THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 66

I had this realization the other day that my youthful desire for power was actually a need to control my immediate surroundings. I felt such visceral & total disgust towards things I didn’t like, my ultimate want was to not feel that way. I didn’t know that I could diminish these feelings without trying to control the world around me. However, the more I had control over my own life & myself the less I desired power. It’s obscenely straight forward & mechanical. I have also worked hard on not feeling such visceral contempt for things I don’t like but I’m thankful for that ultimately because that overwhelming sense of what I like & don’t like has really helped me construct something unique in the world. I keep finding these elements as so two-sided. This brings me back to all the discussions of divided duality being an issue but it was also confirmed when I was researching the Tarot & all the cards have different meanings if they are drawn upright or upside down (reversed). There is an understanding of a trait but then the trait is understood as two-sided or having a balance between two aspects. That is to say, my intense feeling & sensitivity is what helped shape my unmatched aesthetic sensibilities but at the same time, that level of sensitivity has made me vulnerable in certain profound ways & probably was one of the many factors leading to my stroke. I have spent so much energy trying to straighten out my brain of childhood trauma, it kind of underlines how imperfect the human psyche is & how we are a bunch of hairless apes. I have no doubt of our tremendous capabilities as a species, but I also am very aware of how thin the veneer of civilization is on us, & how if you scratch the surface old Baldie Kong is lurking. It’s funny because I owe a lot of my success to eschewing this sort of egg-headed talk, turning up the gorilla & plowing forward. Having had the stroke & lost so much of my hulking, war-machine like presence, I have had the (damaged) brain come to the fore. I was forced to slam on the brakes, I hit a wall.