Ben [Sloan] The Writer

Frightened in the city (animation test)

2012-02-04T16:41:00.001-05:00

This is just a rough test for the initial few moments of the animated short I'm working on. The environment isn't finished, of course, and it would play better with sound, but this is what I have. I like the idea of perfecting an animation until it can get the feeling across without any audio--then anything you add later should really make it stand out. Not that I'm there yet, of course. But it is a lot of fun trying to put feeling and thought into a character instead of just moving pixels around like I've done in the past.

In other news, I'm already a quarter of the way through the semester, and that feels insane. All of my classes are going well--drawing is the most challenging: it really pushes me, but it is rewarding. My web design/programming class is a lot of fun. We've only done simple xhtml/css so far, but I probably enjoy it a little too much. There's just something wonderful about using text and logic to produce a visual result like a web page. I can see how web developers and programmers could be very satisfied with their work. I look forward to learning enough to build my own (fairly advanced) websites from scratch.

It's great to be making things.

Music, delusion, happiness. Also, babies.

2011-12-14T00:02:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-02T12:51:00.000-05:00

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

Irish Explorer With Puppies

2011-10-20T10:43:00.000-04:00

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

Cat Attack Drawing

2011-10-15T18:38:00.000-04:00

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

2011-09-05T19:12:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-10T21:10:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-19T17:37:00.001-04:00

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.)

On Reading Current Literature

2011-06-16T17:04:00.000-04:00

There are immortal novels being written right now. Some were even recently published, I'm sure. I don't know this because I've read them—I haven't read much current literature—but because people are as brilliant and violent and honest and moronic as they've always been, and with the increase in population there has to be even more geniuses bubbling up from the glorious mediocrity of our species. Why, then, don't I read them?

It's not because I think modern writing is crap. There's a hilarious character in Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando who is a literary critic living in the time of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. He rants about how terrible current writers are and avows the Greeks would never have allowed such mucking about. Later in the novel, he pops up again in the 1920s (yeah, it's a weird novel) and rants about those modern writers, declaring that the geniuses of Shakespeare's time would never allow such idiocy. The point is pretty obvious: we obsess over the geniuses of yesteryear because they have already been proven as such by the passage of time, all the while ignoring (or actively hating) the geniuses of today.

Which highlights why I don't currently read new literature: it's not because I think there is no modern Faulkner (actually, there is: Cormac McCarthy. Now that I think about it, I guess that is one current writer I read) but because I'm too impatient to take time wading through possible crap when there is an inexhaustible resource of certain genius from the past. I've already mentioned Faulkner: he published nineteen novels. I've only read seven (currently reading the eighth). Why should I pay $25 on some random person when that same money can buy me ten used books that have already proven themselves immortal?

I'll answer my own question: to support modern writers, to discover new voices on my own instead of depending on others, to see what the latest writers are doing to further the art, to have the excitement of watching a brilliant career unfold in real time. All of these are valid. The other day I was looking for writer blogs to follow, and thought for a moment “I should just search my favorite authors to see if any of them actively blog,” and then I realized they were all long dead (which is a pity, because Virginia Woolf would have been one prolific blogger) or old hermits like Cormac.

So I've at least started to take steps toward reading current authors (sort of). On my to-read pile I've got Phillip Roth and Thomas Pynchon, but to be fair they were both born in the 30s, so they're not exactly of my generation (lol). But it's a tiny toddler's step forward.

Happy Bloomsday, by the way!

Part of me still thinks I should keep to older works as a kind of education. I like to read authors chronologically, starting with their early novels and moving forward so that I get a sense of their development, and it would make sense to approach literature as a whole in the same way. But I haven't exactly started at the beginning of literature, and mythology bores the hell out of me, so I guess that's already ruined.

Maybe I should try to work in a modern novel for every third book I read, or something like that. Anyone have any suggestions? I like literary works, but am not a genre snob (I still maintain Stephen King is a genius for writing compulsively readable stories), and generally enjoy the kind of books that were often banned a few decades ago. I don't really have interest in supernatural stuff unless it has a brilliant new angle like Let The Right One In. I respect every writer and wish them success, but my taste just doesn't align with the Stephanie Meyers and Dean Koontzes of the world.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

The Inconvenient Necessity of Survival

2011-06-13T18:27:00.003-04:00

Please note: I wrote the following in the grips of pessimism and disgust after reading some particularly vile hatchet work in a major newspaper. Since then, I have come to think there is just as much terrible fiction as there is terrible journalism and I should let that spur me to better efforts instead of abandoning the craft altogether. I still maintain that no one is as well informed as they think, but it's certainly possible to inform one's self somewhat and honestly share that information with others. Further, life as a reporter would be worth it for many reasons, not the least of which would be the occasional chance to wield truth to crush deception. Still, in the greater matters of life and thought, my allegiance is to fiction.


Dustin Hoffman misled me again.

I don't think I could live as a reporter. For one thing, writing news means reading it, and while I strive to remain well informed, so much journalism is just terrible writing. And even when it's acceptably written it's largely power serving bullshit. Then, of course, in order to inform others you have to pretend that you are informed, which is almost never the case. The more I learn the more I realize how clueless everyone is. So much of being a journalist, pundit, or intellectual is affecting knowledge you don't have in a theory that is either unprovable, uninteresting, or so formed to be impervious when repeatedly proven wrong. That's not to disparage those out there doing their best, but the overall result is pretty fucking weak. I'm glad there are people trying, but if I were involved for too long I think I'd grow to despise my existence.

I'm going to give Comparative Literature a chance, but much of literary criticism seems to be the same. Novels are an extremely personal medium, and what few truths they address that lend themselves to discussion outside the writer-reader relationship can be addressed in a few vague and obvious observations, after which all discourse degrades to clever people being clever, honing their theories as new fictions ascribed to the old, each theorist competing to out-smart the other. In the end what results may be intelligent or even amusing, but it has little to do with the work that supposedly spurred it. It's like calling out shapes we see in clouds, only most clouds look like nothing, and we are such social animals we must make up for this lack by getting creative—because what the hell else are we going to talk about if not the clouds? So a gray shapeless cloud that means only rain is accused of being a dog, or whatever the viewer can claim to justify. This is not to say that novels are meaningless or cannot be discussed at all, but that the best meaning to be found in novels is far too intimate for one-on-one discussion, let alone that of a classroom. That's why the novelist spends hundreds of hours crafting hundreds of thousands of words in fiction form instead of writing a short lecture or essay. But then, not all criticism is ascribing bullshit to defenseless dead authors—some of it is quite interesting, such as when it is an investigation of the social circumstances of the author, which is at least somewhat factual and keeps the analyzer from straying too far into her own creativity. I don't know, I don't have that much experience with literary criticism. Only high school classes, online lectures from Yale, some essays, and quite a few introductions I've had the displeasure to make myself read. So I'll give it a chance. It's better than working. (Maybe: I'll find out.)

The reality is I'm not going to be happy doing anything but writing novels. If I can make a living that way, great. If not, then that's something I'll have to face: I'll need some other job to keep me fed while I write novels anyway. But I'm not going to do anything that negatively affects my writing. If studying literature somehow hurts my writing, I will stop studying literature. My two goals are to survive and write. Everything else is mechanics: a means to those two ends. So while I try this college thing, I'm looking out for palatable ways to make a living. The key to surviving independently seems to be building a number of small, passive revenue streams: make a little writing freelance articles, a little off novels, a little from a blog, some from some other entrepreneurial venture. I don't mind having a job, even a mindless, boring, or difficult job, but all forms of tyranny oppress me, and any boss with any measure of authority turns into a tyrant, so I'd like to figure out a way to survive without a boss. Sounds naive, right? But thousands of people manage it every day, and I see no reason I shouldn't find a way to make it work for me too. If that doesn't work out, I'd at least like to get away from the soulless corporate structure which penalizes just about every symptom of being a human being.

But above everything else is the writing. If I can get those 1,000 words in every morning, getting published will eventually happen, and beyond that I'm not too worried. It's just the inconvenient necessity of survival: that hard damned reality. I've got to figure something out for that.

A Quick Splurge of Honesty

2011-05-31T21:22:00.000-04:00

So much of politics seems to be pretending to know what you're talking about when you really know nothing. So much of philosophy seems to be pretending you don't believe what you really do. Science is science: it describes and predicts the universe and informs our conceptions of people but still cannot handle the infinite complexities of even a single thinking human being. Mathematics is correct because it says it is and, moreover, it seems to track reality as exactly as any language or system of thought, but it too is limited in its application to the average person's day to day life. Anthropology is much more flexible but mainly applies to a small subset of academics, though it also informs popular literature that makes a lot of difference (as all these things do). Business gets food to mouths and clothes to bodies but it's as dull and unsatisfying as uncooked oatmeal. Medicine is supremely important but bodies are disgusting. Journalism is essential but almost meaningless in the drowning rush of infotainment and propaganda. Literature is almost perfect but nobody reads. So what am I to do?

I'm reading as much as possible and writing the best novels I can. I'm going to school to study languages and literature, which are the enduring passions of my life. I'm being as good as I can to my fellow human beings and exercising empathy to the best of my abilities. Today I ate a strawberry and finished a Faulkner novel and read a month's worth of Facebook posts of a person I cannot comprehend and am inclined to despise. Maybe some day I'll understand him and I won't have to feel the bitterness I do at his exemplification of all I find wasteful, repugnant, harmful, and dishonest. This morning I got up at seven and wrote 1571 words of what I feel to be the best work I've done yet. I petted a kitten at its behest and stood outside and inhaled the wind and sent a message to a person whom I love and respect. I don't know what I'm doing but I'm doing it as best I can, and I guess it's pretty good. The world seems to be going to hell except that it seems it's always been there and I haven't a clue how to fix it or even understand it. But the small slice that is my life, by chance or inevitability or simple hard reality, whatever it is that can be said to be responsible for the features of my existence, seems to be so much better than the violence and despair that surrounds it, and I'm doing my best to exemplify that goodness and breathe it as I do the oxygen ungiven and unasked as it swirls around the globe, which is to say only that I love life and am doing my best, though I have no clue where I'm headed. Do you?

Fleeing Life To Look For It

2011-05-24T15:39:00.000-04:00

I wonder how connected the impulse for flight is to the impulse to live. Not to live in the sense of not dieing, but in the sense of moving and doing, of learning from primary experience. Perhaps that's a definition of privilege: the separation of the concepts of living and survival. Or maybe that's the definition of enough.

In any case, in our jaded, post-industrial existence I and many like me often feel the impulse to flee, not because where we are at is dangerous but because it is not. When you've lived a life of stability and trust and look out at a world of chaos and disease there is a confusion and a pang for some inevident truth which we assume would, if only we could find it, explain that gap. It's not so much that we feel guilty (though some of us do) but that we feel isolated, ignorant, sheltered by the ease of freedom and health.

One reaction to this perceived lack is to run off to war. After all, who hasn't lived if they've been to war? Would Hemingway have written anything worth reading if he hadn't been an ambulance driver in World War One? (I expect he would, but he was a genius.)

I used to have this reaction. I almost joined the Air Force because of it. I was renting a house with my brothers, writing short stories every morning and working at Walmart in the evening. I would send each story into the abyss of rejection and think that I did not know enough, had not lived enough, had nothing of original value to impart. I did not hate my job then but I knew that it was useless to me, like turning a crank in a cage for food pellets. For someone who wanted to live quietly with a spouse it made sense, but I wanted to explore the boundaries of human experience. I wanted to know people so well I could become anyone at a moment's notice, slide into the experience of their subjective being and express truths the meanings of which were gleaned from the various perspectives united in that vast multifarious accumulation of experience, the ultimate aggregate of observation that is the source of any writer's authority, if authority it can be called. Perhaps I should call it informed expression, because it has none of the coercive nature of authority but is only a flawed inaccurate revelation (as all revelations are inaccurate and flawed). In any case, I thought this was to be found in the military.

Virginia Woolf would say I had bought into a skewed masculine value structure that attaches knowledge to violence as a means of vindicating itself (maybe: I haven't read her feminist work but it's the feeling I get from her novels). McCarthy would say my view of war as a means of discovery is a recognition of the foremost issue of human existence: the inevitability of death. I guess I would say they're both right. In any case I'm no longer comfortable with the idea of signing my life away or agreeing to kill some random person some fine day, and I didn't end up joining then because I'm disqualified for eczema.

An alternative to war is travel. Travel is, of course, linked with war (join the Air Force and travel the world!) but it has its separate allure. Hitchens says travel is essential, but then Thoreau said it was a waste of time. (I know Thoreau did some traveling, but I remember him saying any experience worth having is available within walking distance of your home. Or maybe he thought his home was special in this regard.) Anyway, I guess it's obvious that when your immediate surroundings bore you immeasurably and seem to offer no new edification the natural response is a yearning for travel. But then Hitchens also says the more you travel the more you realize people everywhere are essentially the same, so how likely is it to produce new truths?

Notice how I continually quote and refer to writers. Why? Because I haven't traveled, and perhaps haven't lived.

But I happen to know I have lived. I've made friends and lost them, loved people and hated them, risked my life in youth's brash stupidity (which I'm sure I'm not entirely free from yet), hurt people and myself, lived alone, rented, gone into debt, gotten out of debt, gotten more debt, quit school, started school, witnessed the strange sudden absurdity of someone being dead, discovered the meaning of existence, realized I was wrong, killed an animal with calm intention and irrevocably watched it die, gained an appreciation of my own vast ignorance, and read and written more books in my brief existence than some people do in twice the time. I've done all of this and more, yet still I have the feeling—the certainty—that I am an ignorant sheltered child, and often I look to the sky with my spoiled child's eyes and wish to fly to the land of living, to find the thing I lack.

I Was A Prepubescent Hack

2011-05-22T22:13:00.002-04:00

ONE of the earliest stories I remember writing was about a team of scientists who discover an enormous underground bunker of some sort and drop down into it to look around. For some reason, there is a goblin creature in there, and it kills them off one by one in horrible gruesome attacks. The last scientist escapes (without killing the creature) and shoots himself in the head a few days later. I think that was fifth grade. Maybe fourth.

The first short story I ever submitted for publication was to Boy's Life. It was called Johnny and The Clown and was equally ripped off from Stephen King's It (the movie: I hadn't read the book yet), Poltergeist, and probably some X-Files and Twilight Zone episodes. A little boy gets a clown doll for his birthday. It comes alive and dances on top of him in his bed and smiles with rotten teeth and tells him it will eat him during the next thunder-storm. ("A putrid breath wheezed out of the clown as he said in a rough voice, 'I’m gonna eat ya Johnny! I'm gonna wait until there’s a storm and it’s nice and dark, then I'm gonna eat ya slowly from your feet up, so you can watch yourself get chewed up and swallowed by yours truly!'")

When I finished that story, I showed it to my mother and she loved it. She told me to show it to my Uncle Carl, so I ran down the street with the three-page story (printed in red because we were out of black ink) and showed it to him. He read it at once, with us both standing in his living room, me watching as he turned the pages, and he told me it was very good. I looked at it and thought, "My god, it IS good." So I submitted it to Boy's Life, which to my knowledge has never published a story about evil carnivorous dolls. I still have the cover letter.

My father has been active in our Boy Scout troop since I was a young child. So ever since I can remember, I’ve been reading the captivating stories in your magazine. It was these short, yet entertaining stories that first inspired me to write. I decided that if I could have that much fun in these other people’s worlds, why couldn’t I have fun creating my own? [This paragraph is a lie. While I read the stories in Boy's Life, it had no direct role in my beginning to write.]

So I have been writing ever since. I have written many different types of stories, and this one happens to be a horror. Not a violent or graphic horror either, mind you, but one any child could enjoy. I loved being scared by R.L. Stine as a child, so now I’d like to return the favor. Taking a clown doll and a small boy, I spun up a story I think you’ll find entertaining, to the point, and easy to understand. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my story and enter my world. Just look out for the clowns…

I still have the form rejection. When I got it, I was so disheartened I decided to become a hack. I looked in the latest issue of the magazine, and there was an article about some island culture in which boys rode in long canoes and speared sharks as a rite of passage. I looked up those people online and researched how the hunt worked and wrote a short story specifically for Boy's Life. It featured a sensitive young boy who was afraid to spear a shark but had to in order to be considered a man. It, too, was rejected, and I deleted it in shame. So far as I can remember, that was the only short story of mine that I've ever intentionally deleted.

I don't know what the point of this post is. I wish it could be a recollection of my struggling days from the vantage point of an established author, a laugh and a shrug over the silliness of youth. But the truth is I'm still not published. I have an extensive rejection collection and I still love what I write. Of course, when it's about a year old, then I can see how terrible it is, and even in an immediate second draft I can be quite ruthless when editing my own work, but I take an immense pleasure in my writing that is perhaps not justified. Still, maybe that love is necessary to continue writing, to work and improve in the vacuum of unpublished struggle, to move past the goblins and clowns and express the reality of people as I see them. It has been many, many years since I stood in that room and watched my uncle reading, and since then I have grown in more ways than one. But as an eager, unpublished author, am I really any different?

How I Became A Liar And What I've Done About It

2011-05-07T12:40:00.000-04:00

I lied to someone the other day. Well, not intentionally. I was deceiving myself as much as I was him. It was with a classmate before Intro to Political Science. We were talking about books, and he said he tried to read one a month, then guessed that I probably read one a week. I thought back to my reading list from last year to tell him how many books I had read, but I couldn't remember. I could picture the number “88” on the page, and I thought that was the number of novels I had read. As a rule, I try to alternate between fiction and nonfiction, so novels should account for about half my reading. I multiplied 88 by two and estimated 170-something and rounded it off to 200. That number is, of course, ridiculous. I realized it as soon as it came out of my mouth. However, I'm not the most skilled conversationalist and I felt like I couldn't very well say, “Wait—I don't know why I said that. It's much less.” (Which is exactly what I should have said, but the conversation carried forward before I could. I am sometimes a social coward.)

Then, to make matters worse, the conversation in class turned toward education and the classmate mentioned me as an example of the availability of materials to teach one's self. Why, just last year, I had read 200 books, he explained to the class. I don't know how many people believed me and how many thought I was full of crap, but for the first time in my adult life I felt like a genuine fraud, a liar, a fool. As a rule, I follow my conscience, so while I sometimes have regrets I have not in a long time felt the sting of knowing for certain that I had actively wronged others. It was awful. I expect the classmate believed my lie, but if he secretly did not and intentionally proclaimed my lie in front of the class in order to shame me, that would be brilliant and I would applaud such clever justice.

In any case, I felt like a liar (which I was) and worse: I felt like a fool. We all know someone who exaggerates incorrigibly. Someone who has always caught a bigger fish, made breathtaking escapes from death, and invariably knows some famous person in a safely distant way. They are ridiculous and sad. I don't want to be that person.

So when I got home I immediately checked my reading list and, as some of you may recall, this was the actual number: 77. I had claimed to have read 200 books when I had read less than 100. I was a 260% exaggerating liar. Two hundred books! Who reads two hundred books? That's 1.8 days a book. If I didn't have to work or talk to anyone I might be able to pull that off. If I essentially read full time. It's transparently laughable.

That was bad enough, but here is where it got worse. I could not bring myself to approach that classmate and say, “Hey, I lied. Turns out I think so insanely highly of myself that I more than doubled my true reading count.” I have a long history of being too honest with people. I make the mistake of telling them what I really feel or think and even when they're fine with the content of my position they are invariably uncomfortable with my stating it straight out. We are an oblique species, social but subtle, and a history of learned distrust has ingrained the inclination to subtext and hidden meaning. We invented poetry before prose, and honesty is taken as a kind of presumed intimacy. You must master small talk to get to anything of substance, and I'm not one for small talk.

Anyway, I couldn't bring myself to bring it up again, but it haunted me. Lies reverberate. What if we knew some of the same people, and somehow he repeated my ridiculous lie? Insane scenarios came to mind, all of which ended in my being outed as a stupid, foolish liar. But, I thought, I'm not a liar! Especially not about reading! I post my numbers online, for god's sake: they're public. Why would I do that then lie about them? Then it occurred to me that he might somehow come across my blog, look at my reading list, see that number: 77. That drove me so crazy I deleted the post with my reading list—and then the one from the year before for good measure. Go look for them. They're not there. Google might have them cached but they're deleted. This is how lies work. One moment you speak too fast about facts (in this case 50% error and 50% arrogance) and the next moment you're off on an Orwellian plot to cover your tracks by rewriting the past.

Part of me thinks it made sense to delete those posts anyway because we tend to over-share in our blogs, but that's not the point. The point is I am interested in truth, not in lies, and not in exaggeration. I have no intent to deceive people into admiring me. Hell, I don't really care if they admire me for any reason, so long as I'm speaking the truth. (Though of course we all care to some extent.) Honesty is what I want!

So I renounce this lie publicly. It was not an intentional one, as I honestly thought in that brief moment that my calculation made sense, but it was a lie nonetheless. Maybe it's ridiculous to focus on it this much, as it was a tiny lie to someone I didn't really know, but I am not about to excuse myself. As a journalist, novelist, and human being, I want only truth, or at least honesty. Life has only the meaning we attach to it, and I see no meaning in deception.

To press further on this (perhaps already over-analyzed) event, it is interesting to note what it reveals about me. Subconsciously, I must be one hell of an arrogant person. Two hundred books? Come on. I have no issue with confidence, and I believe I have some aspects to merit confidence, but what disturbs me is the idea of misplaced confidence: if I am ever presumptuous, I want only to be it consciously and honestly. (Take, for instance, the first sentence in this paragraph. Is it really interesting what this event reveals about me? Well, it's certainly interesting to me, and if you're reading this still I presume it is to you, if only for impersonal reasons. See? Conscious, honest presumption.)

Moreover, is reading a lot of books in a year really even something of which to be proud? I think it is. It's not much good in itself, but it entails good things. Like learning to tell the truth in interesting ways. Like avoiding the things that erode your conscience. Like lancing the lesions of your mind.

Blood-Lust And Pride: American Vengeance On Osama

2011-05-02T18:11:00.001-04:00

Please bear with me through the next paragraph. After that, you can click away in disgust.

Let me begin by making this clear: No, I am not proud of being an American. I am only an American by accident of birth, and thus have no more reason to be proud of that than I do of having brown hair. I am, however, proud to be an active member of the world's oldest secular republic, for which innumerable good people have given their lives. I am proud to be a proponent of a tradition that bases its authority and morality in the inalienable autonomy of the individual person. I am proud to be a part of a nation that has as its core principle the upholding of reason above fervor and animal fury, above simplistic emotional appeals of divine right or inherent superiority. We are a society founded upon an explicit document recognizing the absolute rights of the individual, limiting the power of a State which can all too easily call up the worst in human beings, pull them together for blind destruction and hate. As a bulwark against this constant looming danger our ancestors (intellectual if not biological) put up a code that established no human being is above the law, no one is above the other, and no matter how many people get together and how disgusted and angry they get, they cannot by force of fury deny any individual his human rights. I am proud of this history. But I can only justly be proud of this history if I am upholding it in this very moment. I did not write the constitution and I never stood up to the illogical presumption of the Kings and Clerics of old. I am not Jefferson or Franklin or Paine and neither are you. We have no right to share in the pride of their deeds. The only way we can even approach an authority to take up the vestments of past glories is by living the truth of their principles in our everyday lives. If we disregard the absolute autonomy of the individual, of the primacy of reason, if we throw ourselves to emotion and disgust, then we lose all privilege to pride and heritage. We spit in the face of those we venerate because we forget the reasons for their actions and worship the actions themselves. Who wants to take up the hard truth of mutual respect and moral effort when you can drive a bayonet into a redcoat's guts, shake with the fury of triumph and righteousness? In our throes of romantic rage we forget that the glory is not in the bayonet nor even in the blood of courage and sacrifice, it is in the sanctity of the principles for which they're applied. Anything else is blind violence of animal thrill, the one thing we all greet with disgust and order our lives to avoid. This is the specter for which government even exists in the first place: to prevent force or fraud of one against another. How quickly we throw ourselves to that we despise most, and for the smallest of things.

Do you want true justice for the 3,000 dead? It doesn't exist. It's impossible. The sad truth of terrible deeds is that they are irrepayable. The killing of one person is infinitely horrible and can never be undone. Killing another no more affects that than shrieking into the wind. We can order our society so that it does not reward evil deeds, so that the evil amongst us know that they face punishment if they impugn the rights of others, and to remove them from our company if they do so anyway—all of this is correct and good—but to revel in an exaggerated thirst for blood, to wish eternal torture upon another or even simply to approve of assassination without trial is no more justified as a response to evil than the fatuous reasons given as an excuse to perpetrate it. That rage you may feel, that thirst for vengeance, that is exactly what every killer feels and follows and is exactly what makes us rightfully despise them. We all have these feelings in some form or another, but it is exactly in our capacity to suppress them, to recognize them as wrong until they cease to dominate us, that makes us what we call human. To call people monsters and work ourselves up in a call for their destruction is exactly what leads to terrorism, not what solves it.

Did Osama Bin Laden deserve to die? I don't know. I don't claim authority to decide who lives and dies. If anyone deserved death, he would have certainly been one. But even if we agreed that he did, the attitude with which to carry it out would not be one of joy. You are destroying a human being who destroyed countless others. Where in that is joy? It is terrible all around. We should be solemnly swearing to ourselves that we will rectify the conditions that led to the evil of Osama. That alone has even the possibility of producing future good to balance past evil.

This is not moral equivalence. I am not saying we are as bad as Osama for celebrating his death. However, I am saying such celebration is antithetical to a democratic spirit, particularly if taken to the lengths many have. Our freedom is a product of the Enlightenment, not of the Dark Ages. Its exercise is in thought, not in rage. If the Egyptians can brave without weapons the men who tortured and murdered them for decades, can calmly and rationally work to put them to trial instead of mobbing and massacring them like a scene from the French revolution, if they can exact justice through the means of reason, respect, and democratic yearning, surely we Americans, with our wealth and comfort and history, with our egalitarian mythos, can calmly remember the right to trial and the basic humanity we all share. Surely through the shouts of pride and thirst for blood we feel the pangs of an insulted human dignity.

Eight Reasons The Kindle Is Better Than A Paper Book

2011-05-01T17:32:00.000-04:00

I just finished the first full book I've read on the Kindle: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book, of course, is magnificent, but of more interest (for this post) is the physical experience of reading it on the Kindle. In a word: fantastic. I would never have believed it if I heard it from anyone else, but reading on the Kindle is actually better than the codex* (my preferred term for paper books). Here are eight reasons why:

1: PAGE TURNING
For one thing, page turning is easier. I thought the black flash of the page being redrawn might be distracting but it is far less so than grabbing a sheet of paper and flipping it over. In fact, the Kindle's double buttons make reading a one handed activity—I can much easier hold my coffee cup in my right hand while page turning with the left. It is so much smoother than turning a page that I seem to read faster, or at least more comfortably for longer periods of time.

2: BUILT IN DICTIONARY
Then there is the built-dictionary. Just run the cursor up to any word and the definition pops up. I suspect for a lot of people this isn't a big deal—for years I just took new words through context and was too lazy to look them up—but over the past year I've been reading more advanced material and I've found that looking up new words does help in avoiding confusion. My iPod touch had worked well for this, since it was portable and allowed me to simply search for a word instead of flipping through a dictionary, but it still took time to dig it out, turn it on, type in the word, etc. With the Kindle, it take less than a second, and is so naturally a part of the reading experience that it is barely a distraction at all. (In a related note, it's nice to touch one button and have the time materialize at the top of the page. These details may seem inconsequential but I am paranoid and often dig out my cell to look at the time, and given the hours one dedicates to a long book these pauses can build up.)

3: ANNOTATIONS
I have also taken up the habit of writing in the margins of books—only nonfiction: it feels somehow sacrilegious to ruin the immersion of a novel by marking it up—and the Kindle has the double advantage of making it so annotations don't permanently ruin a book and also making them searchable. I scrawl a lot of topical notes in older books that I think bear on present issues, so this helps me immensely. If I remember there were several passages from Thomas Paine that I thought applied to gun control, say, I can do a quick search and have every one before me. This brings me to the next feature, which is:

4: EXCERPTS
For about four years now, I've carried little comp books in which I copy down passages from books I've read. Beautiful sentences, brilliant observations, astounding facts, etc. When I fill one these notebooks up (or when they start to fall apart) I get a new one and add the old to a stack of them that I've accumulated, putting a giant black number on the front so I don't get them out of order. After they build up to a certain point (I think I'm up to notebook 16) it gets a little impractical to search through them for the exact passage I want. With the Kindle's highlight feature, however, not only do I save a lot of time not having to copy everything down, but it automatically compiles all of my highlights into a separate file that I can search or browse. This doesn't entirely replace my notebooks, as I still need them to draw, write my own thoughts, make notes to remember, and all that, but it is great for book quotes.

5: CAPACITY

This is the most obvious, but the size of a codex is directly proportional to the amount of text within it. I've got one with three E. M. Forster novels in it, but it's big and clunky. My Kindle, on the other hand, can carry 3,500 books with no problem, and it never gets any heavier. Being able to carry the whole of my library in the small of my back is a pretty fantastic thing. And if the book burners ever come calling, I can jump out the back window and disappear into the wilderness. (Though on the other hand they don't have to come calling if they can remotely wipe my Kindle.)

6: FREE BOOKS
After I first got my Kindle, I spent a good solid two days loading it with free books. There are a lot of free contemporary genre books, if that's your thing (it's not mine), but the real gold is in the classics. Everything from Mark Twain to Wittgenstein, available instantly for free. Free! FREE! It's absolutely wonderful. I'm not sure I can think of anything so delicious as limitless free books, especially immortal works of genius. Well, at least not anything possible. If I could have lunch with Joyce, that would be the most delicious.

7: MAGAZINES
Yes, paper magazines are prettier, and many of them you can access online, but the Kindle combines the best aspects of both worlds: high quality long form journalism with the timeliness, archive-ability, and search-ability of digital. Reading long text is so much better on the Kindle than any computer screen. In fact, when I come across long articles online that I would otherwise skip by (even veteran novel readers such as myself slide into a short-form preference while online) I simply copy them over and email them to my Kindle. But I digress. Another great aspect of magazines on the Kindle is that the pay is cheaper and easier: around $2.99 a month for the New Yorker, $3.49 for the New York Review of Books, $0.99 a month for the Columbia Journalism Review. (And you get them earlier than the paper schmucks.)

8: LIGHT
This one may not count as the others do, since technically it's not a feature on the Kindle itself but on the case you can buy for the Kindle, but it's still awesome. There are ordinary book-lights, of course, but I have yet to use one with a codex that didn't either mar the pages, clamp poorly, illuminate unevenly, prohibit page turning, or some combination of the four. The Kindle's light, however, illuminates perfectly, interferes in no way with page turning, and slides inconspicuously into the cover. Further, it is powered by the Kindle itself, so there are no extra batteries to deal with.

QUALIFICATIONS
The title of this piece should be "Eight Reasons The Kindle Is Better For Me," but I can't make my titles too long. Obviously, not everything about the Kindle is better than a paper book. Until e-readers are wide spread, I'll have a much harder time sharing books with friends/family. But this is a short term problem, as I think it is increasingly obvious that e-readers will take over at least the majority of the market and inevitably become the norm. The codex will never leave us, but it will become a special item, like vinyl records (though perhaps a bit more common). And then again—who knows—maybe I'm completely wrong and will look like those guys in the fifties who thought by year 2000 we'd all have flying cars with robot chauffeurs. In any case, I adore my Kindle and see no reason I will not use it—or some improved version of it—for the rest of my life.

(Not to mention the myriad possibilities through which the Kindle and devices like it could irrevocably change the world in ways we can only begin to imagine.)

__________
*I say codex not to be fancy but because it is the only accurate way I know of to discriminate between the “physical book” and the more general term “book” as we regularly use it. It's common to differentiate them using the terms “e-books” and “books,” but as e-books take over I believe we will drop the E and just call them books. Indeed, by calling them “e-books” we admit implicitly that they are simply a specific variety of book, so reserving the term for the analog form seems downright reactionary. Besides, calling the codex the “physical book” is misleading because even e-books are physical, just not in the form to which we're accustomed. As good materialists, we must not slip into unintentional dualism.

The Meth-Head Who Bled On My Couch (And Also Taught Me Something)

2011-04-26T20:48:00.001-04:00

SCREAMS AT THE DOOR

THE persistent yapping of my mother's worthless doxen upheld its shrill severity even as it faded from my consciousness. A shadow enveloped the periphery of my perception and I was only aware of the slender window, no larger than a hardback book, that floated in the door before me. Through this I saw the hunched form of a shirtless, tattooed, hairless man in his late twenties, bent with his hands on his elbows, rocking in distress. My first impulse was to lock the door and run for the shotgun, for here was what could only be a meth head in some strange state, and he was more than large enough to hurt me with his hands. Before I could reach the lock, he looked up at me and screamed, “Help! I've been burned!”

Particular scenes from A Clockwork Orange jumped immediately to mind, but nonetheless I opened the door, electric caution in my stomach. Even as I saw the pink puckered wounds that covered his left half from waist to neck, there was a moment of disbelief, and I marveled at how much like movie makeup it looked, the strings of skin stretched like cobwebs over the divots of burned out flesh. His face was untouched, but a full half of his torso, from chest to back, was melted in sloughs and blisters. The agony in his face was unimaginable, and I quickly ushered him in.

“I'll get an ambulance,” I said, and ran into the kitchen, picked up the phone. He followed me in, unable to stop moving, pacing erratically until he fell on his knees. Shudders and screams escaped him in starts, and he fell to the floor and began writhing—literally writhing: I gained new understanding of the word—while I dialed nine-one-one. Growing up, I had that number driven into me, and though I had never used it, I always thought I would feel a special thrill, a spike of forbidden pleasure, when I did. There was none of that. I barely registered doing it. As I spoke with the operator—I was transferred once, interrogated, and had to give all my information twice—the man kept screaming for me to do something to stop the pain. He stood in a moment of lucidity and begged me to ask if he could get in the tub. I asked, and the operator said yes. He ran to the bathroom, and as soon as the fire department would let me hang up, I went to help him.

NAKED AGONY

THE door was shut, and I could hear him screaming as he splashed water on himself. I knocked and asked if I could do anything for him, and he asked in a barely discernible voice: “Cup of water, no ice?” I ran to get the cup of water, musing as it filled that such a simple, domestic expression, that request for “no ice,” could find its way into a situation such as this. When I returned with the water, he opened the door in his underwear and took it, closed the door again. I told him I'd be right there if he needed anything, but I had to run to the door to check that the ambulance didn't miss our drive. Outside, there was no sign of anyone.

When I returned, he screamed for a towel. There was one left in the laundry room. I took it to the bathroom, knocked, and opened the door a crack to offer it to him. I didn't really think it was a time for modesty, but I didn't want the man to be embarrassed by my seeing him naked: a ridiculous compunction in retrospect, but another of those daily social observances that leak in as absurdity in times of emergency. As I glanced in, I saw his blistered form shaking as he struggled out of the tub to accept the towel, and I felt like an absolute bastard for making him do it. I stepped in and handed it to him, he fell back into the tub, and I stepped out.

At this point I was worried that the police hadn't gotten the right address, and I ran out to check the road a couple more times. No sound of sirens or anything. I went back in and he shouted for another towel. There were none in the laundry room, but I remembered the others in the bathroom closet. I told him that, opened the door, and went in. I can't remember if the water was still running, but the curtain was back and he was standing in the tub, shaking against the tile, crying and hugging the limp wet rag. The closet was immediately to the right of the entrance, and I opened it and took one of the towels and handed it to him. The clearest image I have of the encounter is in that moment: his hand outstretched, face red, a stranger standing naked and shuddering with pain as I press the dry white cloth into his hand, he a man I would at any time fear, helpless and crying before me.

As he staggered out of the bathroom, clutching one towel to his chest and the other over his groin, I ran ahead and cleared off a couch, told him to lie down. Once he was down, I said, “I'll be right back. I'll get you another cup of water.”

He said, “Yes! Please!” as I went into the kitchen and filled another glass for him, brought it back. He was horizontal but couldn't stay that way, kept wiggling and sitting up, breathing fast and letting out short, panicked screams. I handed him the cup and said, “Try to take deep breaths, drink slowly.” The words came out with calm, but I felt completely useless: I've been trained in basic first aid, but he was so bad I hadn't a clue what to do. The only thing I could think was to try to calm and reassure him.

“You'll be okay,” I said. “You'll be alright. They'll be here soon. They would have warned me if anything bad would happen, so you'll be fine.” The logic wasn't exactly spotless, and I do wonder whether it just annoyed him, but all I could do was make soothing noises. The pain seemed to hit him in waves, and he would stand and pace around, screaming and stomping. In the midst of this he suddenly froze, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I'm sorry.” I could only look at him and say, “You're fine, man.” Then he was back into a frenzy, and he dropped on the couch and looked up and said, “A cop—a cop's here.” I turned to the window: the sheriff was stopped at the entrance to our drive, looking around. I ran out and waved him in.

AUTHORITY INTERVENES

AFTER the burned man left in the ambulance (he had asked them to strap him down as they loaded him in, which I thought was odd) one of the deputies asked me where his clothes were. I told him. His reply seemed strange: “I'm gonna go smell them!” With that, he ran inside to do so.

It took me a moment to figure it out. The deputy wasn't a pervert—he was smelling for chemicals. He bagged the clothes and took them outside, where a ring of police and volunteer firemen stood with their hands on their hips, discussing the event. I stood awkwardly, half in the circle, a twenty-one-year-old bookworm who looked fifteen, surrounded by burly self important men who wore sunglasses and chewed gum.

“Where did he come from?” one of them asked.
“I don't know,” I said. “He just showed up beating on my door.”
“What do they smell like?” one of the firemen asked the deputy.
“No ammonia,” he said. “Clorox, maybe?”
One of them walked to the crossroads and pointed down a road. “I think I see his truck.”

It turned out my first impression was correct: he was a meth head. He had rigged up a roadside lab about a mile down, just a few feet from the street, set in a dry ditch. In the middle of mixing a batch, something went wrong, and it exploded, burning his shirt off in addition to some flesh.

DELAYED REACTION

LEARNING this, I was reminded of an anti-drug plan of which I had heard: to release directions for making meth on the internet, only with an added step that makes everything explode and kill the maker. It had seemed clever before, but it cannot now.

My perspective has shifted. I have never been a squeamish person, and I was always skeptical of claims from people who had witnessed violence that it had affected them in any deep and lasting way. I grew up reading horror novels and watching horror films, and I've seen many gruesome photos and videos that were actually real. The concept of real world violence disturbed me, but I didn't think much of the impact of seeing injured people. I'm of a fairly scientific mind, and I always expected to remain detached and rational.

It turns out that I did while the event was going on. This occurred just before English class, and I went and attended with no issues. It seemed vaguely strange to me, but that was all. I watched, talked, laughed as normal. Then class was over, and I went to the library.

Let me be clear that what I witnessed was not that gruesome. It was disturbing, especially in the screams incited in the man, but there are innumerable, exponentially more horrible sights and sounds all around the world every day. I don't claim any scars or post-traumatic stress.

Still, it was distracting. I found myself stopping mid-sentence as I read and analyzing everything I'd done, everything I'd seen. I replayed the scene at the door, examined my impulse to throw the lock, remembered vividly the movie-set strangeness of his wounds.

Worse later, as I tried to sleep. My brain would not shut down: it kept returning to those scenes. More than anything, that look of anguish as I handed him the towel. Had I done the right thing? What if he had hurt me? Gone insane? Fled the police? Died?

The next morning, it was back. I had a strange feeling of disappointment, a sinking thought of, “Oh. It still happened.” All of this for a burned stranger! I can't imagine the effect of witnessing a death, let alone of someone I knew.

EMPATHY AND SUFFERING

THAT, in essence, is the matter of my shift. It is not that I have been permanently shocked. It has only been a few days, and I slept just fine last night.* I have not had one dream or nightmare. (Which says a lot, because I have dreams about math from doing calculus.) It is only that I have somehow extended my sympathy, taken my academic awareness of the pity of violence and given it emotional impetus, even for people I don't know and am inclined to despise.

If a burn is that bad, what of a missile driving debris through your body? Or even of burns: what of the suppurating phosphorous wounds still open in a Palestinian years after he was hit by Israeli munitions? Sticking to meth addicts: one of the responses to my story was from a man who said, “If a toasted meth head showed up at my door, I'd pour salt on him to increase the pain, then lock the door and call 911.” If that were truly his response to seeing another human being in absolute agony, pleading for his help, I'd be ashamed to say I knew him.

Helping that burned man did not dramatically alter my core philosophy of life, but it did bring into clarity the reality of human suffering. Whether one be a war criminal, meth addict, murderer, or rapist, every person when hurt or tortured cries forth with the sound of a child, and in that cry is the voice of our entire species, a representation of our pain, brutality, and love. This may be a product of my naiveté, and the universality of the sensation of suffering only to be taken as a necessary ingredient in the wars and prosecutions of our existence, but I know that I will never be able to take the harm of another impersonally, to write it off as due justice or the price of anything worth having, without confronting the image of a naked man sobbing as I hand him a towel.

__________
*I originally wrote this in September of last year.

Are You A Protagonist?

2011-04-17T09:05:00.001-04:00

The people in my novels are people. That is to say they are characters, but I don't like calling them characters. It demeans their reality. To me, they carry a three dimensional significance similar to the mental image one might have of an old classmate, say, or perhaps even a sibling. Calling them characters dehumanizes them, and I'm not comfortable with that.

You can, then, imagine the discomfort I feel when others refer to actual human beings as characters. Not in the sense of, “That Johnny, he's a real character!” I mean in the sense of, “I like to find characters with real conflict in their lives, to write stories about protagonists in real agony,” referring to nonfiction writing.

I hadn't come across this much before, but I'm currently reading The New New Journalism, a collection of interviews and essays by Robert S. Boynton. It's really a fantastic book, full of invaluable information gleaned from a multitude of brilliant journalists. Undoubtedly every person in the book has done more to help other people than I have, but there is a disturbing recurrence in the way they talk about the people they cover. Continually, they refer to them as subjects, characters, and protagonists, and they do it in the manner synthesized above, like gods scheming over populations as they select out the entertaining few with which to assemble their books, to “tell a good story.”

As I said, I believe that these are all profoundly thoughtful, ethical people, and they're probably all better writers than I am, but when they talk of their writing they often seem like pseudo-novelists stealing real people because they can't create their own. By itself, this isn't necessarily a horrible thing—I have no problem thinking of Leonardo Da Vinci memorizing faces for his paintings as he walked down the street—but nonfiction is such a powerful medium, so easily used to destroy peoples lives, that it seems almost like exploitation. Calling people “characters” is not only indicative of seeing them as a means instead of an end but also blunts the reality that these are real human beings being exposed in order to entertain (and hopefully enlighten) the general public.

Obviously, journalism is essential to society, and some of the most important is long-form coverage of people who aren't voluntarily public figures. Further, it is one of the most romantic functions: to think that people get paid to go out, find something interesting and important, and write about it! It's like being a private investigator too badass to even need a gun. I would love to be able to do it professionally. But damn it, we're dealing with people here, infinitely complicated, endlessly valuable, imminently perishable human beings, and we're coming into their lives and casting them out where they never asked to be, so to deny them their humanity, consciously or unconsciously, through labels such as “characters” or “protagonists” is dangerous and disturbing.

Characters are creatures of the imagination, and though they may often seem like real people they are not, just as even the most interesting (or useful) person is not a character. As a novelist, I kill characters routinely, feeling no qualms, but as a journalist I strive not to harm a single person. To blur the two is to invite tragedy through abstraction and to deny the importance of both.

UPDATE: To be clear, this is a fantastic book that I highly recommend, and it addresses many of the ethical quandaries of journalism directly. The whole "character" thing, however, is still worrying.

Why I Am Not Self Publishing (But Hope Self Publishers Are Right)

2011-04-09T21:34:00.003-04:00

Pomplamoose

In a post from last year I compared the future of book publishing to the present of music distribution. Specifically, I explored how the two-person band Pomplamoose is able to use the internet to release their music directly to their listeners instead of going through a recording studio. As a result, they get to keep a much larger margin of their sales and can thus live on their art with a smaller fan base. In addition, they have complete control over both their brand and their music. Pomplamoose isn't alone. There are countless other groups doing the same thing, doing their art professionally without kowtowing to corporate money grubbers. It's wonderful not only because more artists can survive doing what they're best at, but also because it removes the barriers which let mass-targeted bland commercial work dominate. There is no longer a monopoly on salable art. (And if the artist is repulsed by making money, she can release it for free.)

It appears the equivalent future of book publishing could be approaching. Indeed, some believe it is already here. Anyone who follows publishing will be aware of Barry Eisler's turning down a $500,000 offer from St. Martin's Press in order to self publish. He did the math and realized he would make more money on his own. Naturally, this caught a lot of attention.

On the other side, self-publishing superstar Amanda Hocking signed a two-million dollar four book deal with the same St. Martin's Press. However, as noted in this discussion by Eisler and Joe Konrath, she will also continue self-publishing at the same time. (While you're at it, if you feel like reading up on the topic, check out Part 1 of the discussion I linked to above. Warning: it's long.)

With the increasing proliferation of e-readers, the connections that traditional publishers bring mean less and less. Why go through the long, painful process of printing thousands of books, trucking them out to book stores, taking them back when they don't sell, and shredding them? Why not just publish directly online,

[source]

make a print-on-demand version available to those (such as myself) who prefer paper books, and be done with it? Of course, you lose readers this way, but if you're making 70% on each book instead of 14%, that more than makes up for it. Add in the complete control you get in self-publishing and it's a pretty tempting deal. You don't have to worry about selling as much as possible in the first six months or getting your book pulled: you just let it naturally build an audience over your life time.

That all sounds wonderful, but I have yet to see compelling evidence that it is widely working. There is some hopeful anecdotal evidence, but the numbers I've seen still show self published books averaging only a few sales. Of course, this may be completely skewed by the prevalence of bad books in the self publishing industry (meaning a good self published book might still do wonderful but get dragged down in the averages by the greater number of bad) but that seems like little more than hopeful supposition.

Then, of course, there is the psychological factor of knowing “I got published” as opposed to “I published.” It is likely we unpublished authors build up “getting published” in our minds as some kind of metaphysical transformation only to be let down when it finally happens and we remain mortals with tenuous careers in a tenuous industry. But still there lurks that call for validation, which is perhaps a relic of hero worship in which the pantheon of established published/publisher gods select the elite few worthy of immortality and imbue them with superhuman status. In effect, all of our favorite authors are published, so getting published puts us on a level with them in some sense, though of course none of us will ever reach the level of the best.

But, for me at least, it all comes down to one thing: readers. If I can get readers, I don't care what format it's in or who controls it, I have a voracious ego and it must be fed. Really, though, it goes beyond ego: art is not a ball to be bounced off a wall for one's own amusement, though that is an aspect of its splendor. It is expression, communication, which entails both subject and object. Even should you not buy into fiction as art, entertainment is even more in need of an audience. If I were a painter or musician at heart I could slap up my work online and reach people since both of these media are short and passive enough for internet consumption, but novels are a different matter entirely. Unless the e-book model works out, we are stuck with print, and the only way to effectively manage print resources is through traditional print publishers, whether we like it or not.

Money is an issue as well, but I am perfectly prepared to make a living some other way if it be necessary in order to reach people. (Not that I think it is necessary. As a consumer of art I cherish the opportunity to support people like Pomplamoose and therefore feel comfortable with the idea of accepting money from others. Making money from art is a pragmatic issue that many have obviously solved. The problem is finding better ways in an irrevocably shifting industry.)

In short, I'm going to continue querying agents and editors, and until I'm published I will continue writing novel after novel, improving as much as I can, telling the best stories in the best way, while securing other means of sustenance. And if the self-published e-book/print-on-demand revolution ever comes (and I hope it will (with agents and editors continuing in new roles)) I will happily accept the new paradigm of artist independence.

Until then, you gatekeepers, great secretaries to the gods, accept my scoop of slush.

The Beautiful Are Found At The Edge Of A Room: An Essay On Bukowski

2011-04-02T12:06:00.002-04:00

some people never go crazy.
what truly horrible lives
they must lead

Thus speaks Charles Bukowski: drunk, bum, lonely philanderer, and captivating poet. It is from his poem some people, found in the collection Burning In Water Drowning In Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973. Bukowski, like Orwell, derives much of his quality from the fact that he isn't a genius,* merely an honest man who lived a life sternly in line with his own peculiar principles.

His was a life devoid of glamor. Though he was born in Germany, he was raised in Los Angeles, where his accent and his horrible acne (an affliction that would leave him pocked and scarred the rest of his life) made him a social outcast. His father's chief hobbies were drinking alcohol and beating him with a razor strop.

As a young man at the height of the Great Depression, he spent his time drinking with thieves in abandoned hotel rooms. By the onset of World War Two, he was traveling the country, working odd jobs, drifting from city to city, submitting short stories to magazines and amassing rejections. He claimed to have lived during this time on one candy bar per day. When picked up for draft evasion, he said he didn't believe in the war, but would like to fight in it. He was deemed psychologically unfit for active service.

In 1955, he was hospitalized for a bleeding stomach ulcer that almost killed him. When he emerged, he found that he could no longer write short stories: everything came out poetry. Thus began a prodigious output of work lasting until his death in 1994, of which Burning in Water Drowning In Flame represents an early slice.

The subjects of Bukowski's poetry are, in order of frequency: alcohol, women, classical music, and loneliness. Often the first four are at the forefront while loneliness lurks beneath. Reading him, one gets the impression that he could have been a genius if he had only grown with a diet other than boiled eggs and scotch.

Alcohol, he seems to think, allows him to rise above the everyday cynical horror and fly along with lyrical ease, witnessing and describing, asserting his own right to live without work or ideology. Lying in a sweat-stained mattress and staring out the window with a bottle of cheap wine is to him the ultimate nirvana. Vomiting blood thrice daily is a small price to pay for this one consistent restorative. His work is full of “empty bottles like bled corpses,” but he manages to pull it off without affectation. When one remembers that he was once billed for vomiting into a grand piano during a poetry reading, it becomes very believable. Overall, the impression is that alcohol, while crippling his everyday life, allows him the numbness necessary to maintain his sanity in a world he perceives as separate and hostile.

The subject of women is much more complicated. He seems to have wanted to be a womanizer, but fell in love with the women he tried to use as objects. The sensitive man falling for the golden hearted prostitute is an ancient trope in literature and one I don't wish to propagate here, but Bukowski presents almost the opposite: a sensitive man hiding behind a veneer of callousness, attempting to have sex with whatever woman is available, only to fall in love with her, and she with him. Bukowski was terrifically ugly (“a dancing bear that didn't” he tells a woman who asks what happened to his face) but he was a poet, and while he was no Keats, he had the poet's faculty for expressing himself that many women find irresistible. It also helped that he wasn't picky: his poems are littered with references to how aged his lovers are, and he consistently refers to one of his greatest loves as “old snaggletooth.” Still, while his love reads as more than genuine, he had a habit of juggling multiple women at once, which usually degraded to he and at least two others screaming, throwing bottles, and walking away heartbroken. He had the good fortune to die in a healthy relationship with one woman who loved him, but his intense affairs tore a lot of optimism from him and left him with a soured view of human relations.

The strange combination in Bukowski's poetry of lowlife vulgarism and high minded culture is startling but genuine. He has an impressive knowledge of classical music, literature, philosophy, and art. In one poem he will invoke the inspiration of Socrates and the unendurable beauty of a good beer shit. He is as fond of Beethoven and Bartók as he is of Old Grand Dad whiskey. If only in his capacity to spit in the face of elitist culture, Bukowski deserves immortality.

Beneath it all, of course, is loneliness. Bukowski is always the ugly outsider too smart to be happy, too generous to be angry, and too drunk to be employed. He loves with a simultaneous disregard for the future and fatalistic foreboding, an intensity of emotion paired with an incapacity for fidelity. Even his right to drink himself into oblivion had to be won by fighting the men who didn't like his looks or the way he talked. He has neither Yeats's piercing observation nor Whitman's lust for life, but he has something of both, and in this synergy is a drunk man lying in the sunlight, loving his right to do so, watching the walls while he waits for poetry, ready to catch it when it comes.

*This observation concerning Orwell is not original to me. It was, I think, Lionel Trilling who first said it.
All photos in this post taken from bukowski.net

A New Approach To Book Reading

2011-03-27T22:13:00.002-04:00

The digital age is revitalizing how we read books—and you don't have to touch an e-reader to benefit. I don't have an e-reader, yet I've used the internet to improve my reading tenfold. Before I show you how, however, some history:

Since the invention of writing, the most important factor limiting the usefulness of books was not the medium they were written on—be it paper, papyrus scrolls, or an iPad screen—but something simpler: access. In the third century BCE, the Library of Alexandria was desperate to get a collection of plays only available at the Library of Athens, but couldn't get Athens to let them borrow them. They ended up offering a 15 talent deposit (about 3 million dollars) on condition of their return—then kept the scrolls and gave up the deposit. During the middle ages, monasteries kept books chained to their shelves and let only the elite access them. Today, with books printed in the thousands and libraries open to all, access is fettered in another way: overload.

We have access to almost every book ever written, but unfortunately many books are terrible. You may spend the rest of your life reading, but you could end up only having read thousands of young adult vampire novels. (Not that they're all bad.) While this scenario is unlikely, you see the point. Without good information, it's hard to find good books. So if you want to read great books, you need great information, and information is the currency of the internet.

Before the internet, if you wanted to learn about a particular subject—say, political science—you could open an encyclopedia, go to the library, or ask a knowledgeable person. In each case the knowledge available was very limited. A library only had so many books, and the likelihood of knowing a professor to recommend a coherent sequence of them was low. Today, however, we have the internet, and not only can you order virtually any book in existence, but you can find the information to help you order the right books. Revered institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, and countless others have reading lists for their students that are accessible online for free. Once you get these lists, you can go to online used book stores and order those books for as low as seventy-five cents each. In this way, people without the resources or connections for world-class institutions can still get world-class educations.

Much is made of the fickle attention span of the post-internet generation, but if we can pull ourselves away from Youtube videos of dancing cats we have the potential to use new media to make better use of the old, and through this to herald a new age of inexpensive, universal education, one in which even the poorest and least traveled can confidently know he or she is as informed and aware as the richest elite: an age in which there is no need to steal scrolls and no book remains chained.

On Hypocrisy, Complicity, and Oppression

2011-02-06T22:30:00.001-05:00

There is something about Israeli support for Mubarak on the grounds of his being a friend of Israel that is not quite ironic but definitely inconsistent. Not only is dictatorship ultimately unstable (as we have been reminded by the current revolution) but one must wonder: how friendly can a dictator be who resorts to spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories the moment he is faced with serious opposition?

Since it became clear that tear gas, rubber bullets, and all the other varieties of uniformed thuggery would not be sufficient to quell the peaceful uprising, Mubarak and his VP/torture chief Omar Suleiman have resorted to a mixture of paid plain clothes thugs and xenophobic propaganda. Their state controlled news-people (at least those who have not resigned in protest of such gross abuse) and the government officials to which they give voice speak of American, Israeli, and Iranian agents infiltrating Egypt under the guise of foreign journalists in order to corrupt the otherwise patriotic youth. This serves several purposes at once:

Eliminating independent coverage of detestable acts (murder, torture, kidnapping, assault, theft, harassment, to name a few).

Forging “chaos” as an excuse for further oppression.

Delegitimizing the movement through incitement to violence.

Attrition of the protester numbers/morale through death, injury, exhaustion, and terror.

This is all standard, dull, heavy handed authoritarianism. The somewhat clever aspect is the convergence of all these aims into the exercise of one tool: the image of the Israeli/American/Iranian infiltrator, conveniently identified with the one group of people best equipped to destroy that image: journalists, especially those working for Al Jazeera. Throughout the revolution so far, Al Jazeera has given by far the best professional coverage, which entails their giving the best coverage of Mubarak's many crimes. (It is perhaps true that the protesters themselves have provided the best coverage, but since Mubarak cannot so blatantly blame the Egyptian people themselves, this fact is useless to him. Thus, he focuses on Al Jazeera.) The reporters of Al Jazeera provided a focal point visible to the most Egyptians, and thus served as the best scapegoat. From then he was able to generalize to all reporters, and from there to anyone with a video camera. All it took was bribery of the veteran desperate in combination with the well crafted lie. The beauty of the lie is that it has some truth to it: Americans, Israelis, and Iranians do all have an intense interest in the protests and their outcome, and Egyptians have serious reason to distrust, even revile, the governments of the United States and Israel. This, of course, does not mean that American and Israeli agents instigated the revolt, but it is the skeleton of truth around which the lie is built. However, not only does the lie serve as a tool for Mubarak's frantic cling to power, but it unintentionally disproves the claims of American and Israeli Mubarak apologists: they claim he is a friend of America and Israel, yet he vilifies them without hesitation to save his own position. (Not that America and Israel are without villainy: I claim just the opposite, but the fact does nothing to correct the incongruity of the pro-Mubarak claims.)

To recap: Some Israelis and Americans attempt to vindicate Mubarak (and thus themselves and their long-standing support for him) by claiming he is a source of stability, peace, and friendship for Israel and America. Yet he is the cause of the current unrest and stirs hatred against Israel and America. Consistent, no?

I move now from highlighting the inconsistency of the despot apologists and address their underlying claim straight on. That claim is:

Though Mubarak is not representative of the people he governs, he brings stability to the Middle East and secures the safety of Israel and the West against Islamic extremism. Therefore, his rule is justified, and he should be supported even against the wishes of the Egyptian people.

This position presupposes many things, but principle among them are the following:

Mubarak brings regional stability.
His rule can be justified on the basis of that stability.
Mubarak's rule is necessary to prevent a hostile Islamic government.
Foreign governments have the right to make fundamental decisions about the form of an independent nation's governing.

The first of these claims is demonstrably untrue. The existence of the uprising alone serves to illustrate the vacuity of this despicable trade. Mubarak's willingness to accept billions of dollars in return for his complicity in the interests of America and Israel does not equal stability. It lends temporary stability to said interests at the cost of the stability of Egypt internally: westerners don't have to worry about scary Muslims, but Egyptians have to worry about secret police that censor, kidnap, torture, and murder them. This disgusting deal presupposes in turn that American and Israeli lives are worth more than those of Egyptians: it is presumed just to torture and oppress innocent Egyptians in order to safeguard Israelis and Americans against a possible future threat. Aside from the obvious and despicable selfishness, racism, nationalism, and authoritarianism at the root of this exchange, the deal is rotten in its ultimate failure: oppression does not mean stability, and sooner or later the people will rise up. This is one of the most beautiful aspects of humanity, yet it has been turned into a problem to be squashed.

Even should stability prove to be reliable under Mubarak's rule, what then? What kind of people can agree to such a trade? Can the democratic, the humane, the lovers of the Rights of Man, the inheritors of the fruits of representative government, can they make such a deal? Shall the progeny of the martyrs of universal liberty conspire to take the same from whom they please? What soulessness is this? What lack of history, of morality, of genuine concern or human sympathy? What creatures must we be? No, we cannot. We cannot sponsor the oppression of the innocent, no matter the gain, and we must remove from power those who would do it in our name. Kidnap, fraud, torture, murder: these are not the tools of legitimate government, and no government that wields them can legitimize itself, no matter how rich the nations it assists, no matter how safe it makes the comfortable feel.

The third assertion is beyond the limits of this already lengthy post (and, to be honest, beyond my expertise), but I have as yet seen no sign of this boogeyman Islamic fundamentalism. Every protester I have read or listened to has emphasized this point, Muslim or otherwise. It is a fable concocted by the fearful to sow hate.

The fourth presupposition is perhaps the most important, and I respond to it with this: Who are we to decide whether Mubarak is justified in his rule? What right have we to fund his cruel control? How many Israelis would agree to allow other nations to decide who shall govern them, to what ends, and in what way? This question need not be regarded hypothetical: we already know the answer. I have only to say the word, “Palestine.” And America, that boiling pot of fattened rebels: who shall we allow to dictate our actions? We regard our right to self determination so jealously we spend more on military force and “intelligence” than any other nation on earth. We are one of the largest obstacles to the seriousness of international law. Everyone else must do as they're told but we, well, we're different: We're America! Shouldn't that explain it? We're America! Anyone who isn't convinced by those two words can take a missile in the chimney or a dictator of our choosing. Because we're America, and that's just how it is.

No, it is plain that we can't uphold our own right to self determination without recognizing that of others. There has been a saying going around a lot lately: “We are all Egyptians.” It is to show support for and identification with the Egyptian cause, the universal drive for positive as well as negative liberty, the hunger for human rights and dignity. Well, those who are against these values, those who view them valid only for themselves at the cost of others, they have no choice but to gather under the opposite flag: “We are all Mubarak.”

Indeed, if we continue to elect the apologists of despots and the exploiters of the oppressed, we must all take up that banner: “We are all Mubarak.”

“We are all dictators.”

“We are all murderers.”

“We are all thugs.”

And thus we will rule in comfort and security until the oppressed rise up and overthrow us, until we fall clamoring for the mirage we thought we were.

An American Stance On The Revolt Against Hosni Mubarak

2011-02-01T23:21:00.001-05:00

Since the world is already awash with commentary on the continuing struggles of the people of Egypt, and as I am acutely aware of my ignorance in matters of global politics (as in everything else), it would be wise for me to stay silent concerning this issue, but I cannot.

The pragmatists among us would have us believe that the revolution (if they will concede that it is a revolution) is understandable insofar as it is a people standing up against an oppressor, but that overall it is dangerous, precipitous, calamitous if successful. They make inaccurate comparisons to the Iranian revolution, grossly overstate the Islamic element, and say that it will the end the worse for the United States, Israel, and ultimately the world. Even assuming the validity of the invalid and granting their factual errors, I respond with one question:

Is it, or is it not, a good thing for a people to rise up in a popular grass roots movement and overthrow a dictator, through peace, so that they may govern themselves?

You may say that I'm begging the question, but this is truly the issue at hand. Note that this revolt does not even include the usual thorny issues of revolution: the need of justification for bloodshed, danger of corruption by charismatic leaders, or organizing political parties with motivations extraneous to the stated aim. This is, as cleanly as any political issue can be, a matter of pure principle.

As Americans, of all people, with our bald-eagle-big-flag-founding-fathers-land-of-the-free-democracy-liberty obsession and self regard, we must recognize that it is as an end in itself desirable that a people rise up and assume the right of their own determination. Anything else is hypocrisy.

Worse. If we step out of the realm of principle and explore our own past and circumstances—the billions of dollars we have sent to a dictator for three decades, indeed succored longer than I've existed—we must recognize our obligation not only to condone the acts of these brave people but to demand that their rights be recognized, that they as the substance of the only true Egyptian government have the right to form as they please, that the gangsters we have armed and funded step down and abdicate both power and dignity, that the dictator of our support lose that unjustifiable claim and be shown that from this instant he is alone in his waning and assumed authority.

Further, we must make it clear that not only do the Egyptians have a right to form a representative government free from the influence of Mubarak and his thugs, but they have the right to form one free from the influence of us and our thugs. I think it highly improbable—and groundless to assume, though I don't have the expertise to state this definitively—that the people of Egypt want an Islamic government, but that does not matter. If they want an Islamic government, they shall form one, and we haven't a word to say about it. That is the meaning of self determination. That is the meaning of democracy, and of sovereignty.

If we wish others to respect our rights to culture and self determination, we must respect their rights to the same.

Besides, without going into the inaccuracies of the hysterical anti-Islam crowd, I will only say that we get along perfectly well with many largely religious or officially religious nations (Israel, UK) and that it is often precisely the people who like to harp (inaccurately) about the United States having a Christian government that are most terrified at the prospect of Islamic governments.

However, to stop here still would be immoral. Not only do we have the obligation to recognize, respect, and lend restitution to the people we have helped to oppress, but we must fundamentally alter the way we interact with the world. How many other Mubaraks are we sponsoring right now, publicly and privately? I can honestly tell you that I don't even know. How many wars are we in right now, at this moment? How many do we admit that we are in?

How much terror and oppression must we export in order to maintain our economic and political position, and how can we justify it? How much domestic progress can vindicate a President that continues and expands covert international aggression and openly opposes international law? These are, of course, issues that exceed and encircle the President, but he represents the false face of change.

Perhaps I have fallen into idealism, but it is only the outsourcing of suffering beyond our borders that lends us the luxury of cynicism. We send remote robots to drop bombs on villagers and sneer from our couches at the starving who brave bullets and tear gas for the principles we have forgotten we were supposed to uphold. We are sniveling, opulent hypocrites when we should and can be the friends of all who love freedom, who are legion, who rise up where we've forgotten and shine forth as brilliant examples of what we once were. Where are our modern Jeffersons, our Paines, our Franklins? This question is often asked in America, and now we know the answer: they are everywhere we ignorantly ignore or cynically exploit, and in the moment I write this, about a million are waking in Tahrir Square.

A Brief Note of Lamentation

2010-12-28T21:34:00.000-05:00

Just came across this in John Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government:

"Almost all travellers are stuck by the fact that every American is in some sense both a patriot, and a person of cultivated intelligence . . . No such wide diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of educated minds, has ever been seen elsewhere, or even conceived as attainable."

Remember, that was written by a Brit. That was in 1861. How much has changed since then...

Badass Turtles and the Khan Academy

2010-09-01T17:41:00.000-04:00

That, my friends, is a badass turtle man, and his presence means only one thing: I am in class again. (Therefore, I'm doodling in notebooks again.)

So far, it has gone quite well. All of my professors are enthusiastic and interesting. I am intrigued by every subject. I have discovered the beauty of mathematics (independently of school) and rediscovered the beauty of the library (as a direct consequence of school).

Aside from the real (sort of) school that I'm going to, I'm also attending a free virtual school: The Khan Academy.

If you are unfamiliar with ~~Shao~~ Sal Khan, he is basically the mathematical equivalent of a Yoda/Mr. Miyagi hybrid composed of the liquid metal that made the T-1000. He has come from the future to make math comprehensible. At his website, you will find lessons for everything from simple arithmetic to physics, calculus, and economics. One could go from absolute ignorance to engineering rockets entirely through viewing one man's ten minute youtube videos. It is astounding.

I personally started at pre-algebra and have worked my way through Calculus I. When I registered for classes and realized I was going to have to do math again--after four years of avoiding it at all costs--I was nervous. But then a friend linked me to Khan Academy, and now I'm light-years beyond my current class. I still have to deal with my constant small computation mistakes, of course, but what was scary is now so easy it's boring.

On his website you will also find videos on chemistry, history, biology, and current events. He is an amazing teacher and a wonderful person. Given three more Salman Khans, we would probably have world peace in about three days. (And probably free fusion energy.)

Virginia Woolf

2010-08-01T16:22:00.000-04:00

And now: a poor drawing of Virginia Woolf! She's all old and sad-like.

(Obsessing over college plans. That is all for now.)

Too cool for--ah, shit.

2010-07-27T20:05:00.000-04:00

The above is a haiku (or what I thought was a haiku) I wrote during class in the one semester of college that I attended. More accurately, half a semester.

When I stopped going, I just stopped going. I didn't withdraw from my classes; I didn't tell anyone. For weeks. Eventually, it occurred to me that this might not be the best course of action, so I emailed them to let them know I was quitting. The kind lady there responded with, ~"Dear God! Why didn't you withdraw? Ws are ALWAYS better than Fs, as they don't affect your GPA!"

Oops.

Yes, I was a moron.

But really, it wasn't that I hadn't thought of that. It's that it didn't seem to matter at the time. I had cascaded headlong into an existential crisis in which I could not see the purpose of school or, indeed, any career. I saw the people around me being herded into these boxes to be conditioned for production, going either for the promise of money or simply because it was the next thing they were expected to do. Many went to fulfill a perceived purpose, of course, but it seemed at the time that every one of these purposes was either shallow or short sighted. The only impulse I could feel with any strength or clarity was that to write, and in my naiveté I could not reconcile this with the pedantic expectations of the teachers in my past or present. I felt a vast panorama within me, an illimitable expanse ready to spread through every person and perceive every pain or desire, to take this experience and distill it into the written word so it could stand in every dimension and be called upon as its own explanation. To me, this was impossible if I were to confine myself to the acquired limitations of education. I had only to escape: to run, run, run as far and as fast as possible, to find some dark refuge from the prejudice of form and purpose, to convene the genius I could find and study it for myself, to confer with the dead brilliance of the human species and face what I would find alone.

So I did run. I took a job that required neither mental nor physical commitment, and I made enough to live and buy books. And I read. For three years.

In those three years I have learned more than I would or could have had I continued in school. However, I have also learned this: that I could greatly use school. Not as I was before. Before, I was too blinded by agitation with the frictional operation of the institution to appreciate the value of the fruits beyond. It was only annoyance and a vague sense of disgust. But now I am able to return with a widened perspective and understand the vitality of the current system, imperfect as it is. Pragmatically, it's all we have, and all we're likely to have any time soon. (Time and the internet may prove me wrong in that last supposition.) In eventuality, it is possible that I could learn everything college has to offer without its assistance. But that would require time and resources I don't have. Thus, I must admit that outside help would be to my advantage.

So, in short, this is all to say I'm going back to college. It's not all about learning more quickly, of course: I have come to understand that most published authors cannot support themselves with their fiction alone, and I am bored to the length of self abuse in my mindless retail job.

I am considering either Anthropology, Psychology, or Comparative Literature as areas of study, leaning toward the first and last. Probably more toward the last. I am very tempted to go into a more technical field such as Anthropology, as I am confident in my ability to advance on my own in the field of literature, but as already stated I could definitely use a powerful boost in the latter as well, which would be wonderful if only because I enjoy literature so passionately. I also would benefit from a structured approach to learning a foreign language. (I have done fairly well in the brief spells of teaching myself French, but I don't have the discipline to consistently study without any framework.)

Anyway, I may have to go into debt, which I despise utterly, but it should be worth it in the long run...probably.

What are your thoughts on university, or any of the majors listed?

Faulkner, Art in America, and a drawing of Camus.

2010-07-21T17:53:00.001-04:00

First, a quick drawing of Camus. As you can see, he is a badass. If you have not read any of Albert Camus (Al-bear Ka-moo: he's a frenchy), buy anything with his name on it. You will not be sorry.

Now, to the unrelated--but also awesome--Faulkner.

Thanks to the University of Virginia, we now have access to hours of Faulkner reading his own work and (even better) answering any questions asked of him. These are from his time as Writer-in-Residence, and they are delightful.

A few choice excerpts:

"I'm not really interested enough in ideas to take even my own too seriously."

"It's much more fun to write about women because I think women are marvelous. They're wonderful, and I know very little about them."

He talks about everything from his bootlegging days when he started writing novels to how he ended up paying $270 to publish a book he was ashamed to have even written. He's obviously very funny, but there is also a lot of great insight. Here is one interesting thought:

Well I would say that in our culture there's really no place for the artist. In Europe, the old cultures, there's a definite place, the artist quite often—because he is a good artist, he suddenly find himself a power in politics. Which never happens in this country because he is a good artist, a good writer, or a good painter, or a good philosopher. He—he becomes a power in politics in our culture, so far, because he's been successful. It doesn't matter what he's successful in. That's because we still haven't quite exhausted the natural resources where we have got to use the best in people. When we reach the point where we have exhausted natural resources and all we have left will be people, then the artist, I think, will find a—a place for himself in the—the fabric of the culture. So far he hasn't. ... I would say that—that we will—we will reach a point where we will say that America was the greatest country in the world, but we couldn't keep on affording it, that we will have to change and then the natural resource which we will have to fall back on, which may be our salvation, will be the—the will of the few that have insisted on being individuals against all the pressure. They will come to the top then. That—that will to be individual was there. It—it won't need to develop. It'll—suddenly it will come to the top where we will need that. As a—as a nation we will need that.

I'm not sure I could really add anything to that, but it is an intriguing idea, and I don't think I've heard any like it before. The emphasis in America on economic success is obvious, of course, and rooted in our abundant natural resources, but I hadn't really thought about how that affects our culture's views toward artists. In another discussion, he talks about how all the rural Mississippians couldn't forgive him for getting paid thirty thousands dollars to write. They couldn't understand it. To them, even though Faulkner was a farmer, in this instance he wasn't getting paid to work: he was getting money for sitting on his ass. So it seemed unfair, incomprehensible, and they didn't like it.

I'm sure this is something that has shifted since the years Faulkner discussed it (this was '57) simply because now there are so many people getting paid to sit on their asses in front of computers all day, but I think the mentality is still there. There is still this assumed dichotomy between useless art and productive work. Even within the realm of art, worth is often seen through the light of economic success. ("Love her or hate her, you have to admit that Stephanie Meyer has made a lot of money.") Obviously this isn't true within the more literary or scholarly circles, but in the general population it is.

As deeply rooted as this is in American history/culture, I have to wonder how long it will be with us. Over the years, as the rest of the world catches up to us economically, and China or India or whoever it will be leaves us whimpering in our wounded pride, will our general sense of economic inferiority lead us to find consolation within the arts? And if so, will it on the whole provide a greater benefit to our society?

Or are we artists just lazy and bitter, and America will just be poor as well as indifferent?

(Or am I reading far too much into Faulkner's comments?)

In which I make a spirited attempt to be optimistic.

2010-07-20T01:28:00.000-04:00

There's a lot of talk going around about the end of publishing/novels/everything else in the world we hold dear. That is to say it is exactly as it always has been.

Still, like everyone else, I can't help but fall back to my own pessimism. Especially with the unprecedented advent of the internet (something so astonishing it is proof that humans are capable of taking anything for granted, as evidenced by my spellchecker having to remind me to capitalize the "I" in "Internet". For me, as for almost everyone else my age, it is nothing special: it is a mere detail of established existence.) and the ever multiplying selection of E-readers, not to mention the cell phones every person I know now carries.

As an unpublished novelist, I can't help but bemoan the loss of a time when novels were supreme and (so it seems in contrast to the present) the market was so enormous it could contain any author who could care to produce. I will not hesitate to highlight my own professional ignorance on the matter, but from what I've read of the past it seems like the mere act of writing a readable book all but guaranteed its publication. This is undoubtedly an exaggeration born out of despair, but it haunts me nonetheless. It is made no better by articles such as this piece by Lee Siegel proclaiming the death of the novel, which I was linked to from this moderately less depressing article that essentially says, "Who the hell knows?" (Which, to continue my chain of infinite regress, I was linked to from this lovely collection of distraction, humour, and horror.)

But then there is Pomplamoose:

[Source]

Okay, so they aren't novelists. But they're definitely artists. What's more, they're artists in an extremely commercialized medium that has been shaken by the internet/gadgets/changes in the methods of consumption. We all remember the years of whiny millionaires saying that internet piracy would destroy their incomes. Well, Pomplamoose are a tiny group (two whole people) who were able to take that great fear (fans using the internet to listen to music for free) and turn it into a marketing strategy. More than that. To call it a marketing strategy is to demean it. It is a whole new approach to producing, distributing, and living off one's art. They want you to listen to their music for free. They have a youtube channel dedicated to it. They want you to send it to your friends for them to listen for free. After all: why not? You're only spreading the word for them. Then, when someone decides she likes their music enough to pay for it, she can go to their website and pay a very low price to get it. (Pay for something free!? In the name of Ayn Rand, what ever do you mean?) It is true that the mp3 is of higher quality, and you can occasionally get extra goodies with them, but I think most people purchase it because they want to support the artists that they love.

And they are supported. Without anything going to record labels or men in suits who happen to have the keys to the cash barn and the connections for the salve for the teats of the money cows. (Boy, that metaphor got out of hand.) They were just two cool people who came up with an art form and put it out for anyone to view. Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn do not make up an anomaly in the descent into a cultural dark age, they are a harbinger of the new enlightenment, one of many, and in the years to come we will see more opportunities for artists everywhere to carve new niches and forge new tools, to broadcast themselves not through the homogeneity of television or radio but in the format of their choosing, in ways we cannot yet even comprehend.

What does this mean for novels? For that, I'm back to before: I don't know. But it makes things look a lot brighter, doesn't it?

I will close with a quotation from an article on the same subject by Leonard Pierce: "...people living through a golden age often don’t know. And it’s important that they do, because this golden age, as with all the ones that lie behind us, depends on patronage. If enough people lament the death of culture, culture will die, no matter how sophisticated our means of disseminating it. And what will crush the horn of plenty won’t be the things it isn’t producing, but indifference to what it is."

Using Cats to Herd Books

2010-07-18T17:30:00.011-04:00

Most of today was spent shelving books. I use LibraryThing to catalog all the books I own, which is nice because you can scan in the ISBN using a barcode scanner on the book's UPC. I use the CueCat:

It's a lovely little feline critter that shoots lasers out of its mouth (not to be confused with Laser Cats). You just line up its paws at the bottom of the barcode and slide either direction and it fills in the ISBN. Not all books have a UPC that is the ISBN, but it works for most. The others I just manually type in.

Why is the scanner shaped like a cat? It's a long story, but apparently it's from a now defunct company that produced thousands of the things (the cat was kind of their mascot) and then promptly imploded financially. They sold them all for twenty cents a piece, or some damn thing, and now they are all over the place. They're cheap, easy, and work well. I know I love mine. If you'd like one, you can purchase it here. It just plugs in through USB and is recognised as a keyboard. It takes a while to get used to using it, but it's nice once you figure it out.

Library Thing is a great website that lets you list and track all the books you own. You can even mark if you've lent them out to someone, and to whom. It also gives lots of cool statistics, such as male/female author ratio, number of characters/places, awards, etc. I don't have a ton of experience with it, but so far it seems pretty great.

Some statistics from my (as yet incomplete) collection:
(I was going to put some here but the site is currently down, haha. This is the first time I've seen it happen. If it does too much, I might have to renounce my reccomendation. Really, I would prefer local software over a website.)UPDATE:

153 books
Percent male authors: 85.9% : Percent female authors: 14.1%
Percent authors alive: 37.5%
19 Series
142 Awards
921 Characters
200 Places
Original language
104 English
4 German
2 French
2 Greek (Ancient)
2 Russian
1 Latin
1 Multiple languages
1 Swedish

Now that I have room for one, I think I'm going to get another bookshelf. I already own too many to fit on the one, and that's not even counting my to-read pile.

(I know, not that impressive. Seven more coming in the mail.)

I think I shall wait until after I have read each new book before I scan it in.

How do you keep track of your books? Do you have a system?

This post looks much better than before.

2010-07-16T19:12:00.004-04:00

I am working on four hours of sleep, moved crap all day, and am mildly ill. Yet still I managed to revolutionise my website/blog! How did I do it? Easy: I don't know.

If you look at the top of this page, you will now see a line of links to static pages. There you will find all sorts of invaluable goodies, I assure you. It's almost like a real website!

I'm thinking of putting some sort of writing sample online...perhaps a short story. I have seen other authors do it, but I'm not sure how many agents pay attention to that kind of thing. Some even post chapters from their novels, but I wouldn't do that. It isn't worth the risk of rights complications.

With this new layout, I intend to post regularly and hopefully produce something worth following. I shall take the topics as they come to me, and will continue to tweak the layout. Do any of you, dear readers, have suggestions for the site?

A note on direction

2010-07-09T07:23:00.002-04:00

Okay, so it's been like three months since my last post. Sorry.

I've been busy writing, revising, querying, drinking tea, reading, and hanging out with A Cool Person. Oh, and learning a few new songs on the uke. (And working. Blech.)

The publication process still incites periodic attacks of existential despair and revulsion, but for the most part I understand that every single person involved, from the writers to the overlords, is a good and humane human being doing his/her best within an industry at the behest of a fickle population.

I also understand that there is a remote possibility that I actually am not quite ready yet. I don't think this is true, but it is definitely possible. I look at what I was reading as recently as two years ago and I have to shudder. It is amazing that I've come as far as I have. Still, if I'm writing good books, I'm writing good books. I guess time will answer.

Either way, it's not like I could ever stop. Understand? I move on to the next novel before I've sent out the first query on the last. Until I die. The writing improves, or it persists. I am published, or I thrash. These are the options. When I was a child, I quickly learned not to care about most things. Games have no consequence except for the emotion attached to winning, so disregard winning and you are wagering nothing. Later, I learned to detach myself from the instinct of self vindication: admit not only that I am wrong, but that I am often wrong, and wrongness ceases to be a negative. Speak, learn, revise. It is an evolution of the concept of life without wager, without attempt or defeat.

This is the defeat I will accept, the challenge I will take up: to become a novelist, to write honest works of what worth I can accomplish, to get them published, to acquire a readership, to live. If I don't, I fail. My entire life will need be counted as failure. I do not even escape into the consolation of a life spent in honest toil for a desired end being vindicated in the toil itself. The toil is nothing. It is all I have to do. I would do it regardless of the remotest possibility of success. But the success is still the aim, and I will accept nothing else so long as I exist.

(Note that success is not getting published. Nor is it writing good books. It is a combination of the two.)

Recognise in me that which I am, the thrashing failure or the climbing creature, living in a dream or satisfying need, an ape with a sword at a cave-mouth smelling smoke.

Writing is well; music...not so much.

2010-04-16T17:19:00.006-04:00

It is nice out, I am inside, and vacation is almost over. The first draft of my latest novel is done (woop!) and I've almost finished typing the corrections on the previous novel.

I've been playing ukulele/guitar again, and am again alternately thrilled and depressed. Music is awesome, of course, but it's fucking hard. Having almost no innate ability or experience doesn't help, of course. But I must remind myself that I don't want to be like one of those people who, after a lifetime of not writing, expect to be able to sit down and write a good book. It doesn't work that way. You have to put in the time and practice, and you have to really believe in what you're doing.

So, I guess I need more time and practice. And that requires patience. I'll probably feel better once work isn't looming over me and has become an everyday fact again. (Or, even better, if I can ever get published and write full time.)

I have very little interest in writing a best seller or getting rich. I just want to write good books that people will enjoy reading, and be able to subsist on it. I'm not even talking middle class. I would gladly embrace poverty, just so long as it allows me to hone my craft and enjoy the other arts in life.

But why even talk about it, eh? I should be reading, writing, and querying. Yes, yes I should. I think I'll do that now.

James Joyce

2010-04-02T17:07:00.004-04:00

James Joyce! The genius himself. Oh, how I love him.

I need a tilted drawing surface to eliminate vertical distortion. Oh, and some talent would be nice.

1400 words today. Wooop.

Orwell with a sword

2010-03-31T18:40:00.004-04:00

George Orwell holding a samurai sword. This is based on a picture of him I came across on the internet. I have no clue what the story behind it is...I can only assume he's preparing to slay some fascists.

(Or just looking at a sword.)

Currently reading a collection of his essays. Needless to say, it's fantastic.

I should be doing less writer drawing and more writing. Oh well.

Faulkner Round Two

2010-03-27T23:48:00.003-04:00

Older Faulkner:

This one was cranked out much more quickly than the previous, which shows, I think, in its general terribleness. I made some pretty rookie mistakes here; I really should take this more seriously if I'm going to bother with it.

Oh well. It's fun.

(Broke 60,000 on the novel today. That was my minimum length estimation, so that's good. Great writing day today.)

Faulkner Drawing and Novel Update

2010-03-24T18:46:00.003-04:00

Was in a bit of a drawing mood today:

It's based on a photo of Faulkner during his time in Paris. It's not the greatest, and it looks better in real life, of course, but I'm happy with it. Especially since it started as just a doodle of his pipe.

In other news, my new novel is almost finished. I should have a completed first draft within a week.

And it's spring! Yippee!

Martha Graham and the Amazingness Thereof

2010-02-28T00:24:00.006-05:00

Source: http://www.arch.columbia.edu/tags/meister

Tonight I saw a performance by the Martha Graham Dance Company, and by the gods am I amazed. I had never before seen dance like this. I had, I think, a latent prejudice against it, left over from my childhood suspicion of everything that could vaguely be taken as pretentious.

Yet what I saw tonight affected me as few things ever have. It had a feeling reminiscent of reliving my oldest memories--a kind of resonant glow bleeding forth from underneath, three layers down. The feats on stage were physically inspiring, of course (men and women with bodies of Greek gods displaying more athleticism than any Olympian), but it is in the form and movement paired with music that it becomes art.

In film, I have long been impressed when a Director successfully matches a visual with music to perfection, yielding an aesthetic synthesis that sears itself into one's consciousness, reverberating through perception until it overrides everything, leaving only the memory of the one glorious moment. But the dances I saw tonight outdid even the best of the great film moments.

More, it outdid sculpture. I was reminded of Walt Whitman, not through any stylistic connection, but simply through the awe it inspired for the human body. The beauty of human beings, living and breathing and creating and feeling, overpowered me in the purity of its display. Michelangelo's David seems nothing in comparison to Graham's Lamentation.

Speaking of Lamentation, when one watches this act, there is not the feeling of watching a dance--there is only terror, anguish, awe, and morbid fascination with something so strange and incomprehensibly beautiful. From the moment the curtain rises, the world outside the stage ceases to exist, and the audience may as well be in a tent in a forest in the center of nowhere and the ambiguity of nowhen: it could be twelfth century England, modern America, or an illegal freak show on some distant planet. Context is nothing and emotion everything, the pretext of entertainment entirely forgotten. This is a level of striking original bizarre beauty that would excite the envy of David Lynch.

In short, I have discovered a new art, and am in the throes of amazement. I can not but profit by it.

String of updates

2010-02-27T00:35:00.004-05:00

Well, it has been too long since my last entry.

I have been working industriously (well...not quite so industriously) on my next novel. I'm about 2/3rds done with it, and am a little terrified about this last third, but I think it will turn out pretty well.

I have engaged in a romantic entanglement, if my previous posts have not given this away, and am enjoying it immensely. I'll not say much on this subject, at least not in this form, but I will say, in short, that we are attempting this through facing reality in all instances, and never running away from it.

Loneliness is at an all time low, yet I have not lost my artistic drive. This is essential. I will not trade productivity for happiness: that would be suicide. But, of course, the other extreme is suicide as well. So I'm trying a different balance, and it seems fruitful.

In the reading realm, I'm currently balancing philosophy with Faulkner and enjoying both, though I despise the idiocy of Universals.

Wine has surpassed hard cider as my beverage of choice, with tea still accompanying.

That is all for now.

Drawings: Walt Whitman, Dog

2010-01-14T10:10:00.004-05:00

This one is obviously messed up. The right eye is a little large and needs shifted left almost an entire eye width. In addition, I had made the eyes too dark, and so then had to go back and try to darken the rest a bit to ease the contrast. Oh well. It was just something to entertain me while at lunch at work. Now that I can somewhat draw proportionally just by eye, without obsessively checking everything, I tend to neglect checking proportions at all, and thus fuck up the eyes, as in this example.

This one was a super-fast sketch on a sticky note while bored at work. It was based off a photo of a dog on the wall. Nothing impressive, but it was enjoyable, and came out pretty good for the time it took to scratch it out.

Books read in 2009

2010-01-01T01:54:00.003-05:00

56 books this year, over 2008's 37. I think that's pretty good. That averages out to just over one a week, though of course it didn't actually work that way. I still go through phases. If I didn't have a pesky job to worry about, I'd get much more reading done.

Another thing worth noting is that in 2008 I showed a clear bias toward fiction, spending 59% of the time on it, while in 2009 I only spent 46% on fiction, giving nonfiction the clear advantage. My one fiction - one nonfiction cycle breaks down often, but caught on strongly later in the year. Maybe that's a sign I'm growing up, haha.

It's also of note that I'm spending significantly less time reading crap. Gone are the days of Dean Koontz and his ilk.

It would be interesting to bring word count into these calculations, but I'm not sure text stats are available on all the books, and it's already pretty late. Maybe some day when I haven't slept and can't read or play guitar I'll compile a word list.

Best book: Ulysses. Easily. It is amazing. It changed my life.
Favorite book: The Voyage Out. The book that made me fall in love with Virginia Woolf. She's like a crazier, more brilliant, more british, more female me. If there turns out to be a heaven and I get there and Virginia Woolf isn't there, I'm going to burn the place down. Not even Anne Frank could stop me, though I do love her dearly.

Best nonfiction: Too hard to say. Though Homage to Catalonia and Guns, Germs, and Steel both come to mind. I've never quite felt how I did after finishing the last line in Homage. Simply amazing.

Other random notes: I've also been reading, and did not include, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and The Vintage Guide to Classical Music by Jan Swafford, both of which I am currently reading, and both of which will go on my 2010 list. But they are both already affecting me drastically, especially Whitman. Also, I didn't finish Wealth of Nations, as there is only so much economics I can take at a time, but I intend to finish it between other books.

My brain is yelping for sleep, the cowardly bastard, so without further rambling or prelude, I present to you the books read by Ben in 2009, listed in chronological (as read, not written) order.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Play The Piano Drunk Like A
Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit by Charles Bukowski
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
In Defense of Evil by Terroja Kincaid
Burning in Water Drowning In Flame by Charles Bukowski
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
Friday by Robert A Heinlein
Play The Piano Drunk Like A
Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit by Charles Bukowski
The Space Elevator: A revolutionary Earth-to-space transportation System by Bradley C. Edwards, Ph.D. and Eric A. Westling
Poems by Robert Frost by Robert Frost
Rebel Without A Crew by Robert Rodriguez
Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies by Jami Bernard
The Elements of Style by William Strunk JR.
E.B. White
The Godfather Legacy by Harlan Lebo
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
What's Eating Gilbert Grape? by Peter Hedges
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Dubliners by James Joyce
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
Letters to A Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
Adam Bede by George Eliot
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
Consciousness Explained by Dan Dennett
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Candide by Voltaire
Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne
Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Elements of Style by William Strunk JR.
E.B. White
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere by Christopher Hitchens
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx
Coming Up For Air by George Orwell
Symposium by Plato
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition by Anne Frank
Burmese Days by George Orwell
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and by Friedrich Engels
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde
Burning in Water Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski
Why I Write [Essay Collection] by George Orwell
Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf

So that's new.

2009-12-26T00:22:00.004-05:00

Much of life is
a curtain
slowly lifting
and
in the dim
you see
shapes
colors
movement
you see
horrible things
you see
chaos
you see
all the bad
there is to see
and
sometimes
beauty.

The crowd is hushed
and I stand above them
with all seeing eyes
wet with wonder.

It's nighttime in the woods and my blade is getting heavy.

2009-12-22T11:42:00.002-05:00

It's tiring
this
open ended question
this
formula
(it's all variables)

It's tiring
the
ever spinning calculations
of
minimizing discomfort
of
avoiding
the sowing of suffering
of
thinking of the kitten
with its head in the can
serrated edge
cutting through fluff
or the tuna
cheap and healthy
that I rob
from the oceans

the accretion
of power over other men
that is necessary
to survival

the withdrawals
I make from others
to place
on a horse
called love

affection
is real
touching
is real
but behind it all
there is only me
and how can I know
if I'm on the path
when I'm the one
cutting it?

It is nice
to have our paths meet
but if I push you off course
please understand
that I have no compass
no destination
and only
the light
of dead and dieing
stars.

Drunk on Cider 2

2009-12-15T23:54:00.001-05:00

Drunk on Cider 2

One of these days
I need to decide
who I hate--
myself
or the world--
and who is to blame?

I meet people
so beautiful
I conclude the former
and sometimes
alone
consider the last.

The essence of hatred
is separation
from Self or Other
and the worst part is
I don't even know
which
is which.

I am the fluctuating
self hating
binary
of analog
existence.

I am the frustration
of is.

New Addition To The Family

2009-12-03T22:36:00.005-05:00

Nothing fancy. His name is Clarence, and he's shy and enjoys poetry. He's a Seagull S6, and though he's not the prettiest guitar in existence, he's all solid wood, has a low action, and purrs when I hug him.

I've been working with a metronome a lot, trying to improve my rhythm -- or, rather, gain some semblance of rhythm -- and am making an organized attempt at learning ALL THE CHORDS TO EVER EXIST. I know like seven. So I'm pretty much there. Yeah.

I've discovered I can rhythmically flail while singing, but once I try to keep a coherent count of where I am, I suddenly lose my tongue. Once things are more instinctual, I'm sure it will be easier.

Muscle memory, ACTIVATE!

~Bonus Video Embed~

Demonstration and Camaraderie

2009-11-04T13:21:00.008-05:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-protests5-2009nov05,0,2031874.story?track=rss

I try not to comment on anything I have not researched well enough to speak on with authority, but I feel obligated in this instance to state my support. I don't think it's a stretch to say the key to liberty in Iran is not CIA operations, American installed puppet regimes, or cruise missiles, but the uprising of its own intelligent, courageous citizens. There is an enormous generation of youth surging forth in Iran, and it speaks with one voice into the face of oppression, arrogance, and theocratic despotism. There is a conscience in the organism of Iran, there always has been, and in the wake of increasingly blatant atrocities and insanities, that conscience has arisen to the forefront of the organism's mind, where it is now battling the homunculi of archaic brutality and hostility to reason.

To my brothers and sisters risking their lives in the fight against tyranny, in the face of ignorant hatred, under the bludgeons of masked men and the clouds of tear gas, in the prisons of obvious primates, under sentences of death and unwarranted confinement, I can only state my passionate support and awed inspiration, though my words can only ring empty in the presence of those courageous enough to put their lives and bodies on the streets.

This is one American who is with you, not for America's sake, not in the hopes that you will be like the West, but in the hope that you will be yourselves, freely, without fetters or fears. We have much to learn from you, and I look forward to a day when we can exchange ideas without a climate of suspicion, resentment, or fear.

E-Reading and the Apocalypse

2009-09-29T21:31:00.007-04:00

With all of the doomsday talk around E-books, E-readers, and everything prefaced with E, I thought I'd throw a thought into the mix.

I love technology. While I may not own an iPhone, I could accurately be described as transhumanist. When the day arrives that we can trade in our organs for nanobots, I will be first in line.

But, you see, I have this bookshelf.

It's not much. It's way too small and has already overflowed, leaving me to pile books on every precious piece of uncluttered horizontal surface space, but it's mine. Those are all books that I have bought, kept well, and can read at any time. When my nieces and nephews are older, and if—gods forbid—I ever spawn a creature of my own, they will have them available at any time.

But could I lend them my Kindle?

When I was a child, my family had a bookcase. It was giant, ancient, and held all the knowledge of the world. (Actually, it was about seven feet tall, built by my father, and filled with yellowing paperbacks, but I was a kid, so it seemed more dramatic.) The top shelf held my dad's nonfiction, mainly, large volumes on nature and history and guns. Below that were several shelves of everything from Lord of The Rings to Dean Koontz, but mostly Stephen King and Tom Clancy. LOTS of Stephen King. Everything he had published, in fact. Then there was the bottom. It was stocked with Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, R.L. Stine, children's science and puzzle books, and a pleasant array of other random things my parents would add.

One of my favorite activities was to sit down in front it all and just pull books out, looking through them, examining the covers. Before I could even read, I was fascinated by books. Here, standing against the wall, was a portal into worlds far away from the tiny cluster of houses surrounding a grain elevator that made up my neighborhood. As I learned to read, I was ever more infatuated. It evolved. I had an argument with my brother about whether bullfrogs ate worms or not; we looked it up. I was right. I crawled up the bookcase from Suess to Silverstein to Stine to King.

By sixth grade I was marveling at Stephen King novels, and writing "books" that somehow always ended at less than three pages. I had long since known I would be a writer, but that's not the point. The point is, even before I could read, I knew I would be a reader, and when the time came, I had ample material to read.

I didn't live in a town big enough for a library. With our large family, we rarely got to go to the bookstore. (Though when the Book Fair came to school I always got to pick two books.) All of those books sitting there, like gold in Scrooge McDuck's vault, ready for swimming, are what made me the reader I am today, and, consequently, made me the person I am today.

If all of my books are on my reader, how am I supposed to pass that experience on? Would handing a child a Kindle have the same effect? Am I nitpicking, or perhaps alone in this kind of memory?

Don't misunderstand me. I think e-paper is awesome, and LOVE the idea of downloading a Virginia Woolf novel for ninety-nine cents. I don't think books will disappear any time soon, but, sure as dogs are damned to hell, e-books are where we're headed. It makes me wonder what may change without our noticing.

15 Books That Will Stick With Me

2009-08-30T21:12:00.004-04:00

Rules:
Don't take too long to think about it.
List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you.
They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1 Ulysses by James Joyce
2 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
3 The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
4 Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
5 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
6 Love is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski
7 On Writing by Stephen King
8 Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
9 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
10 Letter to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
11 The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
12 The Border Trilogy (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of The Plain) by Cormac McCarthy
13 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
14 For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
15 Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Drawing; Poetry

2009-08-25T19:26:00.003-04:00

Big post today. Have been writing but not posting. The drawing was done weeks ago. Thankfully, I no longer feel that way. (At the moment.) The poetry was written over the course of the past few weeks. The best poem is probably the last. If you get tired/bored scroll down and read it.

It seemed so at the time

Last night
I enjoyed
the most beautiful evening
of my existence.

I was headed
to my old apartment
to pick up a check
for four hundred
dollars
and the sun was setting
orange and pink
and peach and blue
and every direction
you looked
the clouds were different
soft marshmallow rubble
or smooth swirls
or sliding hues
Bright Eyes
was on
the stereo
and told me love did exist
outside of poetry
and as a flock of birds passed
the glowing blinding beauty
of the setting son
gliding over the cloud mountains
and green broccoli trees
I became transfixed
so that my foot fell on the gas pedal
and I went over sixty
through a forty-five
and a cop passed
bringing me down enough to notice
he didn't pull me over
and it suddenly seemed
as if even the assholes
were not so bad
as if even the pimps
of mob justice
had to sit up
and take notice
of everything around us
and stare
at the setting
pastel sun
as I'm pretty sure
this one was.

A glimpse of something-

I am a
lifelong
groundhog
peering first
over the dirt
and marveling
at a frightened field mouse
it
r u n s
along
a log
silver-brown coat
gleaming
in the shadowed sunlight
it disappears
into
the dark
and I am left to wonder
what other
creatures
call this land
their home.

Momentary Weakness

Beautiful people
exist.
More beautiful people
exist
than non-beautiful.
They hide behind
their ugliness
and cower.

What the fuck?
I think that was
optimism.

Momentary Strength (or self delusion)

The more I
hate my life
the more I
like it
over everyone else's.

They seem to be
having fun
but – fuck –
they're so stupid.

Recipe For Poetry

Depression
+
Coffee
(or substitute sleeplessness)
+
Frustration
Anger
Annoyance
Loneliness
(proportion to taste)
+
Hope
Despair
Obsession
Carelessness
Design
(in equal parts)
+
vocabulary
connotation
misunderstanding
deception
+
sexual tension
+
satisfaction
+
scorn
+
praise
-
originality
_______________________________________
(equals)
1 ton
of bull shit

Serve with a side of
mixed metaphor.

The cheapest anesthetic is an accurate ear.

I used to walk
with a man
in a gray jacket
with gold lining
who kept his hands
in his pockets,
whistling,
and said good things
about good people
into my ear.

He spoke so well
he could make me
weep
with anxious satisfaction
over a single look
from another.

He died one day.
Disappeared
like childhood fun.
I don't know where
or when
but he's gone.
I occasionally cut cardboard
to look like him,
draw on a face,
whistle lips,
those shiny
window reflecting eyes

I tell it it's him
and I tell him
to tell me
all the good things
of those around me
so I can suck in my breath
and rub my hands in awe.

He is very quiet.

I speak for him,
sometimes,
spilling words
in softly filling pools
that shine empty
and bright.

They evaporate.

I look at the cardboard
and grin so hard
I can't feel my face.

Music- American Philosophies

2009-08-05T19:40:00.004-04:00

Me and my ukulele. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooot.

I suck every time I turn on the freaking camera. I have a MUCH better .mp3 of it. But I didn't want a lame lip synced video.

Anyway.

Lyrics.

I've got a three fifty seven and a twelve guage shotgun
never been to heaven but it sounds like much fun
I aint got a reason but I got the will
to spread the word of Jesus or at least to kill
I've been working too hard and for far too long
to let a man in glasses try to tell me I'm wrong
I'm a man of my nation or at least my version
I keep my box clean but avoid excursion

you know I go to college though I don't learn nothing
but I have a lot of sex so I guess that's something
I do a lot of drugs with my friends and talk
about who we've fucked and who we've fought
as if it's gonnna matter once we get out
forgetting how to think and learnin how to shout
gotta be a gear if you wanna compete
get a good job and a big TV

we live
in a world
where the poor stay poor
and the fools stay fools
and the latter get rich and enforce the rules
we tell our kids to obey
so they grow up to say:

I've got a four floor house with a great big lawn
that I mow every day and it don't seem wrong
cause I don't gotta read when I got DVDs
and I don't gotta think when I know what I see
and the world's not there if it's not in the news
I only like pop cause I haven't had the blues
and I live in a land of water and green
where the bads not bad nor the good what it seems

I got my gods even if I don't
they give me all the knowledge that I don't even know
cause the truths only true if it always feels good
and accuses and excuses as I think it should
been catching my conclusions one at a time
holding out my hat and hoping for a dime
cause I got big ears and little bitty eyes
so desperate for the Truth that I'll even take the lies

we live
in a world
where the poor stay poor
and the fools stay fools
and the latter get rich and enforce the rules
we tell our kids to obey
so they grow up to say

Doodles!

2009-08-03T21:19:00.002-04:00

Vacation is nice....

Bear riding Donkey

2009-07-26T22:55:00.001-04:00

Work has been productive lately.

When I don't sleep I draw better than I read.

Social [Sk]ills

2009-07-25T02:52:00.001-04:00

A retrospective cartoon diary.

Scotty makes me happy.

2009-07-23T22:35:00.003-04:00

He steals every frame he is in.

The Fear (An Opoem)

2009-07-23T02:48:00.002-04:00

Pee-wee Herman (As Flagg)

2009-07-22T19:43:00.004-04:00

This was my first attempt at a painting from an actual three dimensional still life.

I count this one as a happy failure. I moved halfway through completing it so I was unable to keep consistent lighting, and even went from a brown/white room to a PINK room, which fucks everything up, so I pretty much just bullshitted it on the shadows of the face, which was disastrous, and I eventually gave up trying to fix it.

So here it is in all its terrible glory.

It was originally going to be a nude painting per Pee-wee's request, but erections are distractions in art as all things so I therefore clothed him and tied his hands behind his back.

The buttons are an addition of mine onto the actual doll, originating from a Dark Tower merchandise site that sells the buttons Flagg wears on his denim jacket. I had originally bought them with the plan of putting them on my own denim jacket, but have yet to get one, and no longer quite see the humor in dressing day to day as an evil fictional demon. Though I might still do it.

Anyway, onward I go...

Visions of Roam

2009-07-22T03:12:00.003-04:00

I want to meet people. I want to know people. I want to know people who want to know me. I don't think it'll happen any time soon.

Visions of Roam

My life is confined
by a room
with all exit doors
that the world peers into
but never enters

I write letters
on paper planes
that fly out to never return
and the sound of laughter
sounds like sobbing
through the blood red walls

I cannot sleep
for the fruity smell
of apples
wafting through a window
shut tight against the cold
and the promise of pie
is like a mirage
making music
to soothe softly
the coming death

I cannot get out
but if I could
I would walk the world
ten feet high
looking down at the little ones
with a soft smile
of knowing affection
and holding their arms up
like toddlers
they would beg me to carry them
and together we would take walks
across distant lands
to find fire
in the night
and sleep happy
at last.

I'm thinking of putting together all the poetry I have written over the past six months (in my time away from the internet) into an e-book with perhaps some illustrations. Then I think I'll put up a way for people to order it, but it won't be public and it won't be free. Instead of money, however, in order to get a copy of it you'll have to privately email me a detail about yourself that you would never post publicly, and that you think will help me to know you better. I would expect maybe one request. But fuck it.

Drawings; Cartoons

2009-07-19T19:55:00.010-04:00

I drew this in my notebook while waiting on some coffee to brew at work. Can you tell who it is? It's supposed to be Shakespeare, based off the cover painting on the Barnes and Noble edition of The Sonnets I'm reading at the moment. (Free advice: Don't read sonnets while depressed. It doesn't help.) Some of the shading on the neck came off as too beard like and not shade enough like, but that's what you get when scratching away in Subway. I wasn't sure at first whether I would go all the way with crosshatching, rendering shadows, etc., so I was pretty lax on where lines went. Still, I think it turned out alright.

These I drew last night. I was feeling shitty and almost posted some scathing sarcastic remarks on some facebook photos, but opted instead to satirize them in cartoon form.

Obviously not much effort went into them. Not only did I do those I hated, however. I also did myself. Kind of. Not exactly the same thing.

My Saturday Off

2009-07-18T20:26:00.008-04:00

Doodle / Update

2009-07-07T22:23:00.004-04:00

I doodled this while waiting for a video to load.

It's absolute shit. But I didn't want this post to be just one sentence.

I have finished the second draft of my novel.

Huzzah!

Painting: Gizmo (And Novel Stuff)

2009-07-06T17:11:00.006-04:00

Thought I'd throw up my latest completed painting. I wanted to try some straight forward representation so I figured, "What better subject than Gizmo?" Here he is:

Click for bigness.

I was tickled pink with the result, and decided to get brave and try a painting from life (instead of a DVD cover). I asked Peewee to sit still for about five hours and, after some cajoling, he acquiesced. I still have some finishing touches to put on it, but expect it here in the next few days. Maybe a little longer. I have my novel to finish.

Specifically, I have the second draft to finish. What you are seeing is my method for grasping the sequence of the novel in its entirety, since my mammalian brain can only call together small stretches of it (insofar as how they interact directly through the mode of presentation, chronology, etc.)

It's color coded and juxtaposed spatially to help me visualize the shifts in perspective and time. I got the idea when I read about how Robert Rodriguez writes film scripts, via writing each scene on a notecard and then swapping them around until he gets an order he's happy with. I elaborated on it and adapted it to my purposes.

The effect is pretty damn cool. It's like building a truck with your eyes closed and then popping the hood. It's very interesting to see the underlying order of things, the rhythm of the story which I think would be there whether I paid attention to it or not. More on that later.

Hope to have the 2nd draft done in the next few days. Then I'll try to figure out how to bind the damn thing to get people to read it for me.

Music Sharing

2009-07-06T00:12:00.002-04:00

I sometimes find time between bouts of angsty introspection and furious masturbation to listen to music. A lot of what I listen to is supplied to me by my current pop culture guru, but one of the greatest pleasures in life is stumbling upon brilliant art one's self, organically, however that may occur. I found Pomplamoose in this way, and I think I can very easily say they are two of my favorite artists in existence. They being Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn. All of the instruments, vocals, harmonies, etc., are done themselves via looping. I think that's what it's called. They also pioneered the Video Song, a form in which no lip syncing is ever used, and every sound you hear you see being made at some point in the video. It's fantastic. Watch!

They're fucking brilliant. And they're sexy. And they're awesome together. What's not to love? Check out the rest of their shit at http://www.youtube.com/user/PomplamooseMusic or check them out on itunes: http://tinyurl.com/PomplamooseITunes

Should be around more soon

2009-06-25T14:30:00.003-04:00

I'm moving in with me parents here really soon and thus shall have access to internet and be much more likely to post.

Why, you may ask, am I moving in with someone- my parents, no less- when I've so enjoyed my solitude? The answer is mainly financial. I was surviving fine on my meager income but they're screwing with my hours at work and my basement apartment was developing a bit of a moisture problem. Thus, I could either find a better (and thus more expensive) apartment and risk starving/not having rent some fine month or I could fill the vacant room at my parent's house. Fortunately, my parents are very cool people and I don't anticipate any feeling of being a child again, as they freely recognize my autonomy.

The plan is to accrue enough funds to purchase a vehicle (since I have discovered this world hopelessly oriented toward them) and develop a solid financial base/buffer before venturing out into the world again. Hopefully the situation at work will improve and I'll get stable hours again, or eventually I'll find a better job. (Or sell my novel/win the lottery.)

I did successfully finish the first draft of my novel, sooner than expected, with a much better length than expected. It is currently fermenting outside my consciousness, but the self imposed six week waiting period is almost up, at which point I will dig it out and rework it.

Then...TO THE MOON!

I have not died.

2009-03-23T15:34:00.002-04:00

I've got an apartment by myself now, and I don't have internet.

It is the best decision I have ever made.

I am working on a novel that I have high hopes for, and plan to finish the first draft in a little over a month.

I've created a new system for logging my daily word totals and writing times to keep myself responsible. It seems to be working well. Having concrete goals, a definite destination, and tangible evidence of advancement toward that ideal is refreshing and saves on sanity.

Now I'm doing more than dieing and it feels fantastic.

Please email if you are so inclined.

That is all for now.

The ocean and life on Earth.

2009-02-19T19:01:00.003-05:00

Please watch this video. I realize it's kind of long, but it's worth the time. If nothing else, page through it and watch pieces, make sure you catch the graphs showing large fish populations and their decline. (90 percent, if I recall correctly, from 1990 to now. Meaning only 10 percent remaining.)

Environmentalists are often accused of prizing the Earth and its ecosystems over humans themselves, and shunning technological progress. Sometimes this is true, but we can't deceive ourselves into viewing human progress and conservation as conflicting.

I, more than most people I know, am in awe of our technological abilities and the nearly incomprehensible rate with which we advance. The sheer potential of what we could accomplish in the next few decades, let alone the next century, is a blinding orb I squint upon with an almost spiritual reverence.

But there is a difference between utilization of our boundless ability to make our lives better and abuse of the tools we could be using to that end. Immortal personal health and comfort is meaningless on a barren planet.

Alarmist? Alarms serve a purpose. It is not a prank to pull the switch when you gaze upon the flames and feel your lungs fill with smoke.

We are in one of the most high tension epochs in the history of our species, perhaps the highest. We dwell upon the threshold of escape velocity, the point at which we must either explode as we are or ignite into the atmosphere, soaring so high the apes below us appear as insane and primitive ants. We stand to lose nothing short of our existence, and gain no less than offwhite paradise- perhaps not perfect, but enough to pass a Turing test.

I am not just speaking of the Oceans, and I am not just speaking of the Earth. We are at a vital position, and every individual must choose to help or hinder. I would say history will look back upon us and judge us good or bad, but the reality is that isn't an issue because there may very well be no one to look back, and thus even no history.

Little things can help, just as we can be poisoned by quiet complacency. When I was a child, I first wanted to be an artist, then a writer, then a marine biologist. Any of these could directly affect the issues at hand, but I am none of them completely. A person of more fortitude may have been able to tolerate the insanities of our social systems and held onto their core being long enough to become such, and many do every day, but as an independent abstainer I can only limit my contribution of damages and do my best to facilitate the heroes of the coming [r]evolution, should we survive to that point.

This is one of the reasons, in addition to many much more selfish, that I will be abolishing the personal automobile from my daily life, and while I ride along on my bike, tip my helmet to every conscious person I meet.

There is a disease on this Earth that may kill us all. It holds a greasy gape mouthed grin, drives cup holders on wheels, and slurps down words from fatter men who lie for butter. I will not be a part of it.

Poetry:

2009-02-19T01:09:00.002-05:00

Lying in clothes with the light on at night is the greatest hobby.

The bug
flies
around
the light
as I watch
on my back
on my bed.
he
circles
in
spirals
toward
the light
in crazy
orbits
like a firework
that never
explodes.
Sillysad
bug
doesn't understand
you can't steer
by a light
so close
or even
that
it's an artificial light.
He doesn't know
what light is.
I start
to feel dizzy
the room circles
and I think
I'm looking down at
me
circling that damn light.
Sillysad bug.
I think you'll never learn.

India

2009-02-10T23:30:00.002-05:00

Why I Should Go To India

It will give me perspective on American life and the poverty of the rest of the world.

I will get to see monkeys. Wild monkeys.

I will be contributing to the resuscitation of a forest needlessly destroyed.

I will live in a close community, meet people from all over the world, and test my social abilities.

I will be working only 4 hours a day, allowing plenty of time for art, discussion, and introspection.

I will get to fly on a plane.

Being on another continent, I will be able to leave all safety nets and rely entirely upon my own wit and resources, testing my ability and resolve as an individual, and find out how I truly feel about those nets.

It will give me the street cred to claim culture and world knowledge. (How fucking shallow is that?)

Learning a sustainable lifestyle close to nature, I will be able to operate within a frivolous lifestyle with the knowledge I can buck any immoral system without fear, because I can exist without any societal infrastructure.

I will be within biking distance of the ocean. The OCEAN, man.

With no contractual obligations this may be the most opportune time to do such a thing. (Bullshit: leases will always expire and car insurance is the only other imminent threat. It can always be canceled.)

Why I shouldn't go to India.

India borders Pakistan, a country harboring terrorists, nuclear weapons, and generally pissing the world off, including Obama, who has made very real threats of military action within Pakistan's borders.

I have a shitty immune system. The environment I'd be staying in would be open to diseases from other people, poor sanitation, raw food, mosquitoes, and rats. I have read two documented cases of volunteers having rats crawl into their bedding with them, though neither reported being bitten.

The owner of the organization was recently bitten by a poisonous snake and almost died. Death sucks.

The merit of the goal of the organization is questionable. Reforestation is so slow as to have no effect on the earth's climate, and while it has raised water tables considerably resulting in easier water access for the local natives, this is a side effect and not the goal of the organization. It has ties with Auroville, an idiotically new-agey primarily white based community that lives in riches while people die in poverty all around them.

Much of the merit to be found in the experience could easily be found within the bounds of the U.S. at considerably less cost or risk.

With the economy in a steep downward spiral, I am lucky to have a job as good as I have, and could easily surmount any economic risks inherent to my low income lifestyle through the lump sum I would be wasting in India. Staying finalizes my independence, whereas going means relying upon my parents for more help, in housing and vehicle use. It also constrains another's freedom by taking room and a vehicle that should rightly be his.

It taxes my brothers financially.

It taxes my family emotionally.

Someone would have to take a day off work to drive me to the airport.

The saving required would severely limit my reading, painting, and freedom of sociability for the next six months, and for several months after, rendering one of my reasons for going- a study in social cohesion- moot.

Much of the allure is in the public perception of the trip, and not the trip itself.

Going turns a chance at catching up in personal health via checkup and regular prescribed vaccinations into a host of frivolous immunizations leading to a monumental health gamble.

My interests vary like a laser bouncing off mirror panels. Even if my interest persists until the leave date, what are the odds it will continue through my stay?

It will be hot, muggy, buggy, and possibly boring.

VERDICT ON INDIA TRIP:

The previously believed major virtues of such a trip, such as an exercise/test in self reliance, an experiment in social success and continual proximity, and a better understanding of my privileged existence all prove upon examination to be illusory. On the balance, my independence would suffer, as I would have to call upon the generosity and patience of at least six persons, all of whom would be wholly justified in refusing to extend said assistance, and could incur tangible harm. The social aspects, while intriguing in novelty, are not very applicable to real world interaction and, for that matter, not all that novel: they are very similar to my family conditions growing up. Moreover, preparation for the trip on such a financially shaky foundation would hinder much actual interaction, rendering this merit self defeating. As for an understanding of how rich and supple I am in contrast to the world's overwhelming poverty, mere recognition of this as a possible plus shows an already present familiarity. I am not a moron that must see the starved figures in person to feel their plight.

The rest of the benefits can be found in equal or exceeding measure either within my own state or in a better timed trip in the future. In another year I should be free to go anywhere on the planet without requiring requests of material support from any outside agencies.

Until that time, I shall remain where I am, squirreling money away in preparation for the coming moment when I can declare myself without debt, living off none and able to approach the world in whatever way I choose.

The Poetic Impulse

2009-02-04T21:09:00.003-05:00

The most natural pursuit is that of expression. When we are born into this world, we escape the placenta only to find another around our minds. The first realization is that we are separate: I am me; That is the world. I am what is always there, even when I close my eyes, even when I sleep. A baby will look with astonishment at his hands upon discovery that they are his. Initially, he sees them as part of the Separate, as well they are, but then there is the revelation that he can control them. Thus there is interaction with the outside- he is still just a seer inside a bubble, but he now has cranes with which to affect what he sees. That is the beginning of motor control, the most direct way we interact with the Separate, which encompasses all objects and all other people.

The next step is the acquisition of language. Upon naming of objects, and later, concepts, a finer, easier form of expression is attained. One need not simply wail and grope for the bottle, but to say, "I am thirsty." We immediately see the higher forms of expression are advantageous, as they more efficiently project aspects of Self, such as intention or need, and produce the desired effect in the Separate. This is not limited to material wants. As we develop, we transcend the physical needs and come to an understanding with the deeper impulse that had only manifested in mechanical interaction: it is not just I, and the objects outside the bubble, but there are other bubbles too; I must know them.

It is not enough to know they are there, but we must touch them. We must understand them. We must have them touch and understand us. Unfortunately, as we are Selves trapped within bubbles, we can only use our fleshcranes to touch their fleshcranes, words to stand for thoughts, and vocabularies always differ, definitions and connotations always slightly off, so there is always something lost in the translation. How great it would be to burst the membrane and spill as liquid light into the mind of another!

But we can't. Future technologies may allow it but that is a distant (though brilliant) hope. We are stuck as we are: brains in jars across the room from each other, eyestalks unblinking, trying to see through the iris of another, to know its thoughts as our own.

So we must get clever. Definition, never absolute, always slippery, gets tossed to the ditch and detonated into a thousand multicolored sparks of connotation, which are then strung together in a design we call Poetry. Emotion, thought, feeling, are melted into a rainbow slurry, scooped up in double handfuls and tossed onto canvas, manipulated with paintbrush precision into an idea or state that leaps the bounds of vernacular and lands splat on the windshield of all who come across. Music, a language too lofty, too vaporous, too mystical for any boundary, leaps from mind to mind, whispering to the subconscious truths like dimensions we can't perceive but feel lapping down our gravity, allowing us to leap. This is the impulse that drives us, and these are the tools we use to that end.

I call this pursuit the most natural because it stems from our infant selves, cannot be avoided, and is the basis upon which we build the rest of our lives. Granted, some find more interest in the nonhuman, seeking to understand the fundamental laws of the Separate, through physics or chemistry or biology, but even this manifests in expression through invention, debate, and publication, all of which can benefit from varied forms of conveyance, math being another in addition to those already listed.

Further, I call this pursuit the most beautiful, positive, honest, and therefore most good. To reach out to another is by nature an act of love- never does one want to touch out of hate. Hate wants to destroy the other, not understand it, and what little understanding pursued is only for the end of better destroying it. This is why detestable ideologies shun inquiry, exploration, and honest exchange: to discuss with another brings understanding, and with understanding comes affection, which brings peace and coexistence. Ideology doesn't want peace; it wants nothing but destruction of opposing ideology.

Shun dogma, shun honor, shun law. Accept only Self, that piece inside the bubble, and try to touch another. Throw a hook, and pull close every Other you find, and degree by dying degree, we may find the entire population in huddled mass, and though we may never be one, we can get pretty damn close.

Poetry: Rant 2

2009-01-31T18:10:00.002-05:00

Rant 2

Chewing gum
turns to pain
in my jaw
as I agonize
over
30 bucks worth
of paint
and the woman
in front of me
blows
400 dollars
on faded rugs
and frilly lamps
for herself
and her two
rancid daughters
who laugh
in their
colored wool
and await
unwanted pregnancies
unearned cars
honor society
and college educations
all I want is
to create
something
all they want
is something
more somethings
somethings to accentuate
those somethings
and hide a lack
of other somethings
probably a paper something-
maybe a diploma
maybe a dollar
maybe a marriage certificate
mâché morals
and origami worth
you're only as good
as the things
you don't need
and though matter
cannot be created
collecting quarks
and adding atoms
will never rival
creating ephemerals
intangible
nonexistent
and sweet.

Painting/Poetry

2009-01-28T20:41:00.003-05:00

This one's called Crys's Song.

Here's an unrelated poem I wrote:

You stop me painting to write shit like this and don't know nor care.

You call to mind
a frog pond
in the summer
cool brick
beneath my feet
night time breeze
swirling round me
in the place
you live and learn.
These are from my childhood
but future-
not likely-
forms the frame:

I wish
for things
I do not want
when they face me
on the ground
and run
like a coward
from stars
that hold more beauty
than harm.

Hey, Glenn Beck!

2009-01-28T13:34:00.000-05:00

Painting: Gerbil Riding

2009-01-23T00:58:00.005-05:00

Click the picture to see it full sized. It's called Gerbil Riding, and was inspired by the poet John Holden.

This painting required some research, as I had never even drawn a gerbil before, so I spent some time on Google images with a pen and kicked out some rough sketches to get a feel for gerbil anatomy. Thought I'd share it with you, even though some of it's pretty terrible. (It was, after all, just for practice.)

Let me know what you think! I'm loving this painting shit, and will probably be attempting oils soon, as per multiple suggestions.

Painting/Poetry

2009-01-19T23:07:00.003-05:00

This one is called Juli in Red, and is of- who else?- my good friend Juli. She's one of the few Artists I've known, and has always inspired me as a creative person. So this is a kind of thanks.

I realize I suck at this painting thing, but hopefully if I keep doing it I'll get better. Anyway, on to the poetry. The second one rhymes, so maybe that's incentive to get through the first. (Don't just fucking scroll.)

A Slight Reminder in Honor of the Occasion

You may be tempted
to love
the whitewall mouse
but make no mistake
he is not your friend.
He sits atop a mountain
eying you
singing a pleasant song
as he contemplates your death.
He could be your friend
if he was in your back yard
instead of guarding the rope
that holds the boulder
above your head.
You must chastise him.
You must watch him.
You must be suspicious
of his every move.
If he throws you candy
check the wrapper first
and when he takes his meal
make him beg.
It's not that the mouse
is bad
but that he's dangerous
and you are
but a factor
in an equation
spinning behind
his beady eyes.
He sees far from his
granite perch-
more than you'll ever see-
but at his elevation
he cannot perceive
texture.
Feed him, yes,
but always remember
that what to him
is a simple blanket
of grass
you can see
is actually
billions
of singular blades.
Watch him
with joy and apprehension
but always remember
that a mouse on a mountain
is still just a
rat on a rock.

[Anti]Vicious Cycle

The soul of Man
is one of love
and not a thing of hate.
We're filled with fear
but with each year
our base instincts abate.
We hear the call
to so evolve
within each wartime death
and tell our boys
of all the joys
of drawing peaceful breath.
They grow to men
and kill again
but less with each new wave
and so we grow
as more men know
that peace is for the brave.

Painting: Self Portrait # 2

2009-01-17T01:43:00.004-05:00

(Click for hugeness/better quality.)

First painting. Acrylics on canvas. Having trouble getting a good image... Expect more.

Poetry

2009-01-10T22:49:00.006-05:00

A Productive Use of Spoons

I spent a long day digging
today
into the floor
of my cell-
the Wardens don't mind
they're too busy
raping the complacent
through the bars
and gorging on
the piss
that goes running
in channels
down the line.
Those around me
don't mind-
our cells are quite separate
and they assume,
if they do at all,
that I am eating
the crumbled brick
as some are wont to do.
Mostly they just
work
on their cunning locks
building them bigger
stronger
more numerous
taking pride in their art
and the fastness
with which
they bar themselves in.
The Wardens nod with
adamant approval
and throw scraps
to the best.
One man
is so fat
from his sixteen locks
that he couldn't
fit out the door
if they opened it wide.
I dig with my spoon
as I starve in my hole
and smile-
smile, because
even if I never
tunnel out
I have already
escaped.

Poetry: You Are The Flame

2009-01-09T11:14:00.003-05:00

This is for Sra, who suggested I read some of my poetry, and Juli, for her kind words on my drawings.

Answers to some interesting questions.

2009-01-08T01:49:00.002-05:00

The Amazing Atheist on youtube posted a video asking a list of questions and requesting that others answer them. This is my impromptu video response:

Make a response of your own, or your cat will drown in bad luck for 7 years, and Sarah Palin will become relevant again.

Maybe Just -pathetic

2009-01-04T20:39:00.006-05:00

I am a creature
of -mpathy:
empathy for/to
those I love
and sympathy
for the world
to those
I hate.
Sometimes
I'm so -mpathetic
I want to smash
bone with bone
Sometimes
I'm so -mpathetic
I want to press
flesh to flesh
but thankfully
(usually)
I have the sense
to do neither.

Poetry

2009-01-03T18:57:00.001-05:00

The dead sleep less than he.

I paid fifteen dollars today
for a book
written by a dead man
took it home
read it in one sitting
and looked
at the stack of other
corpsebrains
I bought-
nearly fifty dollars worth
the sleepy clerk
fucked me
on the 3 for 2 deal
must've sensed my autistic side
I couldn't open my mouth
paid the overprice
and went home.
No one will ever
sell his thoughts
for unearned dollars
when he is gone.
He's a sleepy bastard
and can have the change-
I've a fleece blanket
and a brain
full of poetry
and joy.

Books Read In 2008

2009-01-01T02:18:00.003-05:00

Well, I had a pretty long stretch of not reading this year. I sometimes do that when I can't get my mind off other things. It's probably healthy. Red means I abandoned it because it was awful. Orange means I have yet to finish it. Looking over it, I can't even begin to rank them...but I'll say that A Tale of Two Cities and Catch 22 are two of the best books I've ever read, with McCarthy and Bukowski affecting me the most personally. Hitchens is always a delight, and makes for some of the most entertaining and cunning nonfiction to be found. Feith provides invaluable insight into the Iraq war and the war on terrorism in general, while Heinlein and Palahniuk...well, they do what they do best: kick ass.

Ulysses knocks me on my ass with its fantastic beauty and wit, but it's like rich fudge, and I started it just as I was sliding into a nonreading phase. I very much look forward to finishing this book off.

37 Books in 2008

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Rage by Stephen King
Requiem by Robert A. Heinlein
Firestarter by Stephen King
Duma Key by Stephen King
Seize The Night by Dean Koontz
Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein
Revolt in 2100 by Robert A. Heinlein
Methuselah's Children by Robert A. Heinlein
Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam by John L. Esposito
Who Speaks For Islam? by John L. Esposito & Dalia Mogahed
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Fewer by Ben J. Wattenberg
Ending Aging by Aubrey De Grey
On Writing by Stephen King
Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Hell House by Richard Matheson
Danse Macabre by Stephen King
The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens
Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
Walden (and Civil Disobedience) by Henry David Thoreau
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Love, Poverty, and War by Christopher Hitchens
War and Decision by Douglas J. Feith
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Watchmen by Alan Moore
The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski
Love is A Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski
Ulysses by James Joyce

Merry Christmas to all

2008-12-25T00:42:00.000-05:00

Poetry and Pictures

2008-12-14T00:33:00.008-05:00

The Starving Neanderthal

It is
the curse
of civilization
to be
ruled
by little
people.
At least
foraging
for food
I would
make
my own
hours.

We are blessed
with long
pointless
lives.
Immortality
as we are
now
would be
sliding
down
an
infinite
chute
of
dull
colorless
ash
that
tastes
like
nothing
and
chafes
like
a
mild
rash.

A rebuttal to the previous.

There are beautiful things,
too.
They tend to come
in quotations.
We are always in the present
forever in the future
and never in the past.
Golden age by golden age
we look upon
the unreachable
and sigh our heavy sighs
as if things were any different.
We are a crowd
on a skyscraper roof
gasping with awe
at the view
of the city
before us,
our gaze too high
to admire the marvel
that sits below our feet,
propping us mile by
swaying mile
above the rotting dirt.
We are the architect,
the client,
and even the steel.
Look to the skyline
please
but more:
love us,
moment
by moment.

Poetry: The Long Wait For Freedom

2008-12-02T23:51:00.003-05:00

Whenever a little
shoppingcart girl
bows her head
because she's
tired
or bored
or sad
I remember
the frustrations
of childhood
and can
forgive them
their screams.

Poetry: Holidays HOLIDAYS HOLIDAYS!!!!

2008-12-02T02:06:00.007-05:00

Very Merry Holidays

Black Friday
is aptly named,
a sad and sordid sport,
women cry and old men die
to please a solid sort

Double greed's
enough to heed
but only feeds
those who never starve

and those who need
are never freed
but only bleed
while fools cruise K-mart.

We scratch our heads
at all the dead
from Mayan sacrifices
but long from now
we'll furrow brows
of people past our vices

"What cretin could,"
they'll say and should
"kill for twenty dollars off?"
"Savages!" they'll say, and scoff.

MORE HOLIDAYS

Christmas
is lipstick
smeared on a corpse.
I'll expect
a little rouge
for the wake
but please don't
doll it up
like you expect me
to fuck it.

"Hanging out."

I'm not really
in the business
of entertaining people.
I attend parties
like a scientist
observing a
strange species.
I interact
socially
like a man
using
broken robotic arms.
It's not that
I don't
enjoy it-
at least
with people
I know
and like-
It's just that
I so much enjoy
being alone.
It feels more
productive.
Eating is something
to be done
quickly
like gassing up
a car
to fuel
truer tasks.
Making it
an event
seems nonsensical.
Swimming
is not a game
it's an attempt
not to drown.
Skiing
is just
sliding down a hill
you have
to mount
again.
Where is
the sense in it?
Movies are movies-
either you
delve in
or you don't-
why must we
need another
to make us feel
safe
to laugh?
I partially suspect
books are so unpopular
not because they're hard
but because they're
lonely.
It is only
your mind
and the author's
no friend to nudge
and exchange glances
no laughing voice
to tell you
what's funny
and what isn't
just your wits
and your knowledge
and your heart
matched with the
writer's same.
A painting
is worse.
There is no
beginning
or end
no guiding
voiceover
or narration.
Mozart
is out of the question.
Bach is unbearable.
People
have their place
I'm sure
but most
need others
like a mother
needs a radio
to drown out
the shrieks
of her beaten child.

Poetry:

2008-11-26T23:19:00.003-05:00

Not Written For The Holiday

There are good people
in this world-
not grand heroes
but average folks
who smile at strangers
and make conversation
with children.
Maybe they're dropouts
maybe they're drunks
maybe they're delivery men
in brown uniforms
who break for family dogs.
Maybe they're felons
or tax evaders
or strange street people
who grin with crooked teeth.
In any case,
I'm thankful for them.

Uke

When you play
an instrument
it changes you
as you change it.
The oils of
your hands
polish the porous
wood
while the edges
soften
under your touch.
Meanwhile
the fingers
callus
grow strong
the nails
may recede
and fingers turn
from fumbling things
to precise
pincers
of beauty.
Your brain
rewires itself
as the strings stretch
and the frets wear
and you become
another person.
Call it an upgrade.
A synergistic
development.
An evolution
of the harmonious.
The only cost
is time
and the reward
is pleasant
present
joy
in the air
and through
your body
joy in sorrow
joy in happiness
joy in expression
and destruction
of boring nothing.
You will change,
yes.
When you learn to love
the thing in your arms
how easier to love
the person across the room.
We all meld.

Quarterlife Crisis

I do a lot less
reading
these days
and a lot more
drinking coffee.
I'd expect this
at 60
but not 20.
I suspect
it is less
a saturation
of wisdom
and more
a reflection
on the bookyears
I've spent.
A catching up.
A soaking.
Or maybe
I sit in awe
of the avenues
I see before me
emerged
out of dirt-
not leading to
gold
as the rainbowliars
scoffingly say
but to a still
pool
that speaks
if you listen.
Perhaps I am
planning the way
What I will not say
What I will see
when I peer into the depths.
Perhaps
I am thinking
of the ripple
as I fall
and am dissolved.

Poetry: (Preferably A Fluffy One) and (Rave 1)

2008-11-25T02:27:00.005-05:00

Preferably A Fluffy One

I have a pet turtle
I don't know the species
Strange- if that was a type
beautiful, too
but it leaves
for long spells
gone, unheard from
doesn't even call.
I realize
it's hard for a
turtle
to reach a payphone
but this one is smart enough
it has has no excuse.
it returns
from time to time
with new colors
painted on its pastelpretty
shell
a flash in its green
turtle eyes
a little bigger, maybe
a whole new perspective
about it
and though I know
it's growing
still
I remember the
creature I watched
disappear last
and wonder
about this new one.
Maybe
they aren't the same
at all
or maybe
instead of being painted
its shell is peeling
and with each ephemeral
return
I'm seeing
deeper
into the layers.
I think about
the rocky creeks
and tumbling streams
that bring it
back to me
and I can't help
but consider
buying a cat.

Rave 1: (Not in a literal way.)

My
grammar
slips
sometimes
I must
apologize.
Rules are
a strap
against
my scrotum
they are
a saddle
on my
back
sometimes
I can't
help
but kick.
Spelling
is outsourced
though I keep
an eye
on the
contractors
and try
to make it
easy
on them.
Thinking
is a
passionate
hobby
(it certainly
makes me
no money.)
Expression
is
a necessary
delight-
I suppose
that
makes me
a
serial creator-
I
abhor a
knife
so I use
a
pen
can't stand
screams
so I stab
into
the void.
Murderers
fell
a foe
of innocence
while I
dissect
my guilty
self.
Sometimes
I think
the world is
a part
of me
but I
know
I'm
not that
clever.
It doesn't
change
anything
anyway.
I am
me
and
you are
you
and the world
turns
upon nothing.
If we are
part of
a greater network
it is
more
insane
than I.
Dissonance
is the
global
passtime
and we
are all
star
athletes.
Art
is often
a knock
at a
sobbing
door.
Either we
truly
are
the neurons
of a
lunatic
or some
day
I will
break
that door.
(Or someone
will
unlock it.)
Until then
I think
I'll
kill
again.

Poetry: (My Position On That) and (Many, anyway.)

2008-11-21T21:47:00.004-05:00

My Position On That

We took her
as a child
carved a grid
into her face
sank LEDs
into her flesh,
embedded in bone,
and drilled lines
into her capillaries
pumping blood
to drown her with.
Idealistically, I suppose
it's a shame
but she's a tough
old broad, and
to tell the truth
I much prefer
her with
her aspirin
and open heart surgery
over that naive
lush virginity
besides
she will outlive
any of us
and long after
we are dead or gone
she will laugh
her silent laugh
and shrug us off
like inconsequential
fleas.

Many, anyway.

Couples
are a cult
of two.
Their dreary
dressalike
sameness
is as sad
as it is false.
They dig
a niche
and huddle in,
covering themselves
in a clowncolored
blanket
too busy
jerking each other off
to hear
the world
through
the cloth.
Squishing
in the mud
with their
peacoatprecious
self aware
bullshit
they tell
each other
the water at their
feet is collected
tears of joy
when it's either
a river
rushing in to
blast them apart
or a baby
come to
chain them together
and in
either case
they're fucked.
I will submit
my mind
for full and open
scrutiny
but I will not
surrender it
for an artificial
umbrella.

Poetry: Rant 1

2008-11-19T19:37:00.002-05:00

Written in a very crowded Subway restaurant.

Rant 1

There are few
things as bad
as having the
place
you go to
to get away
from people
full of them.
The burps of
humanity
revile me
to my quivering
stomach.
We are
an obese bunch
illiterate
ignorant
in our
ten gallon
slurpeecup
sugarsweet
insolence.
Squatting in our
velvet diapers
we curl our lips
at the riches
men we never
knew handed us
and squall,
"More! More!"
as the portraits
fade in our attics
and the thoughts
of people
who would despise us
rot on
our shelves.
We have everything
and deserve nothing.
We've never pushed
a plow
and our skin
is smoother
than the mucus
on a frog's
unthinking eye.
This could be
a great thing
a beautiful thing
a true boon to be
cherished
if it wasn't
slopped down
in copious buffet
abundance
poured down gullets
like slurry
into a funnel.
The stomach's
purpose
is to fuel
the brain
and not the
other way around.
we should sit
before desks
but we sit
before thrones
and tables,
trays erected
between us
and the glowing
Colosseum of
horrors.
I would rather
we devour
ourselves
than each other.
Let the fat
grow thin
and the thin
grow gaunt
and the
starving
feed on our
bloated corpses.
Why is it
the simple dog,
whose greatest pleasure
can only be
the scratch
or the bloody
steak
must make due
with dry
crunchkernals
while we,
the connoisseurs
of cognition,
spend our time
lapping down
endless flesh
and oils?
Let us cast
our courses
to the coarser
creatures
and feed
on the finer things
we have
been neglecting.
A man with
a book
may die in
the desert
for want of
water
but a man
in paradise
will die
for want
of knowledge.
I may hate
to watch
a man eat
but still,
in the case
of the Garden,
I guess I'd
root for the snake.

Poetry: (It's not about sex) and (Everyday Regrets)

2008-11-18T21:54:00.004-05:00

It's Not About Sex

Opposites attract
they say
but I don't think
we're magnets.
I think we're
a bunch of
swarming African
bat bugs who,
though may have
suitable vaginas,
opt instead
to use our razorlike
spears
to inject eachother
anywhere
everywhere
we thrust through
hard carapace
soft underbelly
male
female
through bone
and gristle
we fill arteries
and capillaries
with our seed,
darkest black
against translucent
bodies
we ignore
the mutual comfort
of concavities
and convexities
we ignore
the gentle murmur
for the self-obsessed
shout
for the pleasing proboscis
for the stab
of a murderer's blade
it is not
what's attractive
or what's beautiful
it's what's available
and we become
so desperate
with our singlefloating selves
that we accept
the company
of insects.

I will not
stab
or be
stabbed.
I will await
a proper
counterpart
if any should exist
and until then
I am
quite happy
to call
myself
Human.

Everyday Regrets

To make
another
's life more
difficult
is a blade
twisting
in my leg.

Poetry: Just a bit more

2008-11-16T20:19:00.003-05:00

Just a bit more

I eat hot food
just to feel
there's
something
inside me
and I vomit
onto canvas
just to feel
it's
getting out
and I
roll
in it
just to reassure
myself
that I have
a mouth.
That I have
an asshole
is established.
That I make
sounds
is quite evident.
Ears, I use
abundantly.
Hands are but
a rumor.
I hear whisper
of feet
at the end
of my Amtrak legs
but I'm not
so sure
I'm walking-
I think I might
be sliding
or kicking
against the depths
as TV-Dinner sharks
circle below
my ample shadow.
Where I am
is irrelevant.
What I am
is all there is.
I think I'll eat
some egg rolls
and see what I
spit up
next.

Poetry: (Several)

2008-11-15T19:18:00.002-05:00

Hello

We are
roots
sprouting
through
the soil
seeking
warmth
moisture
knowledge
and sometimes
as we burrowblind
along our way
we meet
other
woody tentacles
and may intwine
strangle each other
or
interweave
the only
sin
is to whistle past
like a strolling man
by a crying child
in the fog
of a winter night.

It isn't alcohol...

Some people
make
money
some make
guitars
others
music
or
automobiles
or
new medicines
or
automatic can openers
or
wristwatches
or
weapons
or
food
or
maybe even love
but most just
make
people.
I wish there were
less amateurs
at that.

Excuse me, sir, do you have the time?

Yes, I have the time.
I have it in my pocket
and when I get home
I'm going to stick it
in my freezer.
Then, a few months
from now
you'll see me on
the news
hear all the gristly
details
how I chopped off
its head
and ground up
its limbs
and stacked them
nice and neat
in labeled ziplock
baggies
how the detectives
vomited at the scene
and they'll interview me
my face pale and eyes white
and they'll ask,
"Why did you do it?"
and I'll smile
and say
"What are you going to
do about it? Put me
in prison? We have
eternity here. All
your clocks are
worthless."
and people will gnash
their teeth
and look to the
sunless sky
where clouds float
with angelwing humans
and they'll throw
the bars down
and grab my hands
and together
we will soar
to the stratosphere
where the air
is clear
and eyes can
see forever.
Yes, I have the time
but you can't see it
because it's only
a matter of --

Poetry: Several...(all written today!)

2008-11-14T21:38:00.002-05:00

For The Unexpecting

Life
throws
surprises
like
curve balls
you can
let them hit
your face
or watch them
fly by
or smash them
into the
sky
and hear the world roar.

In the broader sense of the word

Relationships
are things
buried in
blocks of wood
you have to
recognize them
see them
in the grain
carve away
the excess
go with the flow
make your mistakes
features
sand them
smooth
and love the product
because
it is you
and you
are it.

DO [NOT] FEED THE ANIMALS

One may feed
a wild fox
upon viewing
its adorable tail
and, eying from
a distance
imagine it
following him
home
drinking milk
in his kitchen
lying with him
on his couch
on moviewinter nights
perhaps
surprising him
with an unseen litter
wide-eyed pups
that stare
with love and caution

but cold winds blow
with bitter rain
and one
remembers
that the fox
probably
has a litter somewhere
in a den
huddled
waiting for their mother
and who knows
she might
leave fur on the
carpet
or remain wild
and run off

things like this
so rarely
turn out well
but then
sometimes
SOMETIMES
it works.

One risks
the den
to call
her home
one must
wait
and watch
in case she follows.

Poetry: Practice

2008-11-12T19:04:00.002-05:00

I wasn't going to post this, but what the hell.
2nd poem/post today. Aint I prolific?

Practice

I know you think
you're sore, hand
but you don't know
what sore is.
Why don't you ask
the brain
about sore?
That old bladder,
so long full
just about ready
to burst,
for too long
I've held it.
So you just do
your job and
we'll piss
all over these people
in their ears
eyes
brains
Hell, we'll
piss down their throats
and shake up
their stomachs
if we're lucky.
So you just
toughen up, old hand
and do your thing
because there are
only so many
ways to piss
and so little
time
to do it.

Poetry: "Just a book," my ass...

2008-11-12T17:00:00.003-05:00

"Just a book," my ass...

Every book
represents
a segment
of a writer's
life
it is
a section
of his
soul
a scalpelsliced
quarter
of his
everbeating
heart
it quivers
with energy
and thought.

How many
ghosts
linger in the
aisles of our
libraries?
No photographer's
trick
this is the
real thing:

it's time travel,
folks!
it's telepathy!
it's magic!

Take a spout
drill it into
your forehead
turn the valve
and watch that
delicious goo
run into rectangular
mason jars
watch it
spark
with lighting
this is
immortality
this is
etching
in the nothing
this is
birthing
in the barren
this is truly
the orgasm
of the soul
and the children
are on shelves
forever awaiting
your peering eyes
or the flames
of small minds.