Day 273: Blue skies

Trying to avoid negative rumination, though feel vulnerable to it, “primed” is the term I’d use. Tough to write when I’m like this, because it’s precisely the act of opening the brain up to pondering, to thinking deeply, that initiates the rumination. In fact it’s like the wide open beautiful mulling aspect of the brain that makes writing even possible, but taken and twisted by negativity, poison entering the system, travelling around and around, until everything is tainted.

Trying to disrupt the ruminative process every time I catch it. Force thinking away from that swirling maelstrom, onto anything else. I’ve been literally forcing myself to read shop signs and say the colour of cars in my head and go over the types of coats everyone is wearing, to wrest attention back from rumination. “No, don’t go down into it. Back here. Back here. Back here.” Snapping my fingers at myself, pulling myself away.

At home I’ve been playing OutRun on my Switch, the 1986 arcade classic racer, which is good distraction. Blue Sega skies, luxurious breezy chiptune music, chunky sprite-based worlds rolling by around your bright red Ferrari, and always having to focus on this moment, on the curve of the road, the cars ahead, the timer ticking down. The timer, the cars, the road. Curving road. Cars. Timer. On and on, the sprites spat into existence at your wheels and burning into oblivion just ahead, the acid trip ever-flow, the past gone, the future not arrived, pivoting your car, the chiptunes in your ears, the Sega sky vast above, roaring forwards until the timer runs down, and then one more go, maybe just one more go.

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Music: Lay My Love, by John Cale and Brian Eno.