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    Outlook
    Outlook
    Outlook
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Outlook

    By Charles William Johns

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    About this ebook

    Benjamin Flew is dead-- a suicide. And Sam Wood wants to understand.
    Two years ago, Sam (and seven others) received an enigmatic "goodbye world" email from Flew, one of Sam's former guitar students. Sam does not know any of the others who received the email, but his curiosity about the circumstances regarding Flew's death reaches a boiling point.
    After lying to his girlfriend and abandoning his studies, Sam embarks on a road trip--a quest for discovery--accompanied only by his laptop, his phone, and an esoteric collection of classical CDs. Outlook, the fifth book from the mind of Charlie Johns, follows Sam on his journey as he engages with Benjamin's old colleagues--and runs face-first into a startling revelation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateJan 10, 2019
    ISBN9781532670510
    Outlook
    Author

    Charles William Johns

    Charles William Johns is a Research Assistant in The English & Journalism Department at The University of Lincoln. He is author of both Incompatible Ballerina and Other Essays (John Hunt, 2015) and Neurosis and Assimilation (Springer, 2016). He is currently editing a collection of essays entitled The Neurotic Turn with contributions from Graham Harman, Nick Land, Benjamin Noys, and Patricia Reed, which will be published by Repeater Books in 2017.

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      Book preview

      Outlook - Charles William Johns

      9781532670497.kindle.jpg

      Outlook

      Charles William Johns

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      Outlook

      Copyright © 2019 Charles William Johns. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-7049-7

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-7050-3

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-7051-0

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 11/26/18

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Benjamin Flew

      Sam Wood

      Georges Bizet

      James Macauley

      Luigi Boccherini

      Brian Rose

      Henry Purcell

      Terry Organ

      Leo Brouwer

      Celine Kerr

      Sam Wood

      Lawrence Green

      Bela Bartok

      For Benji and Emily

      (and Anna Sadness . . . wherever she may be).

      Benjamin Flew

      Everyone becomes who they truly are through two types of pain: a pain handed over to you and a pain which is self-inflicted. As psychoanalysts have depicted, the building-blocks of pain are set up in early childhood (even before one is born) but the awareness of such building seems to settle and congeal within oneself in the mid-to-late twenties. The predicament that one feels themselves in-when one truly realises such-is what makes a man an adult. Like the history of Christ split between the before and after of his crucifixion, one can split their life into the feeling of nonchalance before the realisation of one’s true disposition and the situation of attempting to love and be loved whilst acknowledging the illness that defines them and the futility of its overcoming.

      The question always remains as to whether it were the actual traumatic events in life that brought on this morbid realisation or whether it was solely the realisation itself, expanding, accumulating, basking in its own poignancy, diving into the recesses of the soul, appearing at the forefront of one’s mind like a wasp that you bat out of the way in irritation in order to get on with the task in hand.

      Alas, friends, there is no going back or moving forward for me. In early childhood, my overactive imagination was nurtured; I was encouraged to play out the detailed fantasies I had in my head, whether through soldiers and dolls, or through the dozens of stories I wrote every day. At one point I particularly remember drawing an entire city and designating to it certain imaginary lives such as husbands and wives, fireman, politicians and even a church and a school. I would spend days animating these invisible people through their daily lives with only the movement of my eyes carrying them to certain places (I even allowed these characters to have their own inner lives and dreams, which I miraculously achieved without forgetting the precise plane of reality they occupied).

      Soon after the disappearance of my mother and father’s soul-replenishing love and care for me (because of their subsequent divorce and the general assumption that a man should grow to be fully independent), I enrolled as an art student in London. I felt alone, living in a tiny dormitory within a ginormous city, and all I could feel were waves of fear and possibility capsizing me and pinning me forever to my bed.

      Soon I would realise two tormenting truths. Firstly, that the overactive imagination I was blessed with as a child was in fact a curse. I remember reading somewhere for the first time what I was (what I am) and the immediacy of its truth pierced through me as if I had somehow whispered it into my own ear as I read the definition-

      Neurosis-behavioral symptoms such as phobic avoidance, vigilance, impulsive and compulsive acts, lethargy, etc., cognitive problems such as unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, repetition of thoughts and obsession, habitual fantasizing, negativity and cynicism, etc.

      The definition was acceptable enough, but it was only through Freud that I realised the foundations for such neurosis. It was only through Freud that I painfully learnt and accepted a second truth: the effects that sexual taboo and infidelity had upon me.

      I will avoid the exposition of reasons why this is to be the case for my neurosis, but I will say that part of it was plain unluckiness. After my dark adventure into all things psychological, I can now say, with full understanding, that it seems tragic enough for the human race to have to unwittingly carry out their experiences of childhood (dare I say the experiences of their parents) for their whole lives, but to also experience such cruel fate twice, by particular persons that come into your life, who you build trust with and love–now that is an evil repetition that none should have to bear.

      Because this was my fate I now love and hate equally. I hate all those that I love because my love is unconditional and therefore I cannot retract that love even when they mock it or transform it into a way that can give me pain. I love all those I hate simply in the sense that my enemies (including my loved ones) take over my mind and provide me with an infinity of images, sensations and feelings so intimately studied by myself that such intimacy must be love if it is to be anything at all.

      This would, perhaps, be bearable if I wasn’t also an idealist or a romantic. However, it is my almost religious, almost transcendental, desire to be truly loved by a woman, that causes such desperate despair; to wish to lie with her naked, upon her sweet bosom, while she caresses my sweat-ridden brow and whispers my name. This sacred yet ultimately impossible desire is why I wish to die and be at rest now. When I look back at the memories, even those ones that give me momentary delight, they become, through examination,

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