Loyalty — Briton Rivière, 1869

 

Help With a Fresh Start

I left Seattle. I had nothing worth staying there for. I really just wanted away from nothing but negative memories I have there. But I was feeling a lot of trepidation about going home to East County. Yes, I could be close to my mother who shows me unconditional support, but I don't get along with most of either side of my family, every part of SD (no matter how seedy) is expensive, and it felt like running back to more of the same. 

I started driving, took a random East turn, to spend a night in Reno. Instead of that, I had the worst physical health experience of my life, a twenty-eight day hell, most of which was spent in the hospital, whether ER, ICU, or a patient room. 

Between talking with Doctors and them running every test imaginable on me, (I had my first MRI), there was a lot of time to think. That much more because I literally almost died twice (confirmed by Doctors on my team) while I was there. Both times, I could feel it, and both times I felt this odd acceptance.

The past eight years of my life have been a mass wasting, downhill slope, during which anything that can go wrong, has. I've been generally stuck. I need a hard reset. I used to be a happy, creative, active person. Now I'm just this bitter, judgmental, resentful cynic. I can't keep living this way. I want the old John back. I'm sure plenty others wouldn't mind that.

So, I'm doing the bravest and scariest thing I've ever done. I've been nostalgic for Tonopah, NV for years. The town is so key in forming who I am today, both reading, writing, and personality. And the high desert is gorgeous. I think the isolation of this place will be good for finding and strengthening myself. I think it will definitely be good for my writing. So, with literally everything I owned crammed into my Honda Fit, I am in Tonopah. I need to find a job first. I just got here today, and have already been applying. Once I get a job, there's this whole complex of furnished studio apartments, which would be all I need. And the price is right. 

In the meantime, I'm either in a cheap motel or sleeping in my car at the Rest Stop, 13 miles north of town. In short, I don't have a ton of money to stretch out, if things get rolling slower than I'd hoped. 

Whether I post a lot of content in a week or none at all, this blog still gets a fair amount of visits everyday. It makes me happy, even if I know there was probably just a word or name from my post that someone was searching. Still, I have no idea if all of you are those, or friends, or just strangers who enjoy my content. If any of you want to help me out, as I approach forty and start my new chapter: anything helps if you have the means. I feel tacky using the blog this way, but I really need this and I don't want to get forced into a corner where I have to give up on it.

In short, my Venmo is:

@johnnynelson85

Alex Dimitrov

Sartre

 It's strange. I felt less lonely when I didn't know you.

from The Dilemma of Being Human — Glen Martin Taylor

 

An interpretation of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, currently showing at the Arc Gallery, Chicago.

Nothing — Margaret Atwood

Nothing like love to put blood
back in the language,
the difference between the beach and its
discrete rocks and shards, a hard
cuneiform, and the tender cursive
of waves; bone and liquid fishegg, desert
and saltmarsh, a green push
out of death. The vowels plump
again like lips or soaked fingers, and the fingers
themselves move around these
softening pebbles as around skin. The sky's
not vacant and over there but close
against your eyes, molten, so near
you can taste it. It tastes of
salt. What touches you is what you touch.

Alex Lemon

 

Louise Erdrich

 

Deer

 

Carolina Chocron

 

 

Anguish — August Friedrich Schenck, 1878

 

Kathleen Ryan

 Bad Fruit

Sarah Fier's Cursed Hand — Houston Sharp

 

Little Death — Malgorzata Kalinowska

Malgorzata Kalinowska

Tram Drey

 

Tram Drey made a shotgun, complete with shells, (this may initially seem redundant, but I mean shotgun shells, not crustaceans), out of crab.

Pacific, 1967 — Alex Colville

 

Phil Hale

 

 

Towards the Hill — Ken Danby

 

Pandemonium - George Grosz, 1919

 

Secret Admirer

 

Autographs

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Dr. Seuss

 

White Noise, Don DeLillo

 

Fine Just the Way It Is, Annie Proulx

A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

Barkskins, Annie Proulx

The Shards, Bret Easton Ellis

 

Kinder Than Man - Athea Davis

 

The Witching Hour - Andrew Wyeth

 

Farewell Glance - Gennady Dobrov, 1982

 

The Dead Miner (Mourning the Master) - Charles Christian Nahl, 1867

 

The Clay and the Potter - Aitor Frias & Cecilia Jimen

 

The Witch - John Collier, 1893

 

Ron Francis

 

Ron Francis