Music, delusion, happiness. Also, babies.

I've had this song stuck in my head the past several days, and it's not just because it's a brilliant song (though it is a brilliant goddam song). I think it's the cold weather that reminds me of it. When I first heard this song, it was on a mixed CD a friend gave me back in my Walmart days, and I would listen to that CD on repeat as I drove the seemingly endless road home through snow and ice at ten o'clock at night. The song itself has a strong feeling to it, but it has a much stronger significance from its link to that exact period in my life, making me feel just as I did then, nervous as hell as I drove home, tired from working into the night, but happy.

There was a lot I hated about working at Walmart, but when I relive how I felt at that time, I realize that I really was happy. I was working, writing, reading books, and watching movies, and that was about it. It is not nostalgia that I feel, because I do not yearn to be back in that position again, or to actually relive it—I am as happy now as I was then—but it is useful to remember that I could be as happy in that context as any I've experienced since or any that I anticipate for the future. When it really comes down to it, to have a few friends, to have health, to have access to the art that pleases you—that's all anyone really needs. I do believe I am bettering myself by going to college, and I expect to have an immensely more comfortable life once I'm in my chosen career, but ultimately I think human beings are flexible and cunning enough to make a great life out of just about any situation. When we belittle those who find happiness “flipping burgers” at McDonalds, stocking meat at Walmart, or cleaning classrooms in a school, we betray only our own lack of imagination concerning the subjective human experience.

The same goes for having children or not having children. I don't think I'll have children. My energy is drained by being around others too much, even the people I love the most, and being attached to a helpless person for a couple decades does not sound pleasant to me. I used to be profoundly depressed by the number of people I see having children immediately out of high school, thinking they all waste their potential by lashing themselves to infants, but while I still have reservations regarding that choice I now understand that they are at the very least capable of a happiness every bit as equal and profound as that which they would find without children. They may have less time and more stress, but they also worship the creature that absorbs that time and produces that stress. (These are all generalizations, of course, subject to the typical array of human insanity, but you get the point.) On the other hand, bubbling parents who can't seem to comprehend that others may legitimately have no desire for children, no capacity for children, and no plans for children, display an equal lack of imagination. Personally, I think even though I have a distaste for the little bastards and hope never to spawn them, if I were ever to do so I would pretty quickly change my mind out of necessity and love and raise the little life-sucker as best I could. (And get a vasectomy to celebrate its birth.) They say you can tolerate the screams/poop if it's from your own progeny, and I don't doubt it. If I have faith in anything, it is the human capacity for delusion. This is probably the key to happiness: whatever happens to you, your brain will convince itself that it was for the best. Cognitive dissonance saves us. (Most of us.)

What is this, the ninetieth post I've made examining my decision to go to college and comparing it to my “Walmart days”? I have forgotten what the purpose of this post was. But damn, that song is a good song.

The Subtle Art of Persuasion

A quick, crude comic I did today. Inspired by various online arguments.

Irish Explorer With Puppies

I'm not happy with the head, but it was fun to draw. It's the explorer Tom Crean (with puppies).

Cat Attack Drawing

My drawing of a random humorous photoshop job I found on the internet. It's not perfect, but I really like it. That's all for now.

Real College and Three Poems

I now live on campus, studenting away. I am surrounded by 18-year-olds that make me feel like a sage old man from the desert and professors that make me feel like an ignorant child. (And everyone between.) It appears the four-year gap before college has successfully scrubbed from Purdue anyone I might have run into from my high school, which is good. (Nothing against the select few from HS that were cool, with whom I still enjoy contact.) However, it does mean that I must dust off my social skills that have lain dormant for those four years, which presents an interesting challenge to take up in addition to that of simultaneously studying French and Arabic. In consequence, I have been musing upon the social groups I see around me and the nature of interaction with strangers, friends, etc. That is, when I'm not studying, redditing, or revising my novel. Anyway, here are three poems from the past week.


On a stone bench possible

Isolation
in the presence of others
at least
offers hope.

Chance works with is.

The key to being open
is to give it the medium
and await the shapes
that it creates.

This is the essence of meet.



Look at the groups as they pass

Walking in bunches and couples
or strolling with side-borne waves
they fortify the meaning of their presence.
Even in the gaps they do it--
cellphones
and ipods
and cups of coke
with ice against the heat--
whatever they must
to add inertia
to their being.
Flocks and herds and pods and troops
and triads of ever-stable affection
inverted Vs like birds reversed
facilitate their feeling
their certainty
of importance
or alignment
or even only lively living
as if their actions
were any better
than other actions
or any worse...
and even nihilism
is a kind of cop-out
but they don't walk that either
they walk only themselves
self-certain
blocking the sidewalk
with their empathy
or selfishness
whatever it is that binds people
in their infinite exchange
of inanity
    intelligence
    and love.
I don't begrudge them
their commuconfidence--
blood clots in air--
but let's not forget
we're bleeding.


On the process of night. (I)- A café review

8PM. The sidewalks come to life. People stir in twos and threes, eagerly ushering the night. The night takes its time.

On come the headlights, the neon, the up-eared cellphones in preparation for the many-liquored night. Will-you-won't-you-come-and? We'll-be-are-be-at-the-starting-at-the-No? Yes? Later.

9PM. The world is a pool of blacks and blues cut with squares of white and yellow and orange asphalt glow. The sidewalks lull between early arrivers and drunken crowds, clusters of outside socializers near the entrances loitering. The police are erect in their cars, counting the hours to two. Night-cyclers pass in bravery or suicidal yearning. Suddenly the streets awake. Sweet striding seulement surrounds me.

How I Learned I'm Not A Hero, or The Blood In The Dark In The Mist

It was a late summer night a few weeks ago. It had just rained, and there was a wonderful ground mist lurking about ankle deep in the hollows and the fields. About 2 AM. For some reason, that kind of mist always reminds me of werewolves, probably from American Werewolf in London or perhaps the clips I've seen of that old movie Wolfman. In any case, it swirled in curls and eddies like milk in coffee, translucent beautiful and strange. I was driving home from my brother's house, about a fifteen minute drive from the country to the country, one rural house to another. As I said, it had rained, and I was thinking as I drove down the hill that it was perfect weather for a car accident. The road I was on had just been paved, smooth black tar covered in that water and mist. It looked like a highway, not a country road. I don't know why they paved it that way. Usually it's the gray stuff, the cheap stuff, for country roads. Anyway, I was driving down this long hill and as I came to the bottom I saw ahead two lights in strange configuration, a canted angle like a car jacked way up on one side. But it wasn't a car.

I slowed way down, and as I passed I saw it was actually two motorcycles, one of which was twisted and broken and resting on its side. But at the moment it didn't look broken, it just looked laid there, like someone had set it there, and I remembered stories I had heard of people faking accidents so strangers would stop, then when you rolled down your window people came sprinting from the ditches to attack. That ran through my head, but I kind of doubted that was the case, and when the lady walked out into my headlights I knew it wasn't. I stopped as she wondered back into the darkness, having passed the wreck, and I put it in reverse and surged backwards. Once I was about thirty feet behind the accident I put on my blinkers and parked the car. I had brought a flashlight to my brother's because I knew I would be there late, and I took it from my pocket as I got out of the car, clicked it on. It swung on the asphalt ahead of me as I walked, but when I reached them I turned it off. Both the headlights were on on the bikes, even the broken one: in fact it was the one turned over that shined on the man in the ditch.

He was in a long patch of blood, having obviously slid in the grass from the force of the crash, and his friend, the other man in the group, knelt above him. There were four total, those two in the grass and the two women walking, one of which was scraped up in the face and had been on the  back of the bike. The other was on the phone, talking to the emergency operator. She didn't know where they were, so she asked me. I knew where we were in relation to my house, but I didn't know the road number. She gave me a road name I knew was wrong and asked me if it was right, and I said no. Then followed a fumbling exchange in which I proved how idiotic I am when it comes to directions. I kept saying things like:

“We're—we're para—no, we're perpendicular to 26—” and she would repeat to the operator:

“We're perpendicular to 26,” at which point I'd say:

“And we're north of—no, no—we're south, I mean east of—”

“We're east of . . .”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Let me call my brother, he lives right up the road.”

As I said, I was on my way home from my brother's house, and I was only one turn away from his road, so I knew he would know the street name. But it was 2 AM, and I had actually gone to see a movie since I last saw him awake (a friend had dropped me off at my brother's place, where I'd left my car) so I wasn't sure if he was awake. The woman told the operator I was going to call my brother. As the phone rang, I looked back to the injured man with his friend. He was lying face down, not moving, but he was breathing every few seconds with these horrible gurgle-click sounds, and his friend kept asking, “Where are they?” to the woman on the phone, and she kept saying, “They're coming, they're coming!” The injured woman was hysterical, walking and crying, but she handed the uninjured man a handkerchief from her pocket, which he pressed against some wound. I didn't look at the head on the injured. The sound and the look of his body was enough, and I felt it would be disrespectful to go any closer than I had to, to look any closer than I must. It was obviously a major head injury, and there was nothing I could to help with that. So I called my brother, but he didn't pick up. It went to voice-mail and I hung up, apologized to the woman.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm calling the other one.” She couldn't have known what I meant by that. I meant my other brother. We were actually on a road between two of my brothers' houses, and as I dialed the number for the second I realized we were actually closer to him. Thankfully, he works nights but had the day off, so he was awake, and he was able to tell me exactly where we were. The signal was bad and I wasn't sure at first that he had heard me, but I was able to hear him through the audio cutting out and told her where we were, which she relayed to the person on the phone. I hung up, she hung up, and she said the ambulance was on its way.

We waited. I stood there, feeling useless, hearing those horrible breathing sounds, and the man kept asking where they were, kneeling over his friend, holding that cloth wherever he was holding it. The woman who had spoken on the phone was stone calm, even more calm than I was, and she kept telling him, “They're coming.” I looked at her and told her I was sorry, not telling what I was sorry for, though what I meant was that I was sorry I couldn't do more. She said:

“No. Thank you for stopping,” and I stood there, mute and useless. After about five or ten minutes, I saw lights over the hill, then a police car came and parked ahead of us. A man with gloves got out and came to squat by the inert body of the unconscious man. He asked the name of the wounded, one of them told the name, and he repeated it to the unconscious wounded man, said, “Stay with us, buddy!” Then he looked at the friend who was kneeling over him and said, “Sir, can I please ask you to step away with the females.” The two women had grouped together by the cruiser and he gestured at them. I was far away, about twenty feet, knowing I was useless and doing all I could to not be a cheap onlooker, waiting out of the way. The friend didn't move and the policeman kept saying, “Please join the females, sir! I'm going to have to ask you to join the females!” The friend didn't respond and I didn't blame him. He stayed with his buddy.

After a while, about three ambulances showed up with maybe a dozen police cars all lined up in a row, lights flashing, and while the EMTs loaded the injured man into the ambulance the cops split up the others and talked to them while the rest of the policemen and emergency responders gathered in a group and stood around, talking and looking important. I stayed far away in the grass, almost into the field, and looked at my car which was still running. It was blocked in on both sides by long lines of cruisers and ambulances. After the others were in ambulances or with policemen, the original cop came and asked if I had seen the wreck. I said no, I had come along after. He said okay then, I could leave. So I did, creeping along between the flashing lights and uniformed men crowding the street. I got about half a mile away before I had to pull over to let the ambulance past. Last I heard the man was still in the hospital in a coma.

Whenever I used to think about incidents like these, about accidents or medical emergencies, I always assumed they'd be intense and dramatic, that I'd be able to jump in and do something, help out in some way. I imagined my training in CPR coming in handy (even if it was years ago that I learned and CPR has changed since then) or some other bold action being needed, but it was nothing like that. There was nothing I could do. Not even that policeman could do anything but crouch there and ask the others to give distance. Hell, I was barely even able to help with where we were at. If my brother hadn't been awake, I would have just been a stupid onlooker. I had my GPS in the car, but to be honest I'm not even sure I would have thought of that. It's strange how much events, really important, dramatic events, don't match at all our conceptions of them. As much as fiction works to analyze the core of human experience, of the nature of people, it completely fails to encompass the actual nature of dramatic events. Drama in life and fiction are entirely separate. This is obvious, I know, but until put into the situation it never viscerally registered with me. Perhaps there are opportunities where you get to leap in and take action, where it really does feel like the books or movies, where you get to be like a hero and feel like one. It seems plausible, or at least possible. But in my experience it doesn't happen that way. In real life, dramatic events are just tragic and regretful. Even the adrenaline is the sinking kind. But perhaps I'm just not a hero. I wonder about the EMTs and firemen, the ER nurses and doctors, the people who do make a material difference. Do they ever feel like heroes, or is it always this stark reality, this ultimate helplessness, the gurgling blood in the dark? Maybe heroes only exist in fiction, and real life is only a series of tragedies with better or worse results. I guess that seems the most realistic to me. What do you think?

Methods Of Productivity, Or How To Write a Novel

 Sometimes I have to remind myself that every human being that ever lived had the same amount of time per day to get things done, and that I have no excuse for being unproductive. The truth is there is plenty of time to get things done, so long as you prioritize your goals and divide them into workable steps, then recognize your time leeches and shotgun those bastards in the face. (Okay, so maybe leeches don't have faces, and shotgunning a leech would be overkill, but work with me.)

Also, you might shoot your junk off.

First, prioritize. For instance, here are a few of my goals: learn French, publish a novel, and marry Emma Watson. The novel is my highest priority, followed by Emma, then French. If I should find any of the lower goals distract me from the higher, I will adjust my methods or cut the lower goal out. (Sorry Emma.)

It's not creepy because we're almost the same age. (Okay, so it's creepy.)

For the purposes of this post I shall concentrate on the highest priority, the novel. Now, it's well known that almost every person thinks she can write a novel. Of those people, a significant portion of them can't, a smaller portion could but never will, and a smaller group will work on one novel their entire lives (or claim to work on it) and die leaving 26 pages of intensely rewritten crap. Please, don't be in that last group. If you're going to be a failed writer, at least be a successful failed writer: take the time to finish your failures. The reason so many people fall into this trap is that they don't realize the big secret of novel writing: it is impossible.

Before I go on, please note that while I'm using a novel as an example, this applies to everything you might wish to do. Everything worth doing is impossible. Your job is to find out how to break that impossible task into pieces that are possible. For instance, the novel. Many people don't know this, but a novel is actually made of words.

Words: the pre-internet Youtube video

Pick up a big heavy book, like Anna Karenina or Moby Dick. That giant inexplicable tome of genius is just a bunch of words, one after the other, written by some fat guy sitting in a chair. If you wanted to, you too could write Moby Dick (or at least a book as long), but if you sit down with that goal in mind you're going to be so overwhelmed you won't be able to start. And even if you do manage to start (thanks to diligence, creativity, or cocaine) you'll probably get stuck after a few pages and freak out. How can I do this? You'll think. Why am I trying—it's impossible! Well of course it's impossible: you didn't break it down. Remember that fat guy writing one word after another.

Let's tone it down a moment: you just want to write a good, short novel, say 80,000 words. That's still a lot of words! If you try to write 80,000 words, you'll get discouraged. Don't. Write a thousand. Anybody can write a thousand words, it's like two pages. A thousand words is no novel, but at least it's possible. So don't worry about whether you'll get the novel, just write the thousand. Make the goal and then do it. Congratulations! You achieved your goal! But you didn't, you say. You have no novel. Well, here comes the easy part. Tomorrow, do exactly what you just did today. It'll be even easier. The day after that, do it again. In less than three months you'll have a novel.

The bad news is it will probably suck.

Anything else can be addressed in this fashion. Learning French? Impossible. Memorizing twenty French words in a day: easy. Do that for a year, and you'll be on your way. (Of course you'll need grammar, but you get the point.) Want to marry Emma Watson? Impossible. But I've got a plan for that too. I can't give my daily steps away, of course, but let's just say I'll be spending a lot of money on protein shakes and binocular polish.

Of course, once you've identified your steps and made a daily plan, the main enemy will be your own laziness. Even if it's something you enjoy, the thought of having to do it will elicit an immediate response of deliberate distraction: I don't wanna write my words! I need to check Facebook again in case somebody liked my Gizmo reference! I need to clip my toenails! I haven't vacuumed under the bed in a week! My daughter needs fed! Shut up. You've made a daily, possible goal and you must stick to it or you'll never achieve the impossible. What helps me is to write both the daily goal and the results down on a chart.

My current chart (page)

I put mine on the wall above my monitor, where it stares accusingly down at me as I waste my mornings reading about cereal mascots on Wikipedia. When I put up the chart, I wrote down my daily word quota (1000 words) and decided on a schedule (Get up at seven, get coffee/toast and do nothing else until my words are written). Now, every day I write in the exact number of words I wrote that day and the times I started and stopped working. That way, if I screw around and miss a day, while no one will be there to punish me, I have to stare at that 0 every day and think about whether I'm really a writer or just a moron with a childish dream. And then I put a thousand up the next day and feel a small triumph over a world that doesn't know I'm there. The chart knows I'm there: I'm filling it. When it's done, I'll have a novel, and even though that in itself is only the smallest step on the way to publication, I'll know that I took the impossible, broke it down, and accomplished it of my own volition, with no one's discipline but mine. And once you've experienced that, you'll realize how powerful this approach is, and you'll know that every step was worth it, and it'll make it that much easier to do the next impossible thing. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an engagement ring to buy, right after I figure out Emma Watson's birth stone.

(This is part 1 of my productivity post. I'll get part 2, A Defense From Leeches, up in the next few days. It addresses the shotgunning mentioned in the intro.)