“The Balckwell Archives”

POSTS / ESSAYS

MY FAVOURITES

• The Daikon Farmer Points the Way, With a Daikon
• In The Eyes of the Unfathomable Deity
• Smoke & Mirrors
• Hello, Japan. Goodbye, My Japan.
• The Internet Made Me Stupid
• Neil Young’s Mesoamerica
• You Can (Not) Go Back
• Irreconcilable Distances, Permeable Boundaries, Overlapping Memories

2024

• The Daikon Farmer Points the Way, With a Daikon
• Free & Easy
• The Boy and the Heron
• The End of a Coastal Man
• A Retreat to the Customs Office
• In Xanadu
• In A Town Where I Am Going to Live
• Heaven & Good Things

2023

• Neil Young’s Mesoamerica
• Ain’t Got No Clock
• The Internet Made Me Stupid
• What is a Human Being?
• When Conversation is Impossible
• I’m Not Good Enough
• Am I Religious?
• Releasing My Novel
• Proving That I Exist
• Reach Out For the Truth of My Life (Part One)
• Reach Out For the Truth of My Life (Part Two)
• Shake Off The Dust
• Creative Evolution
• Where Did Balckwell Go?
• Hello, Japan. Goodbye, My Japan.
• Transmission From the Planet Blackwell
• Smoke & Mirrors
• Riker’s Stasis
• One Chance Out Between Two Worlds
• Gaza Writes Back
• Asleep on a Sunbeam
• Gotta Go to Work, Gotta Go to Work, Gotta Have a Job
• What More Could You Ask For?
• Holiday Update 2023
• In the Eyes of the Unfathomable Deity

2022

• Tunnel to a New Sky
• Beyond Materialism
• Is Outer Space Real?
• Enough of All That!
• You Can (Not) Go Back
• The Ko Rule of Eternal Revision
• Shall I Languish in Obscurity?
• A Certain Sensitivity to Noise
• In Heaven, Everything is Fine
• The Wretched Life of the Man Who Lives With Ghosts
• I Don’t Like It Any More Than You Do
• Speedrunning Faust
• The Graveyard Story
• A Holiday Update

2021

• The Balckwell Manifesto
• Balckwell Manifesting
• How To Make Friends
• Rock Man’s Sexual Cycle, or, Leave Me to My Polish Curses
• The Lint Filter Sounds Like Donkey Kong, and So Does the Kitchen Sink Mat
• Strangers
• Bloodpath and Beyond
• What The Hell Am I Doing Here?
• High On Neurosa!
• Everything & More & More
• & Engage in Jolly Cooperation!
• Irreconcilable Distances, Permeable Boundaries, Overlapping Memories
• Through the Lens of My Ludens Goggles

STORIES

• Big Pot
• Off You Go, Martin!
• Into the World of Thomas A. Myner
• The Stars Must Be My Friends to Shine On Me
• Agamemnon vs Gibbongod (Poem)
• That Holiday Feeling!

LITERARY CRITICISM

Tribulations of a Chinese Man in China, Jules Verne

Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley

Demian, Herman Hesse: Part One | Part Two

Nostromo, Joseph Conrad

NOVELS

Only In Dreams (2023) Available on Amazon

OLD WEBSITES

My first website that I consider a “real website” began in August of 2015, when I was twenty years old. I updated that until September of 2018, after which I didn’t publish anything anywhere for a while because I didn’t feel like it. In March of 2020, I started a website with a few friends, which I continued posting on until February of 2021, when I set off on my own again, with the original incarnation of Balckwell Rising, which was hosted on Substack. Then, I moved here.

So, that’s that. I’ve decided to link everything here, even the writing I don’t like because it’s old, because it’s nice to see everything one’s done all in one place, even if one doesn’t like some of it because it’s old.

COOL TIMES DOT ZONE ARCHIVE (AUG 2015 – SEP 2018)

Cool Times Dot Zone was the website I maintained while I lived in Japan, and then for several years after that. Those several years were mainly spent thinking about the time I spent in Japan. The three main themes of this website were: depression, Japan, and love.

WEDNESDAY MIDDAY KARAOKE CLUB ARCHIVE (NOV 2016 – DEC 2016)

A failed experiment overlapping with Cool Times, wherein I attempted to blog twice a week, with the rule that if I missed a post, I would remove the website from the internet. This experiment lasted from November 23rd to December 3rd, during which I made four posts. Well! Rules are rules.

SOUP WEB DOT ZONE ARCHIVE (MAR 2020 – FEB 2021)

The Soup Web was a website I created with three of my friends, where we could all post whatever we liked. I didn’t want my own website anymore, because Cool Times had devolved into constant reiteration of the same tired themes, eventually causing me to cease writing non-fiction altogether for several years. I wanted to have some fun. We had fun on this website. This is also where I first unveiled the pseudonym “Balckwell.” Originally, Balckwell was a character I invented, who I imagined as a sort of wise sage immortal who had lived for hundreds or thousands of years and come to the conclusion that the best way of living/being was exactly the way I happened to live/be, which I thought was funny. Eventually, I grew tired of the joke and just started writing as myself again, using the pseudonym only as a means of hiding my true identity from my enemies.

BALCKWELL RISING ARCHIVE (MAR 2021 – ???)

This is my current website. After realizing that I was the only one still posting on Soup Web, I decided to start my own website again. I heard that Substack was a place where people were going in order to attain notoriety, fame, and a bunch of money. Idiotically, I dreamed that I could attain any of these things. Even more idiotically, I dreamed that I wanted any of these things.

After an initial period of meandering, I settled on a biweekly posting schedule, which has worked out quite well for me, and continues to this day.

When I finally became sick of Substack for a variety of reasons, I moved everything here, which is where it is now!