Post: Frank Herbert’s Dune

What I really need is to avoid reading things, pretty much any things, when I want to write again. At the moment/for the past week I have been reading Dune and all its sequels, which is terrible. Or terrifying, probably both. I love Dune like a jogger likes running. It’s not actually pleasant but when it’s over you feel like a good person. For me, Dune is much the same, because it makes my brain ache. Currently I am working through (and it is work) God-Emperor of Dune. Aside from the common theme of politics and religion which deserves not a blog post but an entire bloody university’s output for three years, the topic de jure is about male vs female armies. And it’s getting really, really convoluted. All sorts of repressed sexual connotations and worship and the whole thing is tied into religion and shhiiiiitttt I’m not smart enough for this...

Dune makes me think. It doesn’t make me accept everything in the books as fact because that would be close to the ultimate insult to a critique on deterministic religion, but it does make me think. The problem is I have both lost my taste for intellectualisation and even the ability to do it properly. I feel on the precipice of a massive well of indescribability and I’m terrified of it, and terrified of my own terror.

I need to finish this book, quickly. I need to block it out because I am constantly in pain these days. Even the unpleasant exertion of pointless gym exercise is becoming a relief from my mental hurting. I hate Dune, for making me think.