steeleumbra

[steeleumbra]

From my substack: The farthing I go....

Originally uploaded to substack Nov 20, 2024

I’m sitting at my desktop, half-half asleep. I guess, that would actually be a quarter asleep.

….Gods, I really don’t care.

I didn’t sleep last night. Mostly because I slept yesterday. Mostly because I couldn’t sleep the night before. And the older I get, the harder it is becoming to fix my cycle after insomniazation. No, that’s not a real word. But it’s my word. You can use it, but I’ll have to charge you a farthing. I won’t try to collect, though, since I don’t even know if those still exist, and by the time I find out I won’t care anymore. Also, don’t confuse my made up word with insemination. It’s been too damned long since I’ve had that. Probably because my fat ass is sometimes surprisingly about eighty percent a top, but still….

My cat is sleeping on my bed, again. He won’t let me hold him, barely lets me brush him, and hates for me to pet him for more than two seconds. But I know he loves me because he has to be in the same room with me—most of the time—and he has no problem stealing the place I lay my ass down to get some Zs. Little sleep thief.

I’ve made coffee already. I’ve made a lot of coffee already. It’s only half caff, though. Better for my heart, and blah blah, and whatnot. And on the one hand, I can drink twice as much. But on the other, If I want to stay awake, I actually have to drink twice as much. And, I am well beyond that amount now. I’ve been drinking coffee since my middle school days, when I was trying to find anything that would keep me awake at school. It never actually helped. But on the good side, it likely made my insomnia very much worse than how bad it was already programmed to be.

I’d like to believe that somewhere, in some other reality, an alternate version of me slept peacefully through the whole night, last night, and woke up overflowing with grace and charm at the plumber’s butt crack of dawn to face the day. What I really believe, however, is that ever version of me is part werewolf—or an alter-equivalent—and none of us has been without sleepiness since the day we were born, spawned, grown, hatched, splurted, sprung, or baked in an over at one thousand seventy four kelvin for ninety-six hours and left on the counter to cool. And the world doesn’t help with my sleep, much. Not that it ever really has, but I can remember a time when I wasn’t trying to fall asleep through my constant thoughts about the world ending—it was about two weeks ago. Mind you, I’m not scared of the world ending. Everybody dies. Sometimes a little here and there, like every time I stupidly watch the news for more than three seconds. But eventually we’re all going to end up being not here. I don’t know how I feel about that. I’m probably going to be really afraid when it’s happening. I always kind of have been, of that. But, where ever I go after this, I don’t think the fear follows. Mostly because I’m more afraid of the experience than I am of actually being gone. Whether we wink out, join the collective, or put on robes and wings—red and black or white and gold, to be determined—once it’s done, it’s done, and there’s no more worry left to be had. Unless my fate is to become a worry god. I’m autistically and ADHDally anxious already, so I could probably do that. I’d be willing to bet I’d have tomes about my greatness written for aeons. Mostly because I’d be very angry with my worshipers if all I got was a pamphlet—very angry. And worried…because, worry god. It would be better if I could trade that in for coffee god, though. But I think Juan Valdez has that covered.

And I’ve been angry lately. Not autism-angry—well, maybe autism-angry. But angry in a generically, this fucking world sucks, kind of way. And being generically angry in a this world fucking sucks kind of way is really hard to deal with when you’re neurodivergent with PTSD. Gods, it would be nice if PTSD stood for part time submarine driver. I’d probably find a way to crash it, though, because I never got my license. So I’ll have to settle for being fucked in the head. I’d really much prefer the ass, as I’m only about eighty percent—

All this to say, I’m fucking tired. The cat won’t let me lay down. It’s only 9:56am and I shouldn’t lay down anyway. Half caff ain’t cutting it. I don’t have the energy to figure out why I used “mostly” [too] gods damned much in this post. Oh, and I forgot about the headache. Not that one. Not that one, either. No, not that one either. That doesn’t make sense. But I’m too tired to know exactly what head I mean at this point. You figure it out.

C’est la vie.

*Image Credit - me, and it’s not AI. I used to play around making digital abstracts when I had an active deviant art page a few years ago. The image is a leftover from then that I don’t think I ever uploaded. You can use it for non-commercially stuff if you want. But you owe me a farthing. If you’re wondering, I use an old version of Paint.net.

[steeleumbra]

From my substack: Burn With You Down

Original poem written by me, Steeleumbra, and originally uploaded to substack on Nov 19, 2024

Trigger warning (that I forgot to add to my original substack upload): This is about intolerant and hateful religious and political extremism--technically directed toward the memory of the person who abused me, using but not exclusively both, many years ago, and to the type of person who would do so to others today. This contains NON-glorifying talk of adult subject matters including mentions of S.A. (though not applicable to every action mentioned); reader discretion highly advised, especially for anyone who has experienced any form of abuse (and most especially if you were told it was your fault, because that is NOT the message I am trying to convey here; but the wording I used could definitely make it seem like it is for those who have a mental, physical, and/or other type of abuse history). I very much debated putting this behind a Sensitive Subject Matter wall here on Tumblr, and will likely do so in the near future. But I want there to be enough time for those who wish to see it freely, to not be hindered by needing a Tumblr account to do so.

There is no war like the

war within Unless you take your war and glue it to my face

with empty tears telling me how sad you've been That no one is listening when you tell them love

and understanding

guided your hand The devils dick is in your cheek But you won't bite it off leave him with a stub

to get your voice back Come on! Where's your bitch ass gone Stop pumping shit through your veins while you're laughing through your pain

and bleeding from your knees

Do you really enjoy being afraid of everything Following like a racist in the wind stuck to the ass of a limousine

headed to the fires The home of everything dark that breeds and seethes desperate to feed Do you really think this is peace

You come from a road

you were told was headed to the promised land When did you let the shadows finally take the wheel and spread their disease along the dash

When did the pavement become flesh and bone You're sick You're feverish You're blind and leading yourself into the weeds

You hear voices

swearing that they're strong against the fear and the tears and the rags you've been given to wear What will you do when they leave you raped and pleading

and bound to the thorns in the trees What will you do when you look around and see all the hated children hanging like garland

Legs tied to each other

swaying in the poisoned wind and feel your skin peeling to the tune of a redemption call

Burning off at the touch of your crutches rotten seed What will you do when they bind you to the wall and force you to watch

as they pump you full of flesh

and pull their larvae twisting from between your dying thighs over and over and over again

When they bind your lips with molten rock because the sound of your voice becomes the weapon stabbing at their ears when you won't shut up to just make their god damned

meals

and offspring More larvae breaking from your womb falling to the floor How big and silent

do you think their hive will be when you have no where to run When they give you no time to rest No say

No property

No cloth for your back No bandage for your wounds Some people believe that we should go back to when they themselves

would be the enemy the weak the used and abused the expense no one will miss when it's chopped and mixed

and poured into the soil of their cursing fields

Is that really you Is your whole existence really so worthless that you want your soul to die Do you really want the world to burn with you down

*Image credit to blauthbianca, through Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/users/blauthbianca-6967180/

*Note: I chose the image, created by blauthbianca, because it makes me think of someone choosing to be introspective; someone trying to look at what has happened to them, and trying to heal from their own traumas. Someone who is looking at life with some hope for themselves, rather than fear of having nothing. The version of themselves that the person who inspired the poem could have chosen to be, or could have sought help to become, if they cared to try.

[steeleumbra]

From my substack: Music...

Originally uploaded to substack Nov 19, 2024

I’m sitting in my bedroom at my desktop, listening to my media player on shuffle. Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ just finished, and ‘Baby One More Time’ by Britney Spears just started.

I played with my cat earlier to the song ‘Shake Your Groove Thing’, by Peaches and Herb. He is now trying to sleep in the middle of my bed. And he can have it. It’s 10:57pm, and it already feels like it’s going to be another sleepless night for me.

I’m not sure if I’m just killing time pissing around on the computer, or actually trying to think of something to do. But I also guess it doesn’t ultimately matter. If I strapped wings to my arms, drew a smiley face on my bare ass, and jumped off the roof trying to catch a headwind to Alaska from Lewiston, Maine, I don’t think that would matter much either. Not anymore than my ass possibly seeing a pic of itself smiling on someone’s cctv feed on a future true hauntings special; or whatever my spirit is, still floating around in the earthly ether long enough to see images of the body of a moron, found two feet from the base of my building flashing on the 5 o’clock news with wings tied to his arms and lines on his ass that might be a face, or a recipe for shortbread he must have wrote after putting the wings on. It would only be a two story fall, but at that point one could hope for either result, I guess.

“Why do I write like I’m from somewhere in the UK,” he asks himself but also writes out, for some unknown cosmic reason. I’m an ex-central New Yorker living in Maine.

It’s those damned immigrant-British TV shows, I tell you! Someone should have taken the remote away from me when Keeping Up Appearances and Benny Hill came on. Most fucking definitely when Benny Hill came on. I was way too gods damned, fucking young to be watching that adult shite.

Did you ever notice that he was never undressed enough. Not for my little gay but straight-masking ass. No, he wasn’t that good looking. But I grew up watching the Skipper’s bulge on Gilligan’s Island. Bears have always been my thing, I guess.

Still—fucking late night cable television and lack of responsible adult supervision; regardless of the fact that my undiagnosed autistic and ADHD insomnia made me stay awake later than any adult I knew.

Anyway….

‘Make My Heart Go’, Gloria Estefan. Playing now. It played ‘Wepo’ by her about an hour ago. That’s a fun song to ugly dance to. Most of these songs are fun to ugly dance to. And most of my dances are ugly. That’s why I called the playlist Dance Mix. It isn’t, technically, dance music. I think only three or four of the songs, out of the dozens I’ve added, would actually be played in a club somewhere. But they give my legs and 49 and a half year old hips something to move to while my hands do dishes. I don’t want my limbs to be jealous of each other. Especially my legs. 3:37am, petty vengeance charlie horses are some of the worst I’ve ever had. Granted, I have no proof that revenge is the reason for the pain. But I have better sense than to tempt that kind of fate.

‘Poker Face’. Lady Gaga. This one was fucking huge when it hit the airwaves. It seems like such a long time ago, but it hasn’t even been a full decade yet. It’s not like ‘Joyride’ by Roxette, which came out in 1990, nor ‘Call Me’ by Blonde in 1980. Those I could argue should feel sort of old, now. And I didn’t get here until ‘75, myself, so I can’t actually claim to have been here for the original runs of anything from as far back as 1970. But I’ve heard a lot of music from then…and before. And I’ve pretty much liked it all.

Except that fucking ‘Mairzy Doats’ one. I can’t be arsed to look up who performed it, nor care, but it’s from the ‘40s. It’s slightly more absolutely annoying than ‘Baby Shark’ to me, so it wins my most hated song award—which I don’t have one of to give. Mostly because I’ll be fucked by a bullet train on cross country skis if I invest in an award for a song I hate but can’t get out of my head.

I would invest in an award—a good award—for ‘The Song That Doesn't End’, though, because I don’t mind making some deep valley head spaces for that. Sherry Lewis did it using her Lamb Chop voice for an album. Though, I didn’t hear it until it was on her PBS children’s show in the ‘90s. Yes, I was too old to be watching it. But I’m also autistic, which is both a reality and the excuse I will use anytime I’m questioned about my music and video tastes that seem too juvenile. It also doesn’t hurt that I like ventriloquists. For the most part. Some should drown trying to drink water and talk at the same time. But I’ll keep my lips sealed and my hand firmly out of a puppet’s ass about who, other than to say it isn’t Dunham—but don’t push it.

All this to say…not a hell of a lot. I didn’t really expect to write this much. But I just had some chocolate yogurt with generic Cinnamon Toast Crunch for—well, the fucking crunch, I guess—and some coffee since insomnia already sent a telegram letting me know it’s on that bullet train tonight headed for my ass, so the caffeine won’t make a difference. And it is now 11:28pm, and my cat is still driving my bed through patches of ethereal catnip and tuna trees. And I just wanted a place where I don’t have to strive to be relevant in a world where I never have been. Where I don’t have to bust my ass, sans smiley face, trying to think of something that makes me believe that I’m important enough for the world to give a shit about. I just want to be me, streams of consciousness or not, without the responsibility of having to mask just to make small talk, nor somehow build from scratch the motivation to be impressive in an old t-shirt from Walmart, a pair of boxer briefs that were, at some point in years past, probably also from Walmart, and using one of the coffee cups I bought from Dollar Tree because I’m really fucking poor, but that I wouldn’t trade for a hundred bucks each. Come back with two hundred each, and I’ll negotiate.

That’s a lie. I’m autistic. We don’t negotiate. We wait for you to imply something, take it literally, say something unknowingly inappropriate, and watch you walk away wondering why you don’t want to buy from us anymore.

C’est la vie.

*Image credit - Me. It’s my cat. Not taken at a time that reflects the content of the text, but I’m not taking a low light image at night with an Android. Besides, I like how this one turned out.

[Tumblr reposting note: Although the image isnt' watermarked, it does have a hidden signature]

[steeleumbra]

And THIS, is....

I still, and will always, hold a grudge against this world for not letting Barbara Walters be healthy enough to introduce herself and ring in the New Year live, as the ball finished its decent atop One Times Square in New York City, 5 years ago.

[steeleumbra]

Yeah...

I'm back. But, I'm definitely repurposing this for more of a creative writing and newsletter, kind of thing. Maybe with some poems sprinkled around like pixie dust. Maybe sprinkled around more like salt on an icy road. Mostly because I've never seen pixie dust...that I know of.

Oh, and, hey! The blog title has changed! Gee, how did that happen?

Surprise! It was me.

Okay, it's not really a surprise. But I've been up all night, and now I have to stay awake as long as possible just trying to reset my sleep cycle, so give me this moment of confusion and pretend it's the best thing you've ever seen. I'll be watching you do that from my place over here in this corner, drinking my half caff maxie-hous and trying to decide if catching the bus to the store is worth it or not.

I'm heavily leaning toward not.

But I need the liquid stuff that goes in coffee that makes it not as black as my soul...and goes well with cereal.

.

..

...

I also need cereal...Fuck.

Anyway...I'm leaving a lot of things from the past version of this blog up. But, it will be mostly a writing blog from now until...I don't know. Whenever I change my mind about it or jump to another site, I guess.

Anyway...er, number 2? I recently had started a Substack that I enjoyed uploading to. However, since Substack decided to partner with a waste of internet space, I have stopped posting there. It's okay, though. I only had six stories up. I mention this because I think I'll transfer those stories over to here. If for no other reason, it would be nice to have a record of them on a site that I'll come back to using at some point rather then abandoning them somewhere I have no intention of ever returning to.

And...I guess, Anyway, number 3? In the past, I posted artwork and other things on this blog, and some of those things-that I created-were for sale on Etsy. But, I no longer use Etsy. So--I edited the item a couple of posts back to say part of this, but.... A) If you see something that I was selling on Etsy, that you would be interested in buying, DM me about it. I have a Ko-fi now, and if whatever it is happens to still be available after all this time, I can set up a sales page for it so that you can buy it, and we can both have an official record of sales. Really looking just for sales here in the States, though. International shipping is a bitch--I can make exceptions, but you would need to pay shipping, because I'm poor as hell. And it's still going to be a bitch. And B) I'll be posting my artwork, whether for sale or not, to my art blog. I should have a link to it someplace on my Tumblr profile, but if not then I'll edit this later to add that link. probably at the bottom of this post. I'm still trying to decide what to do with my other Tumblr blogs, but the art one will probably both stay up, and stay the most unchanged other than being the one I post about any pieces I have for sale on, and posting links to any art pieces I have on other sites. I will, however, make that page inclusive of all forms of my art, both digital and physical (no, I won't take off my watermarks, nor tell you where my hidden signatures are). I say that because I believe I have the categories separated over 2 blogs, and I feel the need to consolidate them into one. We'll see how that goes. Oh--and I doubt this is going to do any good, but...NONE of my images-neither those taken as photographs nor those images of my creation-are posted for use to train A.I.

Okay. No more anyways. It does seem that I am back on Tumblr now. For a while, at least. We'll see how this goes.

When I was posting to substack, I ended my posts with the French phrase, "C'est la vie," which makes no sense because I speak almost no French at all. I barely speak English. Hell, I barely speak human. I don't remember why I used the phrase as a sign off to begin with. But it quickly became a habit that I liked. So, I think I'll start using on here, too.

And, with that...C'est la vie.

---The Art of J. Monty Steele - https://jmontysteele.tumblr.com/

[steeleumbra]

It's been a while

But, I'm back.

Maybe.

We'll see. I'll have to figure out what I want to do with these blogs of mine. I'll likely be deleting at least two of them, but I have no idea how soon. And it depends on whether I can find a way to re-use them for things I care about, and the things that have changed.

Expect a blog title change for this one, though, at the least. Probably by the end of October. I can't even imagine how many people found this accidentally while looking for a certain animated movie that will go unnamed in this post--but it's pretty damned obvious which movie it was. Just a reminder for new whatevers, since I haven't been here for...oh, gods...years, now. Not only do I obviously sign many of my original digital art pieces, I also hide watermarks and/or signatures in every original image I create as well--sometimes more than once--so I will always be able to prove it doesn't belong to you. I do the same for any photographs of traditional art that I upload/uploaded in the past. I recommend other digital, and even traditional artists posting pics, do the same. It won't stop AI from stealing anything, but you should be able to prove it if another human stole your work--or at the very least have a relatively good case to bring against them.

[steeleumbra]

"Torn Apart" 9 in by 11 5/8 in. Horror/SciFi drawing (started while having a meltdown).

Graphite, Charcoal, and India ink, on 140lb watercolor paper. Signed and dated on both sides; titled on back.

----------

Edit: Hey! Future me, here.

1) Yes, I know who it resembles. It was not, however, planned to look like him. Just a happy coincidence :) In actuality, it’s just supposed to be a loosely Lovecraftian based horror drawing, and I had no specific people, nor specific orange peel of a person, in mind when I drew it. It was more of an act of trying to relieve a meltdown brought on by anxiety, than anything else.

2) I did have this for sale on Etsy. But, I don’t sell on Etsy anymore. So, if you see an item someplace on my Tumblr that says I’m selling it over there, and if you are interested in buying it, DM me. I have a Ko-fi that I can set up a sales page on for the item you want, and we can go through there for it so we both have an official record of sales--unless what you want has been sold or no longer available. Then...well, it’s already sold or no longer available, now, isn’t it? I mostly sell here in the States, though. International shipping is a bitch, but as long as you’re willing to pay the shipping, I can probably make it happen somehow if I try.

[steeleumbra]

Large sized image without watermark on DeviantArt - http://fav.me/dda7l14

[steeleumbra]

[steeleumbra]

https://www.instagram.com/j_m_steele/

[steeleumbra]

[steeleumbra]

[steeleumbra]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BryYc6VHddu/

[steeleumbra]

[steeleumbra]

https://www.instagram.com/j_m_steele/

[steeleumbra]

"Christians": I'm a warrior! Jesus: I healed a man's ear, after he was attacked with a sword by my own disciple. I ask for worshipers, not warriors. And your sword is to defend yourself, not to cause others pain. Who taught you to attack instead of to help heal? It wasn't Me.

— J. M. Steele (@Umbers35) November 19, 2018

[steeleumbra]

You can not claim love while acting on hate. You can not claim hope while spreading despair.

— J. M. Steele (@Umbers35) October 30, 2018