Lovecraft Unbound. Got to two really good stories finally. Michael Chabon (In the Black Mill) and Joyce Carol Oates. (I have an Oates book or two lying around I've always avoided because she's popular and thus, to be dismissed...) The Chabon got me thinking though and the beginning of the Oates one, more so. About dark rituals, rituals of slow suicide and other destructive actions that speak to our nonsconscious belief in bloodthirsty gods.

Perhaps it's all connected. Nonconscious mysticism. Nonconscious slow suicide. And maybe belief in the old Inca type gods isn't really dead.

But even if it's a load of BS, it makes for a good short story, that might cause people to think, hopefully. In the Black Mill reminds of coal miners and factory workers whom live as if they're without hope, or like they just enjoy killing themselves?

And then with Oates, I haven't finished it yet, but it sparked my mind to think of the ritual of college. I don't know what's going to happen but I suspect someone's going to die while 30,000 cheer on. Like ritual capitalism. A ritual that speaks to our continued nonconscious belief in bloodthirsty gods.

Think of the ritual of cheeseburgers and so on. My own mom who is going to literally die before she eats a piece of broccoli. And sister. And endless patients I take care of, all obese, perhaps just ignorant. (Or is that willful ignornance?)

Hard to care much when no one else does.

It's not that the ritual is meaningless, it's that it speaks to our nonconsious, and within our nonconsious what do we find? Boogie men. Ghosts. Various things to fear. And perhaps an overriding belief in destruction.

So we perform rituals to placate the fear of our animal mind. Rituals to placate the bloodthirsty gods. And rituals that give the truth to the meaninglessness of our lives.