FRIENDS!!!
I don’t even know what I can tell you about the past 6 months. I told you some of it, but as always, not all of it. The word ‘katabasis’ comes to mind.
And with any katabasis, there can be no recapturing, recounting, retelling of the descent in all its fulminant horror. The rage, the violence, the fights with construction workers, the residual shame, the daily grapple for inner peace as brain chemistry operates at F5 levels…
So…no Labor-to-St Patrick’s Day pipeline of information JamesJoycing in your direction at warhead speed.
But I will let you know…regretfully… I did have to go back on the medication. I tapered off it too quickly…and at the very wrongest time ever…when loud construction noises were about to erupt on the horizon [aka my backyard].
I can’t tell you all this harsh, unflattering truth without telling you about MISOPHONIA. This is something that has been tormenting me for years & I never knew it was a real thing—I thought it was just because I couldn’t get past a small-but-large trauma from a past neighbor & so I never really mentioned it to any doctors.
But I finally learned that having sound sensitivities that make you angry is called Misophonia. Not only is it a THING, it’s pretty common. And funnily enough, the most common sound sensitivity, the one that makes people so mad they could shoot up the whole…dining room? The sound of chewing! Chewing, slurping, gnawing, chomping, wet, moist mouth sounds.
Sounds gross, huh? I’m actually glad I’m not too sensitized to moist mouth noises. I’m infuriated by the loud, droning combustible industrial noises of machinery that never change pitch, just fart flatulently in atonal ignorance all day.
And there was plenty of that in the Autumn of ’22, while I was unshielded by my tiny pharmaceuticals.
There is still plenty of atonal flatulence going on across the street. But I am shielded now.
**********ANNOUNCEMENTS***************
Since the collapse of the bulbous-headed Octopus Review in 2019, I’ve been grappling daily with my future as a blogger. I’ve known that Blogger (the platform) was a ghostly wasteland & I didn’t even care, I just kept blogging away like a pretentious hipster c. 2008.
I would rather blog than talk. I explained that to y’all long ago & it still holds true today. I would rather pretend to be an important journalist than actually do all the hard work required to be an important journalist. I pretend I’m someone to listen to, and that feels good enough for me. You all seem to enjoy it too.
Since my very first blog series in the Summer of 2011 you all have been captivated by my gritty, deeply entrenched, darkly-webbed belly lint.
I went on to do other blog series that kept you equally enthralled — the one about my search for spirituality (w/ an impromptu psychic safari as an addendum), the one about detransitioners and autogynephiles, the most recent one about your Rx and their special F/x.
You can’t tell me this shit ain’t important!!
That’s why I’ve decided to transfer the entirety of The Octopus Diary (including Octopus Reviews 1— 8) over to SubStack, which is evidently the thriving blog center of the moment. Or the thriving blog moment of the center. Who knows anymore how to say anything??
You can find the newness-in-the-old over at https://valentinetremens.substack.com
I’ll be using my blogger name Valentine Tremens more. Vin Whitman is my super serious poet name. Val Trem is my fake important journalist name, Val Trem will be giving you his hot take on the hottest in haute culture, the bravest of subversive venturing.
My latest idea for a series has to do with my relationship with technology and how it has evolved over the years. Most of you know there is no love lost between me & the digital world (aka technology). I coined myself a ’Techno-phobe’ before I ever saw anyone else call it that. I did my best to ‘opt out’ of technology altogether — you can do that, right?
No, Valentine Tremens, you cannot. Technology will hunt you down and force you to reckon with all its versions & upgrades. Like deep genuflections to the left-brain gods, you will perform the agonizing rituals that finally come to represent literacy in a foreign language. Sending an email will become recording an EP will become ruling the globe with your Blog Empire.
HaHa!!! HaHa Haaaa!!! Anyway…I’ll keep you entertained with the most artfully edgyistic non-fiction, memoir, Vogon poetry & other very important prose. Just have patience with my handling of the technicalities.
I don’t have much more to say right now… and unfortunately I didn’t do any artwork while I was off-meds. That’s another thing you’ll see in the Substack-zone — new art when I find the reserves to create it! More fine dots, more quintuplet comix, more of whatever else snags my eyeball threads & yanks toward the canvas.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, btw. Happy St Patriocks Sobriety Day. SING!!! Ride your bike!
