Christian Butler's Blog: the Synaptic Gulf

Thanks for coming and welcome!

So this is really my first really-having-done-anything post on this site, though this account, it’s been active for like 4 years (just never really got into using it…)

That said, this is all on occasion of something most special, so hopefully, that will be something changing and evolving progressively over time, especially in the year to follow:

See, just recently this past Monday—November.22.2021–saw the passing of my 33rd revolution around our local star as well as my continued survival upon, this, our one and only home and singular, isolated planetary refuge, this little-known, esoteric space within an expansive universe all our own…

you know, it was my Birthday, is basically what I’m getting at…

Sorry, that sometimes happens…? It’s a thing, the sort of stuff I’m into, basically because Carl Sagan has been a major influence for me and all, and I just love incorporating as much as I can that sort of cosmic perspective in terms of the way I understand my own experience of existence…ANYWAY—

The point is—in commemoration of this annual tradition and occasion for celebration, having made it to 34, especially regarding the events of my childhood, their sustained impact upon my life and the resulting struggles of my later adulthood as having unfurled, incrementally and painfully over the course of these last 7 or so years…

The opportunity allowed for me this rare and once-in-a-lifetime shot for making more public all the stuff I’ve done, in recent years, this work and these things that largely have necessarily been informed by everything I’ve been forced to learn throughout, literally, the sum-total of my formal adulthood just in journey here, in having made it this “place,” to the present space within which I now inhabit and find myself, where everything that’s happening, that’s happened, and most especially, the things yet to come…

…has only just recentlt been made possible…

A journey with which I’ve long been engaged, this most patient and deliberate process navigating my way down this unending, unknowable, path, unwinding ahead of me, the furtherance of this lifelong effort understand whatever it is my place in this existence is, but also a place for myself within it, somewhere I fit, somewhere I can just be present…

…where I can just breathe, and think, and move…where I am able to just go about enduring with some measure of solace that the persistent and inexorable passage of time, that incremental precession, one moment to the next and the next…the present becoming the past, the future our present, and more of those moments, more and more and more ahead of us…the coming of an infinite future, inescapable and unpredictable…

It’s been the struggle of my entire existence, here. I can’t stand it, sometimes. I’m always needing something to work on, somewhere to direct my focus and interest and attention.

And getting older, having to adapt to that change, living in the world having to accomplish things and do things, having to meet expectations, having to acquire necessities: it’s done nothing make more difficult and overwhelming and impossible the most basic endeavor of just being here and being present and just existing.

Having a “job” isn’t enough. It isn’t useful to just be “at work,” or to be on this unending, persistent “hustle.”

A career would be nice. That’s usually something. I’d actually had something like that, it was a decade of my early adulthood and I was really good at it, I received acclaim for my skills and my efforts, it was a place for me and there, I was comfortable. But in the face of having to reconcile with that childhood and the memory of ancient trauma, it was doomed not to last.

So ever since, I’ve been at it again, trying to find that career, of a sorts. But this time, in having to start over, not just anything. In my 30s now, that’s not sustainable for me, for that endeavor enduring the torture of the Moment, in the stillness of it and eternity of it.

So I went back to trying to find not just a career, but something towards which I might devote myself. Something special to me, unique to me, something having manifested of my own experience and journey and everything it is for me, what it’s like for me to feel this, and feel everything. I want to craft something, I wanted to be a student of that, of something I could develop and cultivate, something I could do in my own way.

So for years, I’ve settled on storyteller, in looking for something real and measurable and substantive, in whatever possible medium or outlet available to me where my work might find some exposure, might find an audience of some sort, of some variety or other, where people might one day, hopefully come to find something of what hopefully turns out to be an experience unique, not in the sense that, like, I might be some awesome or super-talented or, like, I don’t know, singular voice or once-in-a-generation whatever-the-heck—

Really, none of that? It seriously—none of it, it’s of no concern, it is not at all in any way by any relevant measure of interest to me….

Only, I mean that so that it is my hope that in being able to do this work—in being a part of the legacy of this most ancient of traditions distinct and unique to us, to our species and the nature of humanity and what it means for us, having to walk this world, and the experience of that journey, of our existence and presence within this space we’ve all come to share—people will eventually find me and the things that I’ve done, the work I’ve made and how all of that is inherently a manifestation of my own, personal and intimate experience of that journey, of my own understanding of being human as I’ve come to experience it; and that people will find in that something that is unique, in experience, because it is, in essence, an extension of what is part of this stranger they’ve encountered, this individual, one who is, themselves, like any other individual—a unique and stand-alone entity, having emerged into the cosmos inhabiting in this same space with a presence all their own, as much a part of this existence, in measure both equal and equitable to all others…

Getting to that point has taken a great deal of time, and never with any promise, guarantee, knowledge, or any awareness, otherwise, it would ever happen, and if so, if so fortunate, **when** it would happen, or what it would look like when getting to that place, when finally approaching the transition from where you find yourself, to where you hoping to go.

And this past Monday, my 34th birthday, I was able to take yet another step on that journey, only this time, it wasn’t the same as the others, and in awareness of that, I saw something of an opportunity, something special and unique.

I chose the day of my Birthday to announce to friends and family not only that this career of mine—the one I’ve been dreaming of, that I’ve hoped for, and that I’ve been constantly, diligently, mindlessly working towards—is actually a thing happening, something possible and with very real and measurable promise, but that it would mark the start of my working as a professional within this industry as a storyteller.

I got to announce my fast-approaching, forthcoming debut as novelist, and not as some abstract possibilities of an outcome or desire or wish for the future, but by getting to reveal what became the result of all those years of difficult and arduous work, the creative project in it’s final, physical form and presence, this thing in our external reality, now independent and separate in having a presence of its own distinct from that of my mind and imagination.

And in showing the result of that work, revealing it, also, to all the world, one and all, marking definitively and without question for all to witness and experience and share, the coming end of the singular mission that has absorbed pretty much all of my energy and attention and devotion:

Days of Class —my first-ever completed—from beginning to definitive end—self-contained story: a very personal and—I hope!—intensely intimate, narrative journey and experience.

Ever since, this literary novel has been visible and available to everyone to find and discover exclusively on Apple Books.

Publishing next year and available for purchase and download on November 22, 2022, as of this Monday (11/22/2021) not only will you find a free sample and sneak-peek of what’s in store from the first 2 chapters, but as of now, you can also pre-order and reserve your download in the year ahead of its release—at a special discount of $9.99.

For now, due to circumstances of available/accessible resources on the part of my being the sole proprietor-seller-publisher, this first edition will remain digital-only and exclusive to Apple Books. However, anyone interested in obtaining a copy of the published edition after its release who does not have any access at all to Apple Books (including, anyone interested in the possibility of obtaining an advance copy after finalizing the published edition), feel free to contact me or message me directly, accommodations can be made!

Anyway. As evidenced by this post.

It’s been a long time coming. It’s been really difficult.

Honestly, I’m still not quite sure how it is I’m even here, right now, how not only this is a place that’s real and that it was here, on this path, and I somehow got here, somehow managed to walk some random path to come to inhabit this place, but also just…

I mean, it’s actually happened? Like, this is a real thing, this is happening. And is continue to happen. And that’s really just very, very strange and hard to kind of fit into my understanding of, like, well…everything.

Anyway, if you’ve even managed, somehow to make it all the way through this part, It’s been fun and exciting. And I’m glad to have you here.

In the meantime, feel free to follow, ask questions, check out the sample, lemme know what you think!

I look forward to getting to discover and experience whatever it’s gonna be like, whatever’s coming next. I hope we get to celebrate and join in that journey, together

😊