My journals serve as the primary workshop for nearly all my writings. At present they consist of 7 bound notebooks with a total of around 1,500 pages of hand-written material covering the years 1999-2010. In this section of the website, I intend to show a few selected passages. (Author retains sole copyrights).
On The Necessity of Lies – Hardin Journals IV, pp. 106-07: 28 January 2007:
You want to know why people don't tell the truth, why they can't seem to stick with it? I'll tell you why. You see, the truth is perfect. It's absolute, like death or beauty or the power of a superhero. It's there, plain and flawless and with no respect for your view of it. It's not so much that a truth doesn't care about what you think of it. It's more. It doesn't even notice you or what you think. It's not human, to say nothing of its being personal.
That's why a lie is so natural. You can never control the truth. It defies all reason and every kind of subjugation to your will. What you bring to the table, whether it has the logic of the rational or all the instinct and chaos of the irrational, doesn't mean a goddamn thing. With a lie, even if it's just the beginning of a lie, -- indeed the birth is the easiest part of the whole process --, you can plant your stake in the ground and proclaim to yourself in a silence the world cannot hear: this I claim as mine; I own this. Truth is universal, but a lie is all your own. We are all the Lucifers of creation. We have been cast down into a kingdom of lies, the only world upon which we reign supreme.
Manipulating others requires a small share of skill which you hone and sharpen over the course of a lifetime. You find what works and what doesn't. You find out why and develop an efficacious timing. The real trick is to convince yourself. Little voices whisper into the unconscious from the seductive softness of the netherworld . . . it could be true, or it's true in a sense. You listen without even knowing that you're listening. Most people succumb to this tender reverie when they are very young. Others resist for a while longer. But only the desperate madmen talk back, in fits of rage and abandon, swearing and wailing that the realm is too claustrophobic.
Among this tiny fraction of complainants of the state of existence, a solid majority are to be found closeted away in the sanitariums. Their minds have convinced themselves that there is no difference between reality and imagination. It is only in this way that they avoid the dishonesty that is the lot of human nature. Only in this way can they avoid the self-betrayal of the necessity of lies. They have refused to attend the great ceremony so elaborately fashioned by the gods of the universe, their own coronation among the vast royalty of the damned.
Workshop
