Tuesday, February 10, 2026

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All Paths Take Me To Just Beyond
Where I Can See From Here And Then
A Blockade Is Reached

Yes, I keep saying quartets when I mean
quatrains.  I’m going through my photo
graphs, something I do in between bouts
of being actually busy, putting in proper

dates, tagging names to faces, deleting dup
licate files.  I’ve been doing this for years but 
in its current iteration now I’m up to March of 
2015, and while I never used to give away dates

in here this easily, I’m concerned that, since it
was soon after that year, let’s say, when all of my
big troubles began, I’m now worried that going 
through the remaining 11 years of photos might also 

get a bit too depressing.  Might be a repeat.  But 
so much time has passed, it’ll probably be more, 
oh, I don’t know, I don’t like to think I’m that too
nostalgic, have gotten some criticism from people 

that know me that maybe I should find a new hobby
since, well, the past.  And I had one.  And it was
pretty good up until, again, around the middle of
2015.  Hell broke loose slowly after that, and in

evitably I wind up here, typing you this short
means of an escape from what that same past
has now, inevitably gotten stuck inside.  So what?
Well, I might just learn something about myself,

I think, a rebuke of the criticism, that suggestion
clearly made by the few who know me and do
actually care about my well-being.  Lately, I’ve
been thinking a lot about the fact that almost

no one I’m in contact with these days, especially
locally, knows me from before that year.  Who I
was pre-2015.  And that year was pretty fun, on
the whole.  To pinpoint a moment where things

fell apart, still, would be toward the end of that
year, or it could go back to the previous one. When 
did the good times end?  What, if anything would I 
call good times since?  What are the reasons that

those seem to be so significantly rarer these
past few years?  Anyone might say that it does
not have to be this way.  But my focus has been
so significantly on bringing myself back to a

contentment, a happiness replete with pleasure,
that existed before then.  But did it?  As those
years and the one in which I exist grow further 
apart, am I losing objectivity about such things?  

As an artist, I’ve conversely always been more left-
brained than I have been right-brained.  And I
can see the formula that I followed for years
that seemed to work so wonderfully.  But is that

just a fantasy, a mirage that my supposedly
analytical brain is giving me.  False memories
or a false sense of whatever I was feeling and
whatever stress I went through back then as

opposed to that which I go through these days?
I stare at these pictures from back then, with its
up-to-then imbalancce of pictures of me, often 
just my face (a selfie), and wonder, but cannot 

look inside each photograph’s face to be able 
to more scientifically discern the differences
that exist due to the passing of this growing
percentage of my life’s duration.  Perhaps it
s

time to shake up all of my routines, take up alter
native hobbies from selfie cataloging.  But the photos
ease my mind so.  Would that life were so easy as 
up being down, down being up, etc.  I want to relive 

without living it again, just to include the edits that 
come from having this life.  But of course that is just
fantasy.  How can I shorten those old long-term
goals to fit within this reality?  Is the key to feeling

like I have it all just a mind-trick?  Do I need a new
pair of glasses?  What can I dredge up in order to
make any kind of substantial breakfast?  How do I
get over this one last hump?  I keep asking myself.

Whether or not these are the right questions to ask.

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