Hello readers, and belated Happy New Year! It’s taken me a few days to recover from a New Year’s Eve bash in Chicago where I drank myself into oblivion. Fortunately, the sound of my own vomit curdling on my chest woke me up Saturday afternoon. I found myself in a strange hotel that dates back to 1875 wearing nothing but my birthday suit and, well, the aforementioned vomit. I could hear Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” playing through the wall, and whether it was someone on the piano in the lobby or a recording, I couldn’t tell.
Nevertheless, here I am a year later. I shan’t recap my multifarious experiences over the course of 2010, for I gave some of the highlights via this blog a couple of weeks ago. However, I should like very much to inform you of future developments and figure the best way to do this is to answer mail from my many readers. Carol from Amherst, Massachusetts wonders why I expend so much energy on scatological musings and not on more significant or meaningful writing projects such as a story of romance and love. Would that I could oblige you, Carol, but I take issue with your dismissal of my scatological anecdotes, the purpose of which is not merely to find juvenile amusement in bodily functions but to keep the more ethereal topics such as God, culture and literature in the full context of human experience. Moreover, I fear that I have no love left in this dark, forlorn heart of mine, and drudging up a “love story” would be as much a foolhardy undertaking as an exercise in deceit and fraud.
Kendall of Pittsburgh wants to know whether I’ll focus more on nonfiction writing this year. I’m well aware that most readers are less interested in my attempts, ill-fated though they be, in fiction. I have a twofold response. First, I basically live a lie and often fail to grasp a putative distinction between reality and creative embellishment; nonfiction and fiction blend in my consciousness so much that I can’t separate them into airtight literary genres. Besides, fiction contains elements of truth—yes, truth about me to a certain extent, but more so truth about, say, an aspect of culture, politics or history. Second, the reading and writing of fiction is a form of escapism for me. While I enjoy a relatively good life, it certainly has its less-than-exhilarating moments. For this reason, I enhance or deflect from my mundane and boring experience of life by creating alternative worlds.
It looks like we have time for one more letter, so let me dig deep into the bottom of this mailbag. Let’s see… Megan of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin wants me to apologize for exposing respectable readers—presumably such as herself—to unmitigated violence without consequences. You’re flat out wrong, Megan, or whatever your real name is. While it is true that I write about murder and massacre, I’m always careful to show that such acts have consequences. For instance, killing thy neighbor can alleviate stress, solve a seemingly insolvable problem, and provide a handy means to get rid of competitors for food, sex, or territory.
Let me close this 2011 kick-off post with my New Year’s resolutions. Given that the end of the world will occur on 17 April 2023, based on a vision I received a few weeks ago, I hope in the course of this year to start the arduous process of coming to terms with the skeletons in my closet. Perhaps I should say closets, plural, since once closet is probably insufficient for storing all those rotting corpses. I don’t want to leave this world with shame, guilt, or lack of resolution in my checkered past. Another resolution is to make a difference by giving back to society. This blog will serve as the vehicle to goad the do-gooders and peaceniks into action by reminding them of the foibles of humanity, the idiocy of the international community, and the evil that men do. As always, Der Viator is serving his fellow man, and woman.
