{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Days between 2014.08.17 and 2020.03.11 : 2033 days
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I have been grabbing this book, Born to Fear (The Ligotti Interviews), on the way out the door.  Re-reading it, finally.   It feels good in my hands, an actual book.  You see, when I work with mathematics, and often even when programming, I am working with hard copy texts; whereas, most of the literature I pour over is digital format through a device.

So, for this book of interviews to spontaneously find its way back to front and center is welcomed.

It is a good companion to The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, since, well - it's Tom Ligotti, the conversationalist existing in our world, not one of his protagonists finding a cassette recording in a trunk in an attic in some creepy abandoned house on the outskirts of Detroit.

Are we in the enchanting nightmare?   When I imagine my fellow-human beings out there, it is kind of terrifying ... The Island of Dr M has nothing on the places we live.   There are some seriously unstable phenomena out there.   Humanity oozes to and from the cities.  In the nooks and crannies, pure Hell ... There is an Evil loose in this world, and it is always hungry, always needs very badly some kind of fix ...

Ligotti wants confrontational escapism, where we might tap into the abstract nightmare ... this phantasmagoria inside our skulls.  The protagonists of Lovecraft's stories are going mad with fear, terror ... horror.   Were we to be able to see all at once into the nooks and crannies on this Plantation of the Multinational Industrialists, we might be truly terrified.

As males, we are generally conditioned to repress or outright deny any fears; and yet Ligotti seeks out the fear.

It is one thing to be brave, another thing to be ignorant of the nature of one's own life.

I admit that I do not fit into this world too harmoniously, and that I hate the Banks, the Big Industries, the Lawmakers who tax and keep police forces well-fed and well-disciplined; but I fear the corrupt and powerful - that is, I wish to evade confrontations with them.

I wish to escape into a realm of far more powerful entities, the so-called supernatural forces who might intervene in my behalf.

If you could transform into some kind of supernatural demon, would you wreak havoc on those who trample over employees to get a bargain flat-screen TV?

All this demon would have to do is allow nature to take its course.

Abstract horror is relative and subjective, isn't it?   I used to have nightmares when I was drinking heavily where these masked freaks would be poking me with sticks ... and I could almost recognize the faces of people I might have known in the town I was living in at the time.

I can sympathize with those who truly feel the presence of supernatural forces battling all around us.   How any one of us interprets this reality must really be our own business, no?   

The demon of life is in me, as well; but I am tormented by a human fragility that we all must share to some degree, some much more than others - our weakness in the hands of the Indifferent Natural Elements, of which our fellowman is a part.

   I must repress a great deal.  As one prone to write and express forbidden ideas, I must be vigilant not to reveal too much even to myself!   Catastrophic Introspection!

Lead us not into temptation?  Tobacco is overtaxed, enforced by Federal Agents of the Corporate State.  We're in the Open Air Funny Farm.  What I am banking on is that a certain degree of documented "psychiatric mood disorder" of some sort might give one POETIC LICENSE to blurt unpopular truths out.