The Nights Will Flame With Fire

"There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

Mike Davis

Aug 16

Happy Wednesday to all of you! I’m Mike Davis; you may know me from The Lovecraft eZine Podcast.

Welcome to my new Substack!

In case you missed it: I’ll be posting here about once a week. About what, you say?

Well, thanks for asking! Read on.

“I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.”

I was an unwilling member of a cult my entire childhood. When I left at age 18, it was as if I had grown up on another planet. I knew almost nothing about this world. I was, in every sense of the word, an outsider.

But I slowly learned to navigate this new reality. And while I wish that I’d had a normal childhood, being an outsider has offered me a unique perspective on life. I'll share that perspective here in this Substack.

When I left the cult, I was suffering from deep depression and confusion. But I’ve been a reader my entire life, and I thought: “If there’s an answer, a way out of this pain, a way to learn to live my dreams, it must be in a book somewhere.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly in one book, of course. I read book after book about happiness, about battling depression, about living my dream life, and more. Some books were a plethora of ideas — others were not. But I kept reading and reading, soaking up all of those ideas and mental tools.

And I found the answers I was looking for. I’ve been living my dream life for a long time now. Let me help you to live yours and to share what I’ve learned.

So until the next post, here are some words from Charles Bukowski that have inspired me:

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation.
Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.
If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
It's the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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