While the machine was down, reading was left to me.

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Therefore reading was what I did. I have number of books on my list, some of those in my possession in a manner so as to lay my hands upon the novels easily. I have read many of the classics, and wished to continue doing so. Of the books available, I picked "Heart of Darkness" as my first read. Not so much because it is what "Apocalypse Now" was based on if I liked the show before dots became connected and I understood the farce from whence the movie came. No, it was on my list as a lad and I had simply never arrived at the point in which it was read. Next was a continuation of my reading of Tolstoy in the form of "Resurrection". I have read the former and I am nearly finished with the latter.

To my mind, understandings, and sentiments, "The Heart of Darkness" ("A Heart of... "Heart of... whatever), was a fine read. I clearly understood both the narrator and the subject, in finality if not always particularly or specifically. The book is not always very clear, or I should say the narrator is not always clear, well actually they can both be quite vague. There are points missed, as well, due to the differences in language from English to American English, the time in which the novel was written, and other factors. Still, I think I came away with a rather clear understanding, sometimes quite in spite of what was written but because of a sense of how the written material was arranged so as to lead one past the vague and into the light of understanding.

I enjoyed the book, if far too short, immensely. The story is good, as per the telling. It is engaging if not simple, light, or kind in a fashion. What is portrayed are not the happiest realities of man, but often the darker images of mankind. From the subject character to the little corporate bureaucrats, to what happens when nothing happens. I found the author to have seen and responded to the real world in a real way using the device that is fiction. I would highly recommend this book to serious readers.

As to Tolstoy, having read two of his more famous novels, if in my youth, I am torn. I understand, much more fully now, why I was initially a socialist. My readings of "liberal" writers such as this must have fomented such drivel in my youth and while quite tender, naive, and impressionable. Should I have never read in as straightforward a manner history as I read these, I should be an academic today, with flighty foolish notions which mean nothing, cannot work, and are childish to the core. This book has been and will continue to be painful to read. Thankfully I became better educated before I acted upon any of the impulses of the socialist cast. I may be embarrassed purely for having been duped in my ignorance.

The book covers the whole of the atheist, socialist, and other sentimental notions which, today, seems to have infected politicians world wide. The notion of equality, the idea that the system must fail or be crushed in order that something better should arise, and many other such follies. However, even a simple reading of this anarchist's manual will reveal the horrid disconnect from reality, logic, and such. I honestly think Tolstoy believed in this drivel fully. Unfortunately, to my mind, he died before he got to be a victim of the machination he and his like minded "high minded" kindred unleashed on the world in such a murderous fashion. I wish he had lived to see what he wanted, the royalty, rich, bureaucratic, and powerful tumble to be replaced by far worse. And further, to watch the retched poor he said he so loved driven further into the dirt and trampled even more and by the very ones he worked with and trusted in order to bring about such a dismal reality that became the U.S.S.R.

However, in reading this stupid thing, I am able to slowly develop both my dislike in the thoughts in an ordered manner and to intellectualize my disdain for this thinking in bits and then on the whole, over the course of imbibing the poison pages. And so it is nearly done. Some of my thinking follows.

Today, his kindred, in large part, are heavily counted among the dissatisfied children of the rich, criminals, and academics (which I term, now, academic nobility). These are people who have, often, never worked honestly a day in their lives. Reading is a frivolity, and though I do it, I do not say it is anything but a frivolity. Even research is merely a pleasurable thing to those who do it. I would say my gaming is little different and about as effective in the end. Well, okay, I do allow a good deal of latitude in this manner for engineering, however, engineers actually produce results that must fit real world criteria.

I also see the same demand in his book by himself and his kindred as I see amongst those described above to intrude on everyone else and force by hook, crook, gun, or whatever else is at hand, their foolish notions. It amazes me to see these people are no different today, having survived the atrocities of a most recent history, most of them having thrived outside of such. But their collective push to overthrow what is good for what has never been but once that I have recollection (namely the U.S. Revolution) a greater good still baffles me. It is a form of insanity.

As to the rest of us. Sure, we are fools and foolish. Certainly our beliefs can and are questioned and doubted. However, we do not attempt to impose insane human thinking on the rest, merely, for the most part, to be left alone to our own devices by which we muddle along in life. I claim to see no better than the next man, and sometimes will advise that I can see far less. And yet, rather than turning to other men (who we all, "liberals" included, deride as fools) either singly or collectively, I turn to an objective proposition, which for me is God. What do they do, after clambering about the fools in power and the foolishness of power? Why, they want MORE!

Ugh. But what can be said for childish, idealistic, failures except that they have no choice and must demand what they are become the norm or they must face the fact of what and who they are. This brings anger at them, indignation toward their notions, but it finalizes in a deep and foreboding sadness. For as I am doomed forever, I have hope. They have nothing, and less I should think. Thus the need for power, insults, irrational behavior, chaos, nihilism, atheism (which really is agnosticism, since I get most atheists to finally admit that they can neither prove or disprove God so they simply do not know but reject anyway). Bah!

I will finish this book and then never read the fools work again.