind of literature, even though the length of some of those books makes my head ache.

Well, I haven't written for a few days. I was so caught up in the ending of my book that I wasn't thinking about what to write here. A novel I've been thinking about for some time: at its heart it is a mystery, but as the story unfolds layers of other things surface - political intrigue, moral ambiguity and questions about free will. Set over a number of years, the plot centers on three characters - a mayor, his daughter and a local industrialist. The mayor, having been in office for twenty years with no opposition, faces an uncertain future. His daughter is an artist, unhappy in her loveless marriage. The industrialist owns the local factory, which employs a large proportion of the town's population. He is known throughout the area for his charitable work, but increasingly faces pressure from unions and environmentalists. The three are involved in a complicated series of alliances and rivalries. Behind every character's back, several others are working to bring them down. Secret notes and tapes are traded among the many conspirators. As the mayoral election approaches, and the daughter prepares for a major exhibition, the industrialist has an idea that could change the course of his company for years to come. Everything is in place - the pieces have been moving toward each other for a long time. Yet, no one knows that he is about to be turned into a puff of dust.

I had to reread the beginning of that novel, which I am still not sure I got right. I think the daughter is unhappy because she has abandoned a project - a painting or something - that she felt she had to finish, even though she doesn't want to finish it. The mayor is an anti environmentalist, a supporter of fracking and all that crap. He wants to build a garbage disposal facility in the lake that stores the melted nuclear reactor. The industrialist owns the factory that makes the machines for construction of the facility. Simple, right? Now the factory is having some financial trouble and the industrialist thinks if they can build the facility he could make a fortune. The mayor, of course, wants it so he can become a national figure by destroying the lake (it's a beautiful alpine lake) for posterity. The daughter, Lisa, is an eccentric artist who makes surrealistic films and paints realistic pictures of alpine landscapes. She is unhappy because she feels trapped, and not only by her husband (a man named Patrick who treats her like a guest in his home - he has a big house with all the mod cons but somehow it doesn't feel so much like a home as you might expect from such a setting). She is unhappy because she feels she has been given no choice in her life. She could never make up her mind whether she should live a certain way or not, but now that she does it seems too late for anything else.

I will probably be late in starting my novel this week. I have been thinking about it off and on, but there is a strange feeling of waiting for something to happen. I think it will happen this week, but it could be next week or the week after. I will have to start without knowing exactly what I want to write about. I suppose that is part of the risk one takes when starting a novel - not knowing how it will turn out, or even if it will.

I watched a movie over the weekend about an artist who goes to Mexico and falls in love with a woman named Frida Kahlo. I had never heard of her before and so learned about her for the first time through this film. What struck me the most was her determination to live life even though she was physically crippled for much of it. She had polio when she was a child and as an adult her wounds, caused by accidents or attacks of panic, were never healed completely. In fact, many of her later wounds were a result of passion - falling from horses, getting drunk and throwing herself out of windows. Her lifelong passion for Trotsky, to give but one example. Yet all of this she lived through with her determined expression, seemingly indifferent to her condition. It was only later when she became even more crippled, her facial tumors and other moles and lesions, that her spirit seemed to change - according to the film at least. As she got sicker, it seemed, her health affected not just her body but her spirit - she became more pessimistic and more famous (the movie implies this connection).

I am not writing this novel exactly as it will turn out but rather its shadow. I have a general idea of what the novel is about but as soon I start typing, words appear that were not part of my plan. My plan is to write a novel about someone who goes in and out of comas, but as I begin writing this sentence it seems the person whose voice will speak through me will be that of another woman - Lisa. I have no intention of writing a novel from the perspective or viewpoint of someone who is in comas, which seems an interesting idea but not one I want to pursue. I am not interested in describing moments or states of sleep, for that matter. I want to write something else, it seems.

I will begin this novel some other time. Now I am going to sleep.