i’ve lost the plot

no more interest in saying where i’m from what i do what my parents are like how many siblings i have do i have dogs or cats what do i read what are my favorite movies

are you feeling it too ?

Read more

Hey everyone.

I am going to be doing a series where I publish my notes and findings from each of my writing workshops.

This will not be free in the future, however, I wanted to offer this first one as a glimpse into this expanding series born out of each of my writing workshops.

For future access to this notes series you will need to upgrade to a paid subscription. Additionally, if you want to join a writing workshop or work with me as an editor and/or writing guide let me know by emailing me.

I am also steadily expanding REALITY NOW PUBLISHING as a full-service publishing company, taking writers from A-Z on their projects.

Enjoy!

Best,
Augustus

WRITING WORKSHOP #1

NOTES:

-should we focus on passion or cultural relevance?
passion
passion, focus on what YOU want to say and NEED to say
let whether or not it becomes culturally relevant be decided by the Gods
all you are really obligated to do is tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may
Truth is universal by the way
A story about a plumber can be related to by the Beverly Hills Socialite, as long is the soul is being revealed
Is that too heavy to say?
Anyway, as complex as humans can seem, we all beat to the same rhythms of emotion at the end of the day (I think)

-personal
if it is not personal what is the point?
caveat: not everything is personal and imbued with the blood of your Self, some things we do write for fun so to speak
however, i have found that the more you are willing to reveal the better!
all writing is personal after all, even if it is Sci Fi or Fantasy? There is always a thread of the writer in there (I think!)

-auto-fiction / faction
This is what we call a story that is not necessarily memoir but is born out of notes from your real life

-Read Philip K. Dick, especially his book VALIS
Vast Active Living Intelligence System
Dick wrote his political views into his sci-fi novels so he could fly his beliefs under the radar
Boom

-Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
A must
Dense
Heavy
But a must
Great female character, we love Anna

Read different writers and see how their voices manifest on the page

-Outlining or Not Outlining
how do we make our writing process fun (or at least not torturous???)
I have found that giving ourselves a roadmap helps
FREEDOM CAN BE FOUND IN BOUNDARIES
in other words please make your writing (somewhat) enjoyable)

-The virtues of an editor
An editor helps reveal the alchemy of what the writer has written
STAMP THAT

-Reading at your writing from when you were younger
What a revelation
I have looked at my writing when I was years younger and expected to cringe but instead I found myself saying:damn this is really good! Who is that person???

-How our audience views otu writing is really none of our concern
HOWEVER, I actually welcome “bad reviews”
I’m curious what people did not like about my writing
Good reviews are easy to swallow, bad ones are something else
Real honest to goodness critics are actually vital (few of them exact actually in today’s world as good PR is bought and paid for by corporate shills)
I once had someone write a review for my book How to Kill a White Man saying “why would someone ever read this.” Wait, don’t stop there, I thought, tell me more!

-The contemporary attention spans
I think writing might be one of the most challenging things to do in a world rife with a dwindling phone-induced attention span
Be aware of this
Slow down
Create a space for writing
Pause
|Chill
Breathe
Ntozake Shange said that whenever she wrote she approached her typewriter like a queen
Love that, love her

-Abandon the need to be perfect
The final edit won’t even be perfect
Abandon perfection
Wabi Sabi
Nature isn’t perfect
But it also is
So just let it be
And write
And see what happens
Go there

-becoming visible
being seen
I like writers I work with to read their writing out loud
it is another step toward getting their writing out into the world
Conviction
Believe
In your Self
Thus
In your writing

“enemies” is a strong word

who even has enemies these days

maybe we do

but i would venture to guess that most of our enemies are fabricated

fabricated through dramas we have created

i once heard a zen monk say that humans are drama …

Read more

I’m working on a new book

Actually it’s more of an essay

A long essay that I will publish

And it is about cheating

Primarily being cheated on

But also about cheating on someone

I can’t really write about being cheated on without also writing about what it feels like to cheat on someone

Now I’m writing this newsletter because I’m kind of having a hard time finding my way into the essay

I want to move the energy of this project around

I don’t know how philosophical or not-philosophical I want to be with this essay

Also do I want to actually write it as less of an essay and more of a short story?

What is the difference between an essay and a short story?

Well to me an essay is more kind of like a science project

Whereas a short story is whatever the opposite of a science project would be

A short story is like an existential trip, as opposed to a mind-brain trip

However I feel like I have so many theories about cheating that I want to talk about, so when I find myself writing it as a short story it keeps taking these turns down rabbit holes of philosophy

So maybe it just needs to be both

After all, every writer is a philosopher

Like Dostoevsky, I feel like he is a great example of short story meeting philosophical essay

Like his book Notes from the Underground feels so philosophically charged. Am I wrong? Let me know

So what i will do is, which I always seem to do with my writing, is just wrap my beliefs around what happened to me

Also, about this thing of talking about both sides of the story, like if I talk about being cheated on then I must talk about cheating on someone else, it goes along with my belief that in writing you must remember the yin and yang

what i mean by the yin and yang is that you can’t really not consider both sides of the story

the audience will become skeptical of your integrity if you don’t consider the yin and yang of life’s experience

like if i just talk about being cheated on then the story can easily veer into me sounding like a victim - which i am not

but if i wrote a story about being cheated on juxtaposed with cheating on somebody else then it is well-rounded and believable and considering the yin and yang of life

it also reinforces my feelings and theories about cheating if i talk about my own foibles

does that make sense?

i will also say the older i get the more focused my writing gets

which is a double edged sword

i don’t write from a place of blissful ignorance anymore like i did when i was say in my early 20s, now i am much more aware of what i’m putting down on the page, which is double edged because i still have to let it rip

but about this story

what does it feel like to be cheated on?

i mean why would anyone even want to write about this?

i’m not a masochist after all

i want to write about it because I don’t feel like there is very much written about it

probably for good reason

it’s exhausting

and it’s the last thing one would really want to continue thinking about

but if you have been cheated on you know

the deep pain

the knife

the breaking

the confusion

the grief

the grey cloud of what just happened

if you say you have been cheated on i can only assume that you at least thought you were in love with said person that cheated on you

and if you were in love with said person then the relationship would be very profound and affecting

so being cheated on leaves indelible marks on our soul and our psyche

with that being said i think it is safe to say that the subject of cheating is worth being written about extensively

and maybe it has been written about extensively in movies and plays and books

however from a kind of essay standpoint i feel like there could be a more pointed approach to the subject

or…fxck it

i have shit to say

and i want to use this as a salve to cleanse my soul from the pain that has been inflicted by someone i trusted

more will be revealed

I’ll keep you posted

let’s go

some of you may know that I have been editing writing a lot lately

editing has revealed itself as something i love to do

i didn’t really know what editing was until (probably) recently, say maybe a solid year ago…

that was until the Universe gave me the opportunity to edit some substantial pieces of writing, including: a book of poetry, a memoir, a book of short stories, and a novel

i have an editor myself, by the way, but even working with her it never really dawned on me how important an editor is

like, what does an editor do anyway?

most people, probably, think of an editor as someone who checks for spelling mistakes and errors in grammar (which I will do with my writers), but that is not the kind of editing i’m talking about

the kind of editing i’m talking about is essentially called developmental editing

developmental editing is when the story is there, in some shape or form, and it needs to be developed, in order to, as i like to say, take it from good to great

that is my job as an editor, take the author’s work from good to great

i also work with writers of all different categories

i work with writers who say they “don’t know how to write” and writers who are seasoned

the person that says they “don’t know how to write” is interesting to me, in the sense that i don’t subscribe to that belief

my belief is that: if you can speak you can write

writing is just speaking onto the page

yes, there is a certain amount of “finding your voice” as it were, that happens as you hone your technique as a writer, but i have noticed a lot of people tend to shortchange themselves by saying “they don’t know how to write” - i’ve also noticed these people often really want to write they just have yet to practice steadily

these people can be a bit more nuanced to work with as opposed to the more seasoned writer because there are more mental or emotional or spiritual blocks to move through if you will

i have also been working with writers who have projects in every kind of phase of development, from literally just an idea in their head to having a full draft of a manuscript written

by the way, i don’t believe in writer’s block - i think it is a scam dreamed up by god knows who. By the way, we don’t seem to know the origin of the term writers block - google says it came from a mystical place, which is interesting because writing is very mystical, but did we need to create another neurosis called writers block?

(remind me in the future to write about my theory on seasonal creation or seasonal writing)

anyway, don’t fall into the writers block trap, instead call me or email me and let’s work

furthermore, i subscribe to a kind of Marlon Brando style belief as it pertains to writing - you know marlon brando right? said to be the greatest actor to ever live -

well brando had this feeling that everybody on earth is an actor, which is totally true after all, think of how often we act, at the grocery store, at the dinner table, at work, all of it is a kind of play of personality, so he didn’t believe when people said they couldn’t act, it was just that they hadn’t honed that skill - i believe the same thing for writing

also, similar to reading, we are actually reading and writing all the time, it’s just in what shape and form - writing a caption on instagram, albeit seemingly inconsequential, is still writing

i have noticed that editing is really about being a shaman

i know, barf, i get it, the last thing we need is another ayahuasca stoned nut job calling themselves a shaman, but bear with me

(I also don’t do ayahuasca, not that there’s anything wrong with ayahuasca, just making that known)

also if shaman is too heavy of a word we could call it guide

but shaman is a lot cooler than being a guide

but being an editor is essentially being a shaman or a guide

like the writing is this river

and the river is surrounded by a lot of beautiful and challenging things like golden snakes and golden alligators and glistening jaguars and fresh waterfalls and anacondas made of stardust

and you don’t really know what of those things you want to caress or stay away from, and it is my job as an editor to help guide you through that process

too abstract?

all right

as an editor i am helping you the writer find the music of your manuscript

writing is music essentially, it is tone, it is sound, it is emotion

and i help you find how those notes hit as your editor

you the writer have the initial idea but i have found that an editor is deeply important to helping the writer find all of that on a deeper and better and greater and more transcendent level

again

GOOD TO GREAT

i don’t want your writing to just be good, i want your writing to transcend

i want you to have the potential of Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica when you write

so we read your writing out loud together and we find that

this is tedious yet deeply important: you must read your writing out loud with the editor

through that we find the gold living in your idea

it’s a bit like being a music producer, maybe rick rubin or pharell

i help you the writer hear and see what you have

i reel you in and i take you up

it is a dance between the writer and editor

a very important relationship is created

i dare say an intimate one

the writer must trust their editor, and honestly vice versa

we must challenge each other and encourage each other

get more personal, get more real, get more vulnerable

go

in today’s world we don’t seem to know what editors are - which makes sense because real through kind of literary writing seems to be lost in its own way

keep in mind though, the statistics show that people are buying more books than ever before - do they read them? i don’t know, but clearly the written word is still vital to our world

but editors used to be rock stars in their own right…

Like this list of important editors here

In conclusion, (so as not to inundate you, and I will probably continue on sharing my editing process more here), working with an editor or writing teacher is necessary

you can think that your writing is perfect and that you have all the answers, but that is something to be wary of

actors need directors

painters need art dealers

football players need coaches

musicians need producers

writers need…

call me, email me

much love

augustus

_{(if you need an editor or a writing teacher hit me up, let’s work together)}

Live large.

Spread love.

It’s the Brooklyn way.

And let us know what you think of this conversation about Artificial Intelligence and the 5th Dimension etceteraaaa

The term "artificial intelligence" was coined by John McCarthy at the 1956 Dartmouth Workshop, which is widely regarded as the founding event of AI as a field of research.

Much love

What’s up!

My brother Eben and I have a conversation about Artificial Intelligence.

There are so many aspects of AI to talk about, and I believe we touched on some important ones.

Notably: I would say about halfway through we get into what felt like a really important and hopeful conversation about the 5th Dimension. Which is really just a place of perspective, as in, a way to see the world around you in a positive light. I think it’s important to note, we aren’t talking about this from some abstract stance, or a place where the solution feels impossibly esoteric to find or understand or practice.

Additionally, we feel like so much of the conversation around AI is polarizing…obviously. It is either amazing or it is terrible, and talking about shifting from the 3rd to the 4th to the 5th dimension felt very optimistic.

After all, it is not healthy to be cynical.

Let us know what you think about this conversation, we would like to hear your thoughts and theories.

Eben and I hope you find this talk engaging.

Sending our best,
Augustus & Eben

in no way do i mean to minimize the self-immolation that took place

however hopefully i am honoring it in some way by referencing it and being inspired by it

keeping the act alive by comparing it to something happening in modernity

the thing i’m comparing it to is not as severe and doesn’t involve death (probably) however the image to me conjures similar feelings

i understand the comparison could be a stretch, but it is what comes up for me

before i go further, i want to give you a couple of links here if you want to read more about the monk who self-immolated

The Monk: Thic Quang Duc

Further context on the images, etc.

the comparison i am referring to is reading (additionally, and maybe especially, reading in public)

mind you, i don’t really read in public per se

there is too much noise and distraction and i need some semblance of peace and quiet in order to read in public

if there is too much music or people around me like in a cafe i don’t want to read

so although i do read in public spaces, those places tend to be less populated

i also like to read at home in the morning when my mind feels most fresh and alert to the printed page

i don’t understand how people read in loud public places

i take my hat off to them

how do they concentrate? it’s actually kind of amazing to me

i also don’t want to be the performative reading guy

note: isn’t it sad and lame and fxcking stupid that we created this thing called the performative male?

by the way: is there a performative female?

i don’t know

anyway, i think a large aspect performative males involves carrying around books and doing performative reading

yes, let’s lambast people reading

yes, let’s lambast people wanting to get smarter and wanting to use their minds

leave it to social media to create something as putrid and vomit-inducing as the idea of the performative male

leave it to social media to promote a kind of passive aggressive intellectualism

i can’t tell you how excited i am for the days of social media to be over

however i won’t be holding my breath

why does the idea of the performative male make me so sick?

it’s like the idiots making fun of people wanting to be smart

don’t get me wrong I guess there are performative males carrying around big copies of Anna Karenina as they enter coffee shops hoping to be seen by the drug-addicted alt-girl covered in tattoos but…are there? Does that guy actually exist?

this reminds me to finally read Confederacy of Dunces, so let’s make a note to add that to our book club

holy shit let me get off this subject and get back to the monk aka the human that actually sacrificed themselves for something decent

mind you i don’t know if self-immolating is the best way to send a message, but it is intense and clearly got attention, i mean, people still talk about it to this day

but the image of the burning monk came up for me because i have been reading a lot more lately

which is a blessing

an actual blessing

reading

because lately i have been hearing myself say out loud: I’m just not reading as much as I used to

and upon hearing myself say this over and over again it started to dawn on me that i needed to do something about it

so i started quietly praying

i think that’s what i did

i started telling god i wanted romance back

reading equals romance

and after a little while it happened

i found myself in book stores

even though i have a ton of books at home

but i found myself looking for a novel to read

note that i wanted to start reading novels

i did not want to read more self-help right now

reading self-help books does not equal romance to me

reading novels equals romance

i was specific about my prayers that i wanted to read novels

so it happened

i bought one

it was called Satantango (published in 1985 and it just won the Nobel Prize in 2025. It was written by a Hungarian dude named Laszlo Krasznahorkai. The book is extremely dense and almost unreadable meaning it just really is hard to follow and it is written in one long paragraph but it has moments of true sensory brilliance)

NOTE: I also like reading books that win Pulitzers and Nobels because I’m like okay what’s up? Why is this so good?

Anyway i picked up Satantango and I started reading it

Barreling through the incoherent beginning

Committed to finishing it (I don’t like to start a book and not finish it)

And I read it in the morning and i read it by the river as a a few people walked by

I carried it with me

Feeling proud that I was carrying a fxcking book as opposed to a cell-phone

Cell-phones have become so LAME

Aren’t we just so corny looking at our cell-phones all the time?

cell-phones have become trash

YES! The new I-phone flip phone. NO. Not yes. Go fxck yourself

Anyway i’m now being somewhat performative walking through coffee shops with my copy of the esoteric Stantango

but this minor performace also feels necessary

why does it feel necessary?

because i’m the new monk

because people don’t seem to be reading and they are lobotomized by their phones and they aren’t paying attention so how can i set myself on fire without actually setting myself on fire??

so i’m not only reading but i’m also doing an act of rebellion

which is where i think deeper about the monk who self-immolated

i am like the monk

you reading in public are also like the monk

because reading now (in public or not) feels (and maybe totally is) an act of rebellion, in the same way the monk immolating was an act of rebellion

rebellion against war, against idiocy, against the powers that be, against so many things unhelpful to earth

i know I sound like a neo-woke soldier of sanity but it’s kind of true

i am an anarchist after all

almost an anarchist to a fault

the male-female sitting outside with their eyes being sucked out of their head by their cell-phone whilst sucking tirelessly on a vape pen is no better than a sack of useless meat

kidding

let me be kind

let me tell you the real story

i was sitting by the river

i was reading the unreadable and at time gorgeous novel Satantango

enjoying moments hating moments of the book

and a man walking two dogs comes strolling up

mind you: people walking by had been looking at me reading

i could see them i could feel them

like they were sort of spell bound or curious or confused at what i was doing: why was i reading a book? how does one do that? is he practicing witchcraft?

at least that’s what my ESP was picking up on

so this guy walks by with his dogs and he stops and i look up at him and he is looking at me and he says: What’s that?!

And he points at my book

clearly making a joke

clearly recognizing the strange equation going on of seeing someone reading a book

my hair stood on end

i got the chills

Dude. I said. That is exactly what i have been feeling.

I went on to tell him that his joke about me holding and reading this object was blowing people’s minds, let alone mine, was less of a joke and more of fact

the man was a bit older, and he momentarily regaled me on life before cell-phones

he said he had headphones in because he was walking and listening to a tape on how to learn Italian and that he was getting ready to move to Italy

i wondered if he would be taking his dogs with him

the man walked off

i kept reading

i kept thinking of that moment between myself and the man and the book

how did we get here??

this slow burn of lobotomization

but AI will save us right?

Yay

I promise I’m not as cynical as I sound

I’m really just a cheap journalist

and for some optimism I will say this

as i started carrying my book around and reading it i started to notice more people reading books in public

i don’t know if it was just that kind of energetic synchronicity like you buy a red Honda Civic and all you see on the road are red Honda Civics

I have now started to see more people carrying around books and reading

Which is amazing because now i go up and talk to them and ask them what they are reading and i can have an interaction face to face with a kindred spirit

what do they say: your vibe attracts your tribe

lovely

i want a tribe that reads

i don’t want a vape sucking eye ball melting phone addicted tribe

no

peace out

let’s fxcking go

and god bless the monk Thich Quang Duc - an emissary of love and sacrifice and inspiration - we hear you - we feel you - we see you

i see this woman often at this place I go to

she doesn’t speak much

she mainly utters guttural sounds and from time to time she yells out unintelligible random words in what sounds like Spanish

^{quick note: reality now is free for eternity}

^{however, feel free to donate $ to reality now if you enjoy this}

^{thank you}

her skin is a deep brown color

her hair is a deep black color

her face is soft and angelic and her eyes are very dark

despite her air of human decay, her teeth are white and straight like piano keys

She looks like she might be 30 years old. I can’t exactly tell

like i said she has a kind of angelic baby face but she looks like life has been very hard on her and she is usually covered in dirty clothes so it can be hard to tell her age

(she comes to this place i go to where she gets free food. And by ‘food’ i mean coffee and whatever snacks they have. Some times it’s donuts or crackers or gummy candies. There is always coffee)

At this place i see her and she fills up a big cup of black coffee and she stirs in a lot of whatever kind of cream is available and then she pours in a lot of sugar

oh, some times the place has cake

if there is cakes she always gets a slice of cake

the cake is really bad. horrible, awful, extremely sugary

but she eats the cake with her coffee

caffeine and sugar fills her body like oil fills an automobile

I see her at this place often amongst other people who sit down and pray and talk about spirituality

The woman does not ever pray (as far as i can tell) and she does not talk about spirituality

She also never holds hands when we stand to pray, she always remains seated with her back against the wall

She also usually enters the room late, after we have all begun our spiritual process

When she walks into the room she more so slides

slides across the floor and kind of saunters

almost hubristically

like she doesn’t care

almost entitled

like life has beaten her up so much that she no longer cares if she lives or dies

Her sliding-across-the-floor-hubris is somewhat annoying, becaue at this place of spirituality there are a lot of people trying to heal

and i’m not saying she isn’t trying to heal (after all, she is there), but she does not seem to respect the space at all

The space where there is a lot of humility and gratitude to be had

Humility and gratitude found in people’s faces and stories

The space holds a mix of people: people who are either like this woman and they are totally on the edge of existence…or people that are very clean and taking good solid care of themselves

dregs of god and diamonds of god people

all of us praying to become diamonds of god

actually we are all diamonds of god deep down, but some of the people are really broken

anyway

i go to this place and I see people like her and it puts things into perspective

all of my stupid concerns evaporate

i am brought back down to size

right-sized as they say

after all I see a woman like her and I instantly am reminded that I am not in last place

there is gratitude to be had in that observation

however, it is not a great idea to rest on the observation that other people have it worse than I, but it is a powerful momentary recognition that I am really not doing so bad in the grand scheme of humanity

anyway

i have seen her a lot at this place of spirit

i don’t know her name

i feel like her name might be Maria

i have seen her for about six months now

maybe twice a week

when I first saw her I did not notice her belly

after a few months i started to notice her belly

it was growing

when i noticed she had a belly i was sort of…what…surprised…shocked…horrified…concerned…

her belly was growing a human inside of it

and she was surviving off of bad cake and bad coffee

no nutrients really

i didn’t know what to do

like

if i could help her

there was no way

i think

or

was there a way for me to go up and talk to her?

but like I said she was edgy

like feral

to a degree feral

sliding cross the floor and yelling out guttural words from time to time from her seat in the back and never holding anybody’s hands in prayer

i couldn’t say anything to her

or i was not brave enough to try

i hoped that god would help her and god would provide someone brave enough to help her or god would provide someone who’s career involved helping people like her

so often i left that space and she left that space and i went home and she went home

wherever home was for her

at my home i would think about her

i would think about her and some of the other people i saw at that place who were down and out

where did they all go?

alleyways? tunnels? abandoned RVs?

i went about my days

walking

reading

sunlight

i went about my days and would walk on a path near my house

there is an area, a border, where my neighborhood reaches the next neighborhood

my neighborhood is very safe

the next neighborhood is not very safe and quite run down, grey, dirty, blackened with soot, graffiti, broken but still there

i would walk into that neighborhood because it was on the path

one day i was walking and to my left i see a pile of things

a desk chair

a barbecue

clothes hanging on a fence

a makeshift tent

i walk and i get closer to these things and i see two people

a man and a woman

the man is wearing sunglasses and worn out clothes and he looks strung out

the woman is

the woman is…

is her from the spiritual space

i understand immediately

she is living there outside

she is living by that broken barbecue and tent made out of t-shirts and sticks on the walking path

again i don’t know what to say

i stop by a tree and secretively watch her and the man from a distance

it looks like her and the man are talking

i have never really seen the woman engage in any kind of conversation

i am surprised

but actually she’s not really conversing but just smiling and grimacing and looking at the man and he is mainly doing the talking

he looks strung out

like he’s about to leave her any moment and go score or rob somebody or something

i see her belly is big and that she is pregnant

her belly is bigger than the last time i saw her

i don’t know what to say

so i think

is that the man that got her pregnant?

what a horrible idea

what a horrible fucking idea

that woman may never come back down to earth mentally and she is pregnant

what is going to happen to that child?

her belly is big and that child is growing

is that child getting nutrients?

bad cake bad coffee

is that child going to be a crack baby?

if that is the man she had sex with then where did they have sex?

in that tent?

when?

how?

in what position?

i don’t know

what’s that?

you want me to be godly?

i’ve talked a bit about god so you want me to be godly?

then i will say every child deserves a chance

that is what i will say

we are all god’s children

that is what i will say

what else am i supposed to say

do you want a happy ending?

so do I

what shall our happy ending be?

i don’t know

i see the woman has a wristband on

it looks like a wristband from a hospital

i suppose that is good

god

i guess that means she went to a hospital for her baby

i wonder how it happened

did she go to the hospital on her own?

did they pick her up?

did someone take her?

when is her baby due?

god

that baby

was the woman doing drugs

meth?

i don’t know

bad cake and bad coffee

god

I walk into a cafe.

Middle of the afternoon.

The cafe is relatively empty. A few people eating in corners.

I am writing in my notebook after having just ordered pancakes.

After a moment a woman with a stroller with a child in it walks up to the front entrance.

She pushes the door open and works her way inside.

Her child is quite young, say, 3 or 4 years old.

The two of them look Eastern European. Possibly Ukrainian.

The woman is very attractive.

She has pale skin and is well-kept.

I assume her husband is off at work and she is enjoying a leisurely lunch with her child.

Nice.

She is approached by the waitress and proceeds to be seated on the other side of the near-empty restaurant.

I eat and write and pause to think and I look over at the woman from time to time.

Her child is quite cute and because of the emptiness of the restaurant I can hear the woman ordering.

As I look at her briefly I notice that she does not have a wedding ring on.

I feel like this is kind of odd.

I figure Eastern European people or Ukrainian people have what I assume could be called more classical values than Americans.

Or something. So I’m surprised that she isn’t married…

Or maybe she is married. And they have decided to forgo the rings? I don’t know.

However, I have been thinking lately about getting married myself. Not that I have anyone to get married to. Hardly. But just the idea of it.

And I have thought that if I do get married one day I don’t want to do it through the court system.

I’m down with saying I’m married to someone and wearing rings as an expression of that pact, but something about being binded through the government just feels like something I don’t want to do.

I feel like something about being binded in marriage through the government doesn’t bode well.

I don’t know.

Maybe this is coming from a lifetime of divorced parents and being shocked when I meet a couple that isn’t divorced…or too many videos of screaming Instagram lawyers telling me why getting married is a terrible idea.

That being said, married or not, the woman I am looking at across the way MUST be the mother of this child.

They look exactly alike. Same skin color, a pale hue.

But what if she’s the child’s nanny? But she just couldn’t be.

After all, she’s feeding the child like a mother would, and like I said they look exactly alike, even though with a closer look I see that the child is a boy.

But I’m just again surprised at her not wearing a ring.

Anyway, I don’t think much more of it.

I have writing to do and I need to attend to my pancakes.

But as I am about to turn away for good I see the Ukrainian woman stand up and pull something out of her purse.

It looks like the long black barrel of a rifle.

She proceeds to extend the thing.

After she fully extends it I see it is a tripod.

The woman stands up the tripod in front of her and her child and their table.

She then proceeds to place her phone on the tripod and frames up the shot of them all.

She sits down.

I watch now.

I am in awe.

What is happening?

I look around to see if the few other customers in the restaurant notice this.

I can’t tell if they do.

I wonder what the waitress is thinking. I can’t tell.

I see through the Ukrainian woman’s phone screen recording her and her son having lunch.

She has now adorned her son with a bucket hat. Almost as if she was doing this as a kind of costume.

I watch secretively.

I kind of for some reason don’t want the woman to notice that I am watching them. I don’t know why. I didn’t really want to interrupt their filming.

And even more bizarrely, a piece of me felt like what she was doing was totally normal.

Like, oh, yes, let me just film myself eating lunch.

But as I watched secretively the child turned to me.

His eyes were wild and Ukrainian blue. I looked at him. We locked eyes.

He had no idea he was being filmed.

He had no idea he had to wear that hat to look cute for an audience he also had no idea existed.

He was being commodified. No longer a child but a puppet.

And then I thought about the woman’s husband. Which I’m assuming she had despite wearing no ring.

Like was she filming this for him?

Was she going to send him this video after they finished?

Mind you, she filmed the ENTIRE meal.

I could see the red dot on her I-phone recording.

She let the entire thing run for about 30 minuets until it was time for me to leave.

I wondered for a moment if she was facetiming her significant other this footage. But this wasn’t a video call, this was a recording.

Or, was she recording this to then cut up it up later into clips for her social media?

This 30 minute video meal with her child would be cut into clips for her “day in the life” segment on Instagram or TikTok.

Hey guys! This is Svetlana! Come have lunch we me and Vladimir!

I thought more about her significant other. Maybe he was in the Ukrainian war with Russia? Maybe she got knocked up yet her and her husband Kandinsky were really in love and she was going to send him this full 30 minute video of her and their son Vladimir as he battled it out on the frontlines in Kyiv?

I felt a barrenness inside of me growing as I watched.

What was this?

I wanted to ask her but I also did not want to ask her.

Part of me wanted to say WE ARE ALL FUCKED.

Another part of me wanted to say HOW SWEET IT IS TO FILM LUNCH WITH YOUR CHILD.

I really didn’t know.

At what point did we arrive here?

Us.

Humans.

Where we film everything…

Where every second of our lives is an opportunity to be filmed.

It’s as if deep down we all really just want to be actors and actresses.

Or simpler put we just want to be celebrities.

Or more psycho-spiritually we just want to be seen.

Mother. Father. Please see me.

Mother of social media.

Father of social media.

Please see me.

Make me the celebrity I deserve to be.

Now.

And forever.

Amen.

I hope you enjoy this conversation!

I want this to be engaging for all creative people.

Much love,
Augustus

Notably, they made an amazing short film called THE TURTLE that recently premiered at a film festival in Los Angeles.
Their film is really good. No BS.
They did not pay me to say that!

Emotional. Atmospheric. Honest.

The film is about a relationship.
A couple in essence trying to solve the problems of their world late at night.
That always ends well.

I’m not giving anything else away! You gotta watch it!

The acting is terrific.
The directing is specific and intimate.
The writing is organic and natural.

I’m excited to see what these guys keep creating!

Also, Joe and RJ have a feature film called
CHASING PERSEPHONE that will premiere at a film festival soon and will hopefully be released to the public in the near future so you all can watch it!

Stoked!

Joe directed and wrote both of these films.

RJ acted in both of them.

Additionally, together they produce these films - their production company is called THE STOONADS - hit them up if you want to get involved with them!

This conversation was really thought provoking.
VARIOUS SUBJECTS LIKE:
-Why wait for someone to give you the green light to create?
-The rehearsal process?
-Writing process?
-Various directors and writers used as inspiration?
-What does “independent” even mean anyway???
-ETCETERA!

***Overall I wanted this conversation to be intriguing and helpful and inspiring for not only filmmakers but for ALL people that are creative!

NOTA BENE: Joe and RJ and their respective films are on Instagram so you can either find links to watch the films or stay updated on their release status there.

I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Let me know what you think!

Peace out.

Much love,
Augustus

this woman is on instagram

she posts this story

the story is a video of two women sitting at dinner talking to one another

the women are actually just moving their mouths and a conversation is dubbed over them

the conversation seems to be coming from a clip from some TV show, most likely a reality TV show

I have seen these kinds of videos before…

if you’re on instagram long enough you have seen EVERYTHING before

but it is what is being said in the audio that peaks my interest here, as well as the caption the person who has posted this writes over the story

(if none of the instagram jargon i am saying here makes sense to you I’m sorry, I hope you just follow along until you understand)

so let’s start with what the audio in the video is that the girls are mouthing along to

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this could all be expanded upon

however…

i used to spend summers and winters in Connecticut

nobody really knows anything about Connecticut

but i will tell you that rural Connecticut is as beautiful a place as you will ever find on planet earth

when i was there i was much younger

this was before the days of smart phones

i would go there and stay at my grandparent’s house

now i will tell you that my grandparent’s house was very nice

this was certainly a living situation that was reserved for affluent people

my grandparents weren’t like millionaires as far as i know, after all they were buying house during a time when you could actually work a decent job and still buy a house

but

my grandfather worked for decades at IBM and they bought this house in Connecticut that I always thought looked like a mini White House

the house sat up on a hill and was surrounded by around 3 acres of bright green grass

their neighbors were far away and everyone kept to themselves so it felt very quiet and almost isolated within nature

to gloat a little more, my grandparent’s house was certainly the nicest house on a very quiet and gorgeous road that finished at a dead end where the forest began

i would visit this place on every holiday and like i said during winters and summers

winters were perfect, a wonderland

snow came down and the fireplace was lit and we went sledding down the hill

wow, i feel a deep nostalgia as i write this

i feel an emotion of freedom as i write this

i played in that snow and when i was sweaty underneath big clothes i would come inside and there would be food laid out by my grandmother and i would warm up by the fire as my grandfather played classical music

and the summers were just as perfect

it was all about running outside and playing sports and walking into the forest and finding hidden magical rivers and small spots where native americans must have built camps and homes before everything changed years ago

summers were sweaty and happy and i would go to the local pool and go to the ice cream shop or the icee shop or the local outdoor cafe in town called Denmo’s and my dad would get a soft shell crab sandwich

this was living !

and i don’t think i feel that this was living just because i was young and the weight of adulthood hadn’t hit me yet

it felt like living because that is all we did

we weren’t pre-occupied with HOW to live, we were just LIVING

and again this was long before smart-phones

I say smart-phones instead of cell-phones because first of all I’m sure people had cell-phones but nobody had ever even heard of a smart-phone yet

and i think the smart-phone is what really damaged this feeling of living

these phones have taken us out of the moment

i used to be so romantic

i think

its all so hard to piece together

i used to feel this unchained kind of freedom before smart-phones

i used to walk up streets at midnight

i used to read dense literature and wonder how it was written

have you ever read Maldoror on a moonlit night??

i used to listen to music without dissecting it

i used to take a photo with a camera and that photo meant something

i used to sit up at night and listen to the birds outside

speaking of night time

maybe this is what i want to write about

this kind of romance

when i was in Connecticut i used to go to sleep and it would be pitch-black

nowadays i remember that blackness

something about it was primal

a primality i don’t think i have felt in so long

a primality now being swallowed up by lights and too much information

that darkness outside the Connecticut window that held secrets

scary secrets, magical secrets

no smart phone to gaze into before bed, obliterating the natural magic of my mind

i used sometimes get up out of bed and look out of the window into the pitch blackness and wonder

i could see nothing in front of me

all i knew was that there was a forest out there on the edge of the big back yard

i would be scared and curious and giddy at the same time

what was that noise?

what was that shape in the darkness?

now i don’t do that

now i can’t do that

because I am surrounded by light

because I am overtaken by an angst to look at a smart phone

why is it called smart?

I am surrounded by mostly pointless information

i have been thinking of moving back to the east coast lately

I want to search for that enchanting darkness again

will you join me

???

i assume you’re aware of this trend

if not i’m sorry to make you aware of it

the trend is this social media clarion call to “normalize s3x work”

i have seen this call to action being touted in various places

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i’m so excited to take her to dinner!

i bring flowers

white lilies from trader joes

trader joes sells beautiful flowers

do you know that?

they smell beautiful too

i always bought her flowers

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let me preface with the obvious

im just another idiot with a keyboard and a microphone

the earth is now full of idiots with keyboards and microphones

nothing i say is gospel

OBVIOUSLY

every reality now article is more or less just questions posed by another idiot with a microphone

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one day you wake up

or one day you fall asleep

i was on a train a long time ago

i was young

young(er)

early 20s

texting this woman

she said to me

youth is wasted on the young

i scoffed

that’s b.s.

what does she know

but now i know

she was right

the older you get the more you see that she was right

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what do i know

i preface with that because it feels like the last thing this world needs is another person offering up ways to self-help

at this point why aren’t we all levitating

???

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Or they no longer practice telling the truth? Or they are afraid of telling the truth? Or there are veils to hide behind now where one doesn’t HAVE to tell the truth?

Like, what is teh future of relationships? I’m genuinely curious.

Relations…

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