Jack of Spades.

A young man stands with his long, dark hair blowing in the wind, looking off to the horizon. In his right hand he holds three cards - the backs to us. With his left hand he grips the shoulder strap for the sword he carries on his back. It is embroidered with spades; three are visible. He is wearing armor, perhaps preparing to go off to battle. Behind him in the breeze wave three banners, each with laurel leaves printed upon them. The wind blows blue behind him...

This is an energetic card - this guys is gonna DO something. You can tell. I get a real sense of energy going forward when I look at this card. I'd almost like to travel with him...

The pamphlet reads "Caution" and "Potential".

Yep - the armor and the weapons - which include both the sword and the cards, natch - are there for the sake of caution. But... there is a direction to go in, and he is going there.

This card speaks to me, of course, because this moment of my life actually has SO much potential. I am changing - for the better, I believe - and as doors close in my face, new ones also open. The field is wide - the sun is high.

There's a long way to go. But I am going there.

Writing...?

Up a bit late tonight - drank tea too late in the day. So it goes.

I've spent the past month healing my soul. That's taken the form of focusing intently on cooking, planting, reading a whole bunch about history and ecology, and driving all over the region to every damn McMenamins I can reach (and yes, I will write reviews of ALL of them... eventually). I've spent less time in front of a screen this past month than I have for years upon years. It's amazing. It's like remembering myself.

But - there is a craft that I do, have done, for most of my life, whenever I find a spare moment and a spare corner. That craft is writing. And that moment and that corner might, finally, have come once more.

It must be said - I, uh, already easily write at least 1000 words a day, even when I spend less hours per day in front of a screen than I have for easily a decade. In fact, on days when I'm humming, I easily write **10,000** words per day without any trouble. Volume has never been an issue for me, all the way back to middle school, when I got bored of watching Matlock reruns and wrote 100 pages of fanfiction every summer break for the rest of my school years.

But most of that writing is not directly spent on story - over this past year in particular, it's been in the form of Internet comments. I must credit Rod Dreher (who I disagree with on a lot politically, but respect as a human and as a writer) for creating a welcoming space for my 10,000 word comments. It unleashed my ability to write an entire political essay in an hour. Of course, I don't actually think any political essay written in an hour has a single lick of quality. It was a way to get myself through the darkness of 2020. And... we're through, the darkness is past, and I can look to the future.

What do I want to write? And, since this is a spiritual blog - what *should* I write? I know that I have a certain amount of talent. This is the era in which creative people of all types have a more difficult time, a higher bar to clear, than ever before, so I am quite aware that developing my talent will never amount to anything close to fame, or even making a living. In a way this is a tragedy, but in a way it is freeing. No matter how hard I work, I will never amount to anything. The pressure's off! So... what do I want to write? What am I *called* to write?

In 2019 I had a burning desire - in more ways than one - to write pornography. But pornography on my terms, involving complex and broken people who find transcendence through the ties woven between sex and emotion. I wanted to write about love across a gaping class divide, but not the usual one - no princes, but broken-down working class men; no poor girl made good, but spoiled non-monogamous married businesswomen from San Francisco. I wanted to write about people of color who find themselves in love with racists, with no easy happy ending. I wanted to write entire books focused on the sexuality of men, with a pitiless female gaze. I wanted to write about women and men who question their entire identity because of the new sexual desires they uncover in middle age. I wanted to write sci-fi where the sexual boundary lines were drawn in very different places than our current world, yet didn't perturb the characters any more than our own taboos and norms do. And I wanted to create an entirely new category called "historically-accurate kink".

I took too much time getting over the unmarketability of these works, and their non-PC-ness. History caught up with my dreams and smashed them on the rocks. I never had the time to complete a single one.

I still think I want to write those stories. But that's not the only thing I want to write - not anymore.

All throughout 2020, different types of stories started to pop up in my mind. For the first time ever, they dealt with spiritual matters. At first I shrugged them off as random - I do get story ideas all, and I mean ALL, the time - but eventually they led to... well... this blog, and all it represents.

But - they are still popping up in my mind. They feel no less important to me, and to where I am in life right now, than the pornography. And... they might even be more meaningful.

So, uh. Here's an idea. Just throwing it out there.

I will start to prepare a Wordpress blog. Not right away - I need a deep bench of work ready to post on a schedule, before I tackle the hassle of public bloggery. But when it's all put together, it will have this tagline:

"This blog contains hardcore pornography and harder-core spirituality. No, I didn't workshop this, but I always update on time."

There will be a work focusing on spirituality uploaded on the first of every month, and a work focused on sexuality uploaded on the 15th of every month.

I'll want 6 months of content MINIMUM before I go public. I want to keep to the schedule I promised. I'll keep a "backlog tracker" running on the sidebar, to keep myself honest as much as anything.

That means... 6 spiritual entries, and 6 sexual ones. Hmm.

I have a 7-chapter pornographic work that's almost finished, so that could stand in for the entirety of the sexual content before launch, provided I complete it.

I also have... hmm. An "easy" 4-chapter spiritual work about rescuing a piece of land from the developer's maw. That's a good place to start?

There's also a whole bunch of formulaic (in a way) short stories that deal with human sin and karma which keep popping into my mind like clockwork - they all want to be written like children's books, so that in theory won't take much time.

The porn ideas are literally endless, I could always write a few of those and intersperse, as I prefer.

This is just the start of the work - I'll have to do a lot more concrete planning, and of course... the writing. But I mean. What's stopping me? I have literally no more barriers left, physical or emotional or even social. I can write whatever the hell I want. Several hours of the day, even. I can finally, finally, FINALLY, WRITE.

And... I think I'm gonna do just that.