Dear Lady of all the Sirens:
When Trumpfuckery was afoot and identity politics was one of the most damaging counter intuitive responses to far right wingnuttery...
...What, you want to divide people based on their gender, the colour of their skin or the preference of their sexuality, which is nobody's fucking business and why do you think I need to know it and you actually think that shaming people is progressive pedagogy, I just decided I needed to write lighten up stories.
Most of these were true stories revolving around self-deprecation and laughing at oneself is a sure fire cure for the blues.
As for the sorrows of the world and your lament?
I remember having to deconstruct Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott way way back in the University days.
This really really bright woman was my tutorial partner.
I apologize to Pamela for my paraphrase:
"She's a weaver, Daryl. She takes the strands of humanity, their stories and tries to make sense of them...give them colour and patterns and beauty. "
"But she can't really practice her art if she's too involved in humanity. She needs to isolate herself, sure in a tower, by a river, all in order to remove herself from the clatter and clang and the other sounds of those whom Nietzsche called the bungled and the botched."
"When she decides to end her artistic isolation, she floats down the river and suffers not a literal but a metaphorical death...its her art that dies."
Hot damn Pamela was something else.
Which brings me back to you, carrying all that sorrow, don't let it rob you of your art.
Some of us, like you, are born to love the world...a blessing and a curse. This post and what's in it is the curse part...loud and soul searingingly joyless.
It's like someone just unmoored yer boat and let you drift down the river all crestfallen that degradation is the norm...best to join the sisters and make some good coffee and smoke some bad ass weed...make some harps out of seaweed strands and conch shells, learn how to speak manatee.
So yes to lighten up stories. Please. People love stories about Mermaids and Mermen too. Give us more Jay Bostics with gills and flukes.
Let that be your new mantra for just awhile. And come back to us recharged.