Bloodstream City

A Chemical Fire: Free for 5 Days

2012-02-08T07:27:00.000-05:00

I had a good time sharing my other book last month, so I figured what the shit. I'm giving away A Chemical Fire for five days, February 8th through the 12th. This is a one-shot deal, so download it now before it's gone. Tell your friends, your enemies, your frenemies, even your enefriends, though they stopped listening to you years ago.

A Chemical Fire was the first novel I ever completed, and in some ways the most clear of vision. It was one of those big ideas that only come along so often, that demand to be written down and sent out. It taught me a lot about story-writing, and as far as I think I've come since then, I'm still very proud of it.

Read it: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004G093Q2

Weak End

2012-01-29T17:38:00.004-05:00

When I make a plan and stick to it I feel like an unstoppable force. I'm moving faster than ever before and picking up speed. I'm eager to see out this year because I know what it entails- improving what I do and reaching out further into the world. People will hear what I say and know who I am, and that part of me that wants it will feed and grow and grow. That part of me that doesn't will be rejected like a transplant that didn't take.

Nicholas Cage had a cameo as himself in my dream last night. It wasn't a stretch for him, but it's good to see him taking on some smaller roles.

My Dead Night

2012-01-21T08:09:00.000-05:00

Had nothing but zombie dreams last night. Debriefing follows.

Someone in the street has the flu and is stumbling around. Theytry to get into the house. More people in the street, sick, gettingworse, traffic accidents, try to get something from my car but arunaway truck takes off the door. Realization of zombie apocalypse.Mild excitement but also panic, sense of real danger. Yelling atfamily to grab any bag they can find and fill it with food andmedicine. Filling my bag with apples and water bottles. Outside,crowds of dead.

About to leave, government responds.Dropping concrete dividers from helicopters in the street to slowthem down. It's working. Some of them are crushed under the dividers.Then a rumbling in the ground. House is suddenly raised. All houseson street coming up on metal platforms like giant car garage lifts.Feels like house will fall apart but holds together. Sense ofsunlight coming through the windows, making the room bright.

Some time later. Rickety structuresfifty feet above flood water. Zombies in the dirty water below. Whenanyone falls in they're bitten or dragged down. Have to jumpfrom one structure to the other or use ladders and ropes. Thestructure I'm on begins to topple and I have to lean it toward thenext to reach it, but the impact causes that to topple and I have tolean it toward the next. Fall into the water. Claw my way out andonto a rock with the feeling of hands on my ankles.

Some time later. Living with otherpeople on a resort or hotel property of some kind. Structures arebuilt all over to climb up and use for escape in case of attacks.Inside the main building is a spinning vault preserving artifacts ofhumanity.

Some time later. Towns are abandoned,not even zombies for some years. On a garbage detail with a group ofmen trying to clean it out. Out of the corner of my vision I spotslow movement. A single zombie. Need to deal with the situation, butthen there's another coming out the window of an old building. Then agroup from around a corner ahead. We start to run. Another group frombehind. We try to snake through the buildings to duck away but moreand more zombies surge from every corner and every building untilwe're trapped in an alley. One of the men starts to sing a song asthe zombies close in, but I can't remember the song.

Read my 2nd Book Free

2012-01-15T06:29:00.000-05:00

Today marks one year since I published my second book, a book I never planned to write until about two weeks prior, when I learned of National Novel Writing Month. The idea was simple: write a complete novel from start to finish in November. It came at just the right moment for me since I was at somewhat of a crossroads in my writing. I had just seen my first attempt at a new project fizzle, a science-fiction story not quite ready to exist, yet the other project I had in mind was too lengthy and involving to jump into just yet. With that in mind, pushing myself to write faster than ever before seemed like a good exercise. So I signed on. I went in with a skeleton of an outline, half a page at most, and even that was partly scrapped. What came of it was as unexpected to me as it is to anyone reading it, a surreal, twisting story involving experimental drugs, robots and sword swallowing. It was never intended to be read by the public, only passed among my inner circle, but these things have a tendency to find their way out. And once they do, they're out for good.

A year later, Kissing You is like Trying to Punch a Ghost is my least read book by such a large margin it essentially doesn't exist, yet the reaction I get from the title alone makes the whole thing worth it. You can almost think of it as my Snakes on a Plane; everyone talked about it, no one saw it. But I still like the book. Occasionally I open it to a random page, read a line and struggle to remember writing it, similar to thinking back to a dream from last night, or even last week. The details are there, but the frame has all but collapsed.

This book is my freak in the basement, the one everyone hears but no one acknowledges, and I want to celebrate it. So today until the 19th, you can read it totally free. If you have a Kindle you'll find it that way, if you don't just find it on Amazon and make sure to download one of the free reading apps covering everything from PC to iPhone to Android. If you do read it, take a minute to write a few words about it on Amazon, seeing as it's my only book with zero reviews.

You hear the chains rattling down there. It's time to make eye contact.

Coagulations

2012-01-10T22:22:00.001-05:00

The woman told him he was doing it wrong. You don't lean back. That just makes you sick, gives you the runs. You lean forward and let it clot. Keep the nose above the heart. Pinch the bridge and apply ice to the forehead or to the back of the neck. That's fine, he said, but tasting all these pennies was making him feel loose in the jaw.

After the flow stopped she told him to avoid anything that might make it start again, like blowing his nose or rubbing it too hard. All he could think was: if he was the kind of person who knew how to avoid a nosebleed in the first place, he never would have come here.

He was happy he'd worn a red shirt that day.

Take the Hand from the Picture

2012-01-06T22:32:00.001-05:00

Nulla dies sine linea. This has been my motto for some time, without my realizing it. It's attributed to a fourth century Greek painter by the name of Apelles, and it means "No day without a line". Apelles believed that art was a daily discipline. Like a true artist he boiled that idea down to its simplest form- four words in Latin, five in English, and in the process he invented a simple rule to follow, one that I believe yields results. I have certain word counts that I keep myself accountable for. One is optimal. Half that is minimal. And if I don't reach at least one of those numbers on any given day, I label myself a failure for that day. It's harsh. And it needs to be. And this year I'm raising my numbers.

I don't fancy myself an artist, though I do find myself entrenched in one of the arts. A practitioner, maybe. Calling oneself an artist is the first step toward complete uselessness. Maybe it's my particular personality but I almost view fiction from a more scientific viewpoint than I do a creative one. The technical aspects, the chemistry between the various elements. It's like a form of math which has to be reinvented midway through every equation for it to work. That's why it can be so challenging at times, why the chase eludes. The toughest game draws the most fools, and I number among the crowd.

A lot of people talk, some of them write, but only a few of them write every day. Nulla dies sine linea. No day without a line.

Numbered

2011-12-27T20:54:00.000-05:00

2012 is almost here, and that has me thinking about what happened during 2011 to get me to this point. This year gave me more new readers than any previous year of my life, thanks almost entirely to the Kindle and the chance it gave me to offer freebies. Driven by that, and by the good feedback I got, I spent a good part of the year writing my serial The Mountain and The City. Between February and December I completed four parts, with the fourth hitting tomorrow and the final two coming in early 2012. From there, the plan is to throw myself into a larger project- a series of Noir books I've had on the back-burner for the past year.

Looking back at my rate of output, I've realized it's too slow. Fifteen-thousand words every two months has been standard for me lately, and I don't know, maybe to some people that's respectable, but personally I know I can do better, not in exchange for quality but in exchange for doubt. Too much time is spent second-guessing myself. It's time to shear off the side-views. At my current rate it would take a good chunk of 2012 to finish up The Mountain and The City, pushing the next project to who-knows-when, maybe even 2013. I don't want to think that far ahead, and if the Mayans have their way I won't have to, so something has to be done, and it's probably the only part of this I have any control over.

Ironically, given the longer form of a novel versus a serial, this increase in output won't be visible to anyone but me for some time. So I want to stay busy in other ways, too, ways that keep me on the radar. I'd like to do more blog posts, hopefully including guest posts on other blogs. Maybe even write some articles if the opportunity is there.

Production. This is the only thing I have in my control, and that's what I'll be focusing on. This month I sold more books than I've ever sold in a month (it's not much), but as good as that felt it was only a bi-product of my actions, not a direct result. This year I won't be looking at what happens. Instead, I'll be looking at what I do.

Sit down. Do more. Do better. That's 2012 for me. That or Earth's magnetic poles flipping due to a massive solar flare resulting in a cataclysmic event which spells the end of human civilization. Either way.

The Darkening Days of Winter

2011-11-26T07:25:00.001-05:00

I just found myself watching footage which was shot yesterday in a Walmart in Mesquite, Texas. It showed a crowd of Black Friday shoppers crammed together, shouting at each other while tearing apart a display of video-games. In the center of the chaos a woman is being pulled out, presumably by her daughter, who is trying to keep her from being trampled by the masses. As I watched this footage, I couldn't help but feel both angry and truly sad for them, because if this is the kind of behavior human beings allow themselves to degrade to over something as trivial as a game, what hope is there?

If these were a starving people, and this was the last crate of food which had been air-dropped into their village by the military, even then I would feel disappointed in those people for not trying to act in a brotherly, civilized manner, but I would understand that survival can do some dark things to people, and that they were only acting on self-preservation and the protection of their families. As it is, these people in Walmart were elbowing and smothering each other over toys, and seeing them do it can only make me feel discouraged. There is something fundamentally wrong here, and no amount of jokes or explanations can hide it.

It's either ironic or telling that Black Friday starts only a few hours after Thanksgiving has ended, a holiday which is meant to slow people down from their day-to-day lives long enough to remind them they should be thankful for the things they have in their lives. Thankful for their friends, their families, the food and shelter that keeps them alive. How flimsy, how meaningless does this message become when millions of people finish their meals, wipe their faces, excuse themselves from the dinner table and then drive to a store to act like some kind of goddamned animal.

This. This is how we as a people have come to start the holiday season. It's no wonder Christmas has become a twisted, depraved version of what it used to be. I wonder how many of the vein-headed, finger-choked consumers in that crowd praise Jesus, and have convinced themselves that this is how they show their love for him. I wonder if they know that December 25th is not his real birthday, but was chosen to overtake a Pagan holiday, and I wonder if they appreciate the sick humor of celebrating the life of a pacifist by clawing at the chests of their fellow man to save a few dollars on a toy.

Group psychology is an interesting and scary thing. Maybe on their own each of these people can act civilized, courteous, but bring them together in a tense situation and they turn on each other, devolve, act on their basest instincts. Deep in my heart there's a special fear reserved for crowds, because I know that you can put a man in a suit, teach him economics and proper grammar and appreciation for wine, but if you place twenty of these men in a small room and drop dollar bills on them, they will chew each other's fucking eyes out.

Friends 'til The End

2011-10-23T07:34:00.000-04:00

I'm in love with the apocalypse. If you've been around me or read my stuff for longer than five minutes, you probably know that already. When I wrote my first book, A Chemical Fire, I set out to make my definitive apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic zombie/pseudo-zombie story. I put all those things into it that I'd never seen in a movie or comic or book but always wanted to, and when it was finished I expected it to be out of my system. I would still read it, sure, but it was a well I wouldn't dip into again.

When it came time to spread the word about A Chemical Fire, I began to look up blogs and sites that dealt with apocalyptic fiction, and what I found surprised me. There's an entire community out there that loves the concept of the end of the world just as much if not more than me, and the people who run those sites are the most passionate of all. For the most part they make no profit from their sites, and those who do only years after anyone trying to cash in would have long quit. Yet they continue to search for news, update their sites, respond to readers and field email.

I'm a fan of these sites now. I visit them religiously and follow them on Twitter, and it's because of this that I ended up going back into the genre to write The Mountain and The City, which started out as a short story and turned into a serial, part three of which came out a few days ago. I never intended to be here again, but here I am. The well turned out to be deeper than I knew.

The contact I've had with the faces behind these sites has been overwhelmingly positive, people who are way too friendly to be rooting for life-ending cataclysm, so I wanted to share those sites with you. Check them out, see what you like. And if you end up like me, sticking around for longer than you planned, tell them I sent you.

Online Post-Apocalyptic Fiction - A Squidoo lens by Shanna that points to all kinds of content, a lot of it free.
The Post Apoc - Run by Eric, a passionate guy who also seems to be obsessed with handmade weapons. Not updated often, but definitely entertaining. He wrote a review of ACF and even hosted a giveaway.
Megaton.us - An entire network of PA sites, including some fairly active forums. Bill, aka Megaton, still finds time to read my stuff and tell people about it.
Quiet Earth - A great site for movie news especially. It has started to branch out a bit and included more general sci-fi and generally dark material.
Survive The Apocalypse - This site offered to feature an original story of mine, and when I sat down to think of what that could be I ended up with The Mountain and The City. Sadly they've since changed formats and ditched the fiction section, but it can still be found on the old version.

My Top 10 (9+3) Books of All Time (So Far)

2011-09-25T20:38:00.000-04:00

It's not easy for me to make a definitive list of anything, especially things I love. It always seems that for every one addition I make to that list two crimes of omission are committed. Given that, I started compiling a list of my top ten (in no order) favorite books of all time, and I decided it should ignore format, genre, and social value, looking at it as I often do, with a combination of the "If-I-Was-On-A-Desert-Island" and the 'If-I-Had-To-Prove-To-Aliens-We-Shouldn't-Explode" scenarios.

I say "so far" because I'm always looking for that next book which will rewrite or rearrange everything for me, forcing me think about the written word in a new way. The "9+3" is because, as you'll see, there are three books which blend together as a concept for me, included for what they do for the art and mean to me as a writer more than they stand on their own. I've listed a good amount of these in other places, including my site, but I've never given a proper explanation of why they're favorites. So, here goes.

1) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson

If I had to choose one literary hero above all others, it would be Dr. Thompson. Unapologetic in his views, feared by his enemies and loved by his friends, he was a monster of a man, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Hunter at his unbeatable, undeniable best. He took what began as a Rolling Stone assignment to cover a race in the middle of the desert and turned it into the best drug trip ever captured on paper. Then he had the balls to make it about something. His search for the American Dream became a time capsule holding the death of the sixties, told in a style so distinct it was practically trademarked. Hunter took politics and made them not only personable, but dangerous. Reading this book is so enjoyable I find myself having to slow down to taste every word.

2) Dermaphoria, by Craig Clevenger

I devour Clevenger's work. I'm greedy for it. Considering he's only put out two novels in the past ten years, I'm forced to join his newsletter and check his site far more often than necessary to catch wind of the slightest development. As great as his debut novel The Contortionist's Handbook is, and it is great, Dermaphoria is the one I had to put down after reading only three sentences to get in touch with my friends and make sure they were reading it. Clevenger is that good, constructing sentence after scenario after character so pitch-perfect it angers me to know they're not mine. In Dermaphoria it all comes together to tell the disjointed story of an amnesiac drug chemist, piecing his memory together after a near-fatal overdose.

3) Invisible Monsters, by Chuck Palahniuk

With all due respect to Mr. Palahniuk, I'm not sure whether I outgrew him or he outgrew him, but sadly I haven't enjoyed or bothered to pick up his last four books. If you look into it you'll find that those four books came out in the last four years, which is telling. He's the polar opposite of Clevenger in that he puts out too many books too fast and doesn't give them a chance to fully form, or, in plainer words, shed the shit. However there's no denying the lasting effect Palahniuk has had on fiction and the chances publishers take on darker material. Most of the spotlight fell on one of his other books, even though rule one of that book clearly states we shouldn't talk about it, but the book that stuck with me most was Invisible Monsters, the story of a model who has her face blown off, and the drag queen who bases his look on said model's former face. I love a properly done twist, and while that other unmentionable book has quite the example, Invisible Monsters has a dozen. Practically every chapter reveals some previously withheld detail that changes not only everything to come, but everything you've already read. This to me, both the reader me and the writer me, is one of fiction's greatest strengths- the trust that comes from letting someone else see for you, someone who may not be entirely trust-worthy.

4) Batman: The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore

In the third grade, when most boys wanted to be Superman or Spiderman, I wanted to be the Joker. I vividly remember standing under the hanging branches of a weeping willow tree during recess, telling a friend that when I was older I'd end up in an insane asylum. The reason? I'd seen it in Killing Joke, and the Joker just made it look too fucking cool. Alan Moore showed us comics could be dark and cruel and funny all at once. They could show nudity and madness. And they could be really, really good. Either by chance or by the simple evil of its cover it drew me in at the comic shop at the ripe age of nine. Thankfully I wasn't carded, because it changed the way I saw comics forever. I must have re-read it a hundred times before retiring it to it's dust-resistant grave. Unknown to me at the time, Killing Joke would be referenced as one of the turning points in comics toward more adult-oriented themes. It also laid down the popularly-accepted origin of the Joker and influenced both movie versions of the character. Supposedly Heath Ledger was handed a copy of Killing Joke by Christopher Nolan when he took on the role.

5) House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski

When people talk about the Bible, I bet their expressions are close to mine when I talk about House of Leaves. Like them I'd gladly spend my time going around, telling people why they should have a copy in their homes. The problem is, I could tell you what it's about (a narrative about a manuscript about a documentary about a house that defies logic), but like the Matrix you really have to see it for yourself to understand. Not many novels can be considered an object of art, but House of Leaves wears the label comfortably. It's a masterpiece of typography and ergodic literature, and it could only be achieved with such single-minded vision because Danielewski went to the printing house, hunched down and slaved over it on his own. The resulting tome is a testament to the dying paper book. As interesting as e-books are, and as thankful as I am for what they mean to me as an independent writer, a work like House of Leaves is simply impossible to translate into any other format. All those lists and footnotes and recovered photos would be there, sure, but the effect would be wholly lost. Do yourself a favor. Go to a bookstore, find House of Leaves and look inside. If you don't find yourself helplessly taking it to the register and putting down money for it, you're a stronger person than I.

6) Nobody Move, by Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson seems to me one of the last, great classics. As far as I'm aware he has no internet presence; no Twitter account, no blog, not even a website, and so it's difficult to tune into what he has going on. But when he does write something, you can be sure he'll write the shit out of it. Jesus' Son was full of so much vivid honesty that reading it was like that moment you hear your favorite band for the first time. And just as you do with a favorite band, I flipped between what my favorite work of his was- Jesus' Son, about his alcoholism, or Seek, a collection of his brilliant non-fiction articles. I went back and forth this way right until Nobody Move was released, and then there was no contest. It's not as flashy a book as the others, but that's where its power comes from: the effortless way with which it owns you. All it is, really, is the story of a low-end criminal mixed up with medium-end criminals, with a girl thrown in for measure, but you never spend a second not caring about the stakes, not enjoying the ride. It's genre fiction by a literary king, and instead of feeling dumbed down it feels pared down, honed to a stabbing point. Sometimes your favorite is the one you want to go back to the most to relive it.

7) The Informers, by Bret Easton Ellis

In general I like the idea of Bret Easton Ellis more than I actually like him. Like someone out of one of his books, he comes on strong, and seems a bit in love with himself. However I need to know that writers like him are out there, scaring people with their books, saying things others are too timid to. But even if I'm not an adoring fan I have to tip my hat to Ellis for one book in particular: The Informers. With this inter-connected collection of short stories about (of course) Los Angeles, he manages to reveal a dozen, different sides of the same, vapid society, offering a handful of characters you either love to hate or feel your heart break as you watch their cruel surroundings consume them and turn them into one of its own. This alone is enough for a good book, but then one, final element comes into play from so far left field you don't see it coming, until it cracks you straight in the skull. It's one hell of a surprise, pulled off with flawless skill, and it elevates the entire book to an unexpected level of greatness. Well played, Ellis.

8) Book of Sketches, by Jack Kerouac

There's a pattern forming here. I tend to acknowledge an author's more known work yet celebrate their more obscure, less celebrated stuff. In other words, I might be a book snob. Kerouac's huge hit was The Road, easily the most widely-read book to come out of the Beat Generation. My only issue with that book is I think it's too long a form to maintain Kerouac's passion, so that by the end I felt numb to it. Book of Sketches solves that by not being a novel at all but rather compiled pieces from the notebook he kept in his back pocket and ritually, even obsessively detailed the things he witnessed inside. Not only does this set an example any writer would be smart to follow, it offers a thousand, tiny moments of genius for us to discover. It finds a happy medium between his poetry and his prose, and finally it acts as the most telling kind of autobiography- one told in brief moments, those the man felt were important enough to put down on paper. All Kerouac is worth a read, but this one slapped me the hardest.

9) Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

I'd always meant to read this classic, and when I finally did about a year or two ago I kicked myself for waiting so long. Then I went to the library and borrowed all the Bradbury they had. His voice is so modern and clean I had to stare at Fahrenheit's 1953 publishing date a few times to make sure I wasn't reading it wrong. It's no wonder it blew people away when it came out. This is one case where an author's most popular work, while being nowhere near the only thing he had to offer, is also his greatest. Warning of a future in which no one reads books, and in fact can't own them by law, brought out the best in Bradbury. It's science fiction yet it isn't, common for Bradbury, one of the most respected sci-fi authors (the Ray Bradbury Award is the highest honor in its field) yet he claims he isn't one. Don't be fooled into thinking Fahrenheit 451 should be lumped in with all those boring classics found on mandatory school reading lists. While some of those dead texts can feel like punishment, others become classics because they're actually that good.

+3) The Unfortunates, by B.S. Johnson, The Microscripts, by Robert Walser, The Atrocity Exhibition, by J.G. Ballard

Finally, there are three works which I group together because I love what they represent to me, which is the endless possibilities inherent in books. The various forms they can take when approached with a mind that's either innovative or, to be honest, mentally ill. And sometimes both. Books like these free me up in the way I think about books themselves, similar to the way House of Leaves does except that that book stands very much on its own.

The Unfortunates is an attempt to create a non-linear narrative in the most honest way possible- by taking it out of the author's hands and leaving it completely to chance. You see, The Unfortunates is made up of twenty-seven, individually-bound chapters which the reader removes from the box and is free to shuffle and read any way they choose. While the premise could be considered gimmicky, the idea works because the story- a true account of Johnson's friend dying of cancer- is told through random memories as they float to the surface during Johnson's return to a familiar city. Though I'd like to see something like this tried with a more fictional, event-based story, there were enough unplanned moments in my reading for the whole thing to be worthwhile. I compare it to a videogame. When something amazing happens through gameplay and physics versus scripted cinematics, it always seems more special, more real. Ironic that a "Book-in-a-Box" showed thinking outside one, and it ends up as a one-of-a-kind experience.

The Microscripts is a book of writings by the German author Robert Walser, a man who spent a great deal of his life in a sanitarium. Walser was unique because due to a combination of his illness and a lack of confidence he wrote in tiny marks a millimeter high on scraps of paper he found. For years after his death the scribbles were believed to be written in a code that died along with Walser, until someone realized it was actually German script so small it was barely legible. The scraps were painstakingly transcribed and sadly revealed not the ramblings of a madman but rather a real author with a real voice. These Microscripts come reproduced with color photos of the original scraps, written on the backs of receipts or in the margins of book covers, letting us look into the mind of the tortured artist.

Finally, The Atrocity Exhibition is what I'm talking about when I say both innovative and mentally ill, because I'm not sure anyone in their right mind could write something even close to Atrocity Exhibition. Nor anyone less than brilliant. If you need evidence of how disturbed the late Ballard was, you only need know that a) he wrote Crash about his repeated theme of sexual arousal by car crash, and that b) the movie Empire of The Sun (with young Christian Bale running through the wasteland of WWII internment camps) is based on Ballard's childhood. Atrocity Exhibition is about as bizarre and disjointed as they come, depicting a world post-JFK assassination. Eerily abandoned and sterile, it focuses primarily on a doctor attempting to somehow map out the architecture of sex. It treats dead celebrities and parking garages as equal sexual objects. In short, it's genius and it's insane. I could never write a book like this in a hundred years, and I probably sleep better for it, but all I have to do is crack the cover on this for ten seconds to read a sentence or even a chapter title so brilliant I have to put it back down. Which is for the best, because attempting an in-depth sitting with this one is both challenging and off-putting. It took me a few years to actually finish it even though in reality its not very long. Do I recommend it? Yes. And also not at all. That's the greatest compliment I believe I can offer a novel.

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2011-08-25T07:47:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, as I sat sweating in my car, a story occurred to me. You see for me there's the kind of story that I develop slowly, one piece at a time, often not knowing how they'll all fit together. But then there's the kind that slaps me in the face before I see it coming. De-Partment was that kind of story, the kind that, even though I had other plans, it seemed I had to put those aside and write this thing.

Which is what I did.

Once it was finished, I decided the right thing to do was to give it away, and given I'd been thinking about starting a newsletter the whole thing dove-tailed nicely. All you have to do in order to read De-Partment is sign up for my newsletter, but don't worry, I won't be using it to flood you with links to buy. I plan to be better than that, now and always. So if you're interested in a free book and a potentially entertaining newsletter, sign up below. The book comes in PDF if you don't have an e-reader, EPUB if you do.

http://tinyletter.com/bloodstreamcity

Description:

“Welcome to the Parts Department of the great city of Smoke.”

These words greet Tuxxel on his first day at the warehouse, a building so massive the ceiling can't be seen. Yet what follows is anything but welcoming. An Exterminator in the city of Smoke, he finds himself leading a life of violence and subservience. Picked on and abused by his supervisor he has little choice but to do the dirty work Smoke demands of him. As the days pass, and he learns of his city's horrific treatment of its citizens, he finds it more and more difficult to listen to the orders given to him. He must do what feels right. But disobedience has its consequences.

De-Partment is a dystopian novella about the struggle to maintain one's sense of self, set in a world both recognizable and entirely foreign.

Here's Your Change

2011-08-21T09:05:00.000-04:00

Until the time comes when I can support myself writing full-time, I have a Day Job. Capital letters. Forty hours. The Big Suck. In that Day Job I work as a bank teller, usually head teller, which means I'm responsible for this great, big pile of cash that I'm allowed to play with and look after but never take further than the bullet-resistant glass. My power is like that of the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade- it's incredible to behold, but it can't cross the seal.

Or, as I like to say: I have the only job that gets worse the more money you throw at me.

In October I'll have completed three years at this job, a number that's scary considering how fast it came, and how bad the job has gotten at moments. There were stretches of time in which I can only explain why I showed up in the morning as a sick fascination. That thing where you say, "It can't possibly get worse," and then it does, and you laugh and say it again. And it happens again.

At times like that I like to imagine myself sitting up on a hill, watching a gruesome train derailment. Maybe I'm eating popcorn.

The main reason why The Job got so bad, and not all of the time, but a good amount of it, is simple: under-staffing. I worked at a branch which simply didn't have enough employees for the amount of work that needed to get done. That kind of thing tends to snowball- low morale, lack of energy, all the little things that get put off until some mystical future that never quite comes, stays just out of reach- it all congeals into this great, gaping wound that doesn't get a chance to heal.

About a month ago, on a Monday, at three-thirty, thirty minutes to closing time, I was called into the office. There I was told quite simply that, due to some shifting needs in the area, I'd be reporting to another branch the next morning.

I'd been transferred. Nearly three years in one place, and I had thirty minutes to say goodbye.

This was a shock to me, as you can imagine, as was walking into my new situation the next morning and finding I'd gone from an old, dirty building built in the fifties and frequented by the elderly and generally not-well-off, to a bright, clean block made of glass and daylight within eyesight of a golf course, visited by an endless line of lawyers and trust-fund babies. All these people had teeth and used the internet! They wore ties and had investment brokers on speed-dial!

I was lost.

Now, a month later, I'm finding myself as adapted to the change as I'll likely ever be. Not entirely, but enough. There's a strange resentment in dealing with people who have money when you have little, but mainly in dealing with the ones who don't deserve it, who push it around like a shield, with a sense of entitlement in every move. The ones who see waiting in line as spit in their faces. Whose immune systems violently over-react to the word No. Whose primary weapon is the threat of Taking Their Money Elsewhere. It's an insult to people not so fortunate to see ones who are, yet take no pleasure in it at all. Or maybe it's an important and affirming lesson. Who knows.

And then, just when your mind is made up about these Money People, you'll turn around and meet one who's the nicest guy you've ever met. Or you'll meet, as I did, the plastic surgeon who uses his own money to bring kids over from Iraq who have been disfigured in the war, who puts them up in comfortable surroundings and then rebuilds their faces, free of charge.

But it's not all doctors and lawyers, of course. There are the nurses and drivers, too, the secretaries and the retirees. Yesterday I helped a man with a check from the Narcotics Department who looked head-to-toe like an undercover drug cop, and when he walked away he was replaced by a sushi chef in full uniform, the shirt held closed by a safety pin.

Does anyone see these things and simply move on through their day? Am I the only one haunted by intangible connections?

The only constant is change, as they say, change is good, change is growth. But change always seems to have a running start on me, and I have to chase after it, lungs burning in my chest, to catch the trailing seams of its shirt.

A Few Questions for The Reader

2011-08-11T23:18:00.000-04:00

So this is what's going on, maybe you can help.

I'm starting a mailing list, and the plan is to send out some kind of newsletter once a month at most, but really it could be longer. Whenever I have something relevant to share, let's say, in a way that won't be just a bunch of spam. But I need some input on what people would want out of such a newsletter. What would make them excited to stay on the list.

Have any of you signed up for an author newsletter before, and if you have, what do you like about it? Just as important, what don't you like? I would also want to give people an incentive for signing up, some kind of automatic reward, and I'm more or less decided that it would be a free story. In fact, I think the novella I recently finished would make a very fine gift. After sign-up the person would receive a welcome e-mail which would include a link to PDF and EPUB versions of the book. I know that not everyone e/screen-reads, but it's the most realistic way I could give away something for free.

I'd really like some input on this. I'm not about to waste people's time on garbage, if I'm going to do it I'm doing it right. Comment below or email me at Brian at Bloodstreamcity dot com, whatever you need to do to be heard.

Follow-upper

2011-07-28T07:38:00.000-04:00

It's cliche' to start a post by talking about how there hasn't been one in a while, yet one we've all been guilty of. Here's mine.

My excuse is at least is one I can be proud of, and that's that I've been off doing what I do. After Amazon suddenly made "The Mountain and The City" free on Kindle, I had even more reason to push forward on the project I had started, which was to turn that story into a serialized novel. A serial is something I've always wanted to write, having always been interested in stories like that of Great Expectations and the way people were so impatient for the next installment they literally lined up on the docks to wait for the shipment to come off the boat. Serials seemed to die down over the past number of years, but now with the internet and the development of ebooks and email, Twitter, Facebook and all the other methods of communication, as well as condensed time and attention, I feel times have strangely come back around to making sense for the serial.

It seemed to me that this story made perfect material for a serial, and having sudden exposure on Kindle (3,000 downloads so far, still mind-blowing) even furthered that, so I hunkered down and completed Part II, which I'm proud to say is out now on Kindle and Smashwords. Already I've been involved in some interesting conversations about the idea of the serial ebook on Twitter and Goodreads, most especially the always active "Apocalypse Whenever" group, where I'm getting some good feedback.

It's an interesting experiment regardless of what else, and I'm curious to see how it plays out. I'll share anything I learn and I invite everyone to leave suggestions/thoughts/doubts/opinions in the comments. I'm, as always, open to hearing what people think about what I put out there and how I go about it.

Something for Nothing

2011-07-07T07:26:00.002-04:00

Big announcement: The Mountain and The City just became a free e-book in Amazon's Kindle Store. Either sometime late last night or early this morning, Amazon dropped the price to zero in order to match how it was being offered through Smashwords and the affiliates they distribute to. I'm not sure when it actually happened, but the book has already hit #403 in Amazon's overall rankings, as well as #19 in the Horror genre and #7 in Short Stories, and is being downloaded more as I watch.

This has really made my morning, and I thank everyone for the support you've given me as well as the new people who are just checking out my stuff. I'm actually writing Part II of The Mountain and The City as we speak (to be fair, I'm writing a blog post about it, but I believe we all accept the parameters of this phrase) and I'm even more excited to finish that and put it out there now that this happened.

**EDIT**

Twenty-four hours later, the story has been downloaded over twelve-hundred times and is sitting at #130 in the rankings. I've wanted to crack Amazon's top 100 for a while and this is the closest I've come by a mile or so.

An Epic Battle in Two Acts

2011-07-02T07:43:00.001-04:00

I leave words like slugs leave slime.

On all my computers, on my cell phone, even on old, unlabeled cds, I have files of random text. Open some of my closets and you'll find manila folders bulging with stacks of papers, both hand-written and printed. In drawers you'll come across backs of receipts, corners of flyers, with only a sentence or two on them which by now have lost all context. They're ideas I need to get down before they disappear, or conversations I've had. Or people I've met who struck me as such fully-formed characters I knew I'd write them into something some day. Or dreams.

In one such place I had these: two notes which I left for my wife before leaving the house, which I usually do in a text file on our computer's desktop. Screw you, Post-its. The day before the first note, leading up to a trip to Mexico, I had spotted a spider in the corner of the bathroom when I was getting into the shower, but by the time I had gotten back out it was gone. Worse, it seemed to be colored a deep red.

This is what followed.

Dearest Natalia,

I hesitate to tell you the following, as it will certainly put you into a state of distress, however I believe in my heart that you deserve fair warning in these matters. In short, the bathroom spider exists. Yes, the large arachnid which I did briefly spy upon entering the bathroom those several nights ago, half asleep, torch in hand, is real, and continues to be real and to live. I spotted it just this morning, in the far corner to the left of the mirror, as I sat for my morning rituals. I can confirm only this: that it is large, that it is red (yes, I regret to say, red, as a hemophiliac's nightmare), and that it possesses telepathic abilities. This last detail is the only logical conclusion I can make based on what I witnessed of it, which was nothing less than fully developed psychic power. The incident in question concerned the matter of an immediate response in the bathroom spider to my silent retreival of the tissue which I had planned to form my weapon with. It responded by proceeding directly behind the mirror, out of harm's way, before I could so much as stand let alone deliver the deathblow. I feel I've failed you in no small way by falling short of protecting you from this hellish beast which has violated the security and sanctity of our homestead, but I take solace in the unexpected skill my enemy brandished. I was, after all, outnumbered, at least in the area of legs, by a ratio of eight to two. I've formulated several ideas as to how we can proceed from here to fell the intruder, not the least of which is burning this house to the ground and starting over somewhere the bathroom spider can never find us. Montenegro, perhaps. I regret to be the bearer of such grave news but as I stated previously, I believe you have the right to know the particular danger you find yourself in as you await my return. I wish you good luck and humbly recommend you take caution.

Dutifully yours,
Brian Martinez

Dearest Natalia,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and in high spirits. If they are not, I have news which very well may lift them. I say it with great joy: the bathroom spider is dead. I felled the beast.

The day started in a rather dismal and unassuming manner, as I rose feeling the effects of what is surely a touch of the consumption which has afflicted these parts. Do not worry for my well-being, I have already frequented the apothecary, and he supplied me with several tonics which he assured me would cure the illness. It was in this weakened state that I entered the bathroom this morning, forgetting myself for a moment and ignoring the danger inherent in the room. Quickly the thought struck out at me and I whipped around, scanning the corners, the nooks and crannies the beast is known to inhabit, and surely enough it was there, above the shower, with all of its red eyes trained upon me. I feel comfortable in admitting to you that at first I did not feel up to the task, what with my weakened state and lack of sleep. It was only my thoughts of you that steeled me for the task. I thought of you, sitting alone in the house all day, frightened to enter a room of your own home, and the image angered me so much I put my mind to it, right then and there: it was to be the beast, or me.

I withdrew my weapon of tissue paper and went to the beast where it crouched. I felt not only its eyes upon me but the effects of its mind control which at this point I am most sure it possessed. Its shrilly voice was inside my head, taunting me, confusing me. But I would not lay down so easily. I shall spare you the more gruesome details of our battle, but I will tell you this: I felt as if the Lord Himself guided my hand. My strike was fierce and my aim true, and in the end I stood before the fallen monster and, for just the briefest of seconds, I pitied it. Strange, isn't it, how we can pity the very thing which terrifies us. Such thoughts are useless, I am sure, but there they are regardless.

We are free, my dear. We can go about our lives here in the cottage and raise our family in the knowledge that we are safe. I believe a celebration is called for, even a voyage. I have always wanted to vacation in a more tropical region, perhaps the time has come.

Triumphantly yours,
Brian Martinez

Foreshadower

2011-05-26T07:43:00.003-04:00

This is the cover for the novella I'm working on. In some down-time I decided to get it done, and I liked the way it came out so I thought I'd share it. It's part of a forthcoming anthology but I might put it out separately as well.

I've probably never mentioned that I make the covers to all my stuff, which owes to the fact that I've never wanted to be seen as an "artist", only a writer. I happen to have the skills necessary to make a decent cover and I know what I want and I don't cost anything, so the choice is easy. I've never once entertained a High-Art view of myself and I don't plan to. This is something I need to do and I do it the way I know how. I've personally never liked the snobbish side of art, and a while ago I decided if I ever start a movement or a group, I'll call it The Anti-Warhols.

An interesting fact about this image- I photographed this wall in the boiler room of the building I work in, sans handprint, of course. Given the story of De-Partment, which you'll know soon enough, I find it pretty appropriate.

Click the cover for full-size.

Reaching, Searching

2011-05-06T08:32:00.000-04:00

I recently made a return to short stories after being away from it for a number of years. This was the form I started out in, when I was young and didn't have the attention span, or, put another way, enough words in me. I used to struggle to fill a page. I'd get to the bottom and say, "Well, that's enough, isn't it?" and the answer was yes and that was the end. After a while, though, the answer was no, and I moved on to a second page, which I'd have a hard time filling.

My breakthrough came with A Chemical Fire, my first novel which took a few years to finish and came in at just over 50,000 words, a length, I should add, which some publishers don't accept as long enough for a novel. It's short, to be sure, but as you can imagine someone who once had a hard time filling a page might say, I do believe in brevity.

From there I moved directly into writing a second book, The Scapegoatist. Though I had some issues with it and ultimately had to put it in the drawer until I'm ready to dissect and sew it back together, hence its invisible status, that book took about a year to finish and came in at 80,000 words. An improvement in production, if not success.

Then I started a science fiction book, which I'm not ready to reveal the name of, that wasn't ready to be written and told me so. A false-start, but not an end.

At this point I wasn't sure whether to attempt a restart of that book or move onto another project I'm planning, which I've referenced and which involves "A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean", a short story I wrote to pass the time while I shuffled my feet about what to do. Just then, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, came along and offered me a challenge while I made my decision: write a novel in a month. I did, completing 50,000 words in a month, then adding another 11,000 the next to finish the thing.

Still being not sure where to move next, or being sure but reluctant to begin, was what brought me back to short stories. "An anthology," I thought. Write some new stories. Collect some old favorites and give them solid edits and rewrites. I went back and forth on this, even, wondering if I should alter older work or leave them as time capsules, until I compared it to a remastered re-release of an album, like Nine Inch Nails recently did with Pretty Hate Machine, and that seemed to warm me up to the idea.

I wrote "The Mountain and The City", an apocalyptic tale, pretty quickly and very much enjoyed it, even got good reactions to it. Then I moved onto another story, science fiction also, and to my surprise found it growing bigger and bigger until I realized I may have a novella on my hands. Who knew? Not me, and that's the beauty of this thing; the not knowing, the discovering, the sharing of unexpected turnouts. Now my anthology will include a novella, it seems. Who knew.

Before that happens, though, I've been thinking about sharing it in some unique way, something different. I like the idea of broadcasting works through Twitter, as some writers have done, but that wouldn't be fitting for this story. It would be too drawn out, as i think it would be better to write with that kind of sharing in mind. Maybe I'll do that some day. With social networks, blogs, websites, image sharing sites and so on I feel there's something I can do that would be interesting to watch and follow, but like so many other things it's just kicking around right now, shuffling feet, back and forth, through my head, my hands, my heart. If you have an idea, I'm here to hear it. Comment. Post. Speak. I'm here to hear it.

Sell Abrasion

2011-03-05T08:46:00.002-05:00

As part of "Read an E-Book Week" I'm giving away Kissing You is Like Trying to Punch a Ghost. Just go to Smashwords between March 6th and 12th and enter coupon RE100. All I ask in return of readers is they eventually write a review on Smashwords, Goodreads or Amazon.

I've been thinking about how it's an interesting time to be both a reader and a writer. There used to be such a divide between the two- fans interacting with their heroes over autograph tables, at best- but now, with all the routes that exist, the table has collapsed. Some mystery may have been lost but in many ways both sides have gained a voice and a face. Publishers and writers can no longer treat the public the same way. They have to engage them head on, listen to them, respond to them. And yeah, maybe some people don't need to be heard. But at least everyone gets a chance to prove it.

Something happened over the past few days that capped off what I had been thinking about. On March 1st, The Information by James Gleick was published. It's a non-fiction title, a history and theory of information and communication, appropriately. On March 2nd nothing happened. On March 3rd I walked into a library, noticed it on the shelf and borrowed it. All normal, but the interesting part happened on March 4th. To join in on the #fridayreads tag, I mentioned on Twitter that I was reading that very book. A little while later Pantheon Books, the publisher of The Information, retweeted my statement and included James Gleick's Twitter name with it, meaning Gleick himself, being an active participant of Twitter, almost definitely saw it. That's it, that's the end of the story, but the fact that it's almost commonplace now shows how far we've come, because what it means is this: three days after a major publishing house released their latest title, I, a reader, had been directly heard by both the publisher and the author. Compared with how things were even five or ten years ago it's almost shocking to be that visible, that connected with a book. There used to be a steel plate between the two sides. Now the wall is paper.

I'm curious to see where we go from here. Technology isn't inherently good or evil, I believe, like any man-made device. A hammer can be used to build a house or bludgeon a skull. There's a responsibility on both sides not to abuse the new handshake.

Momentum

2011-02-16T18:15:00.003-05:00

The book I wrote between November 1st and November 30th as a part of NaNoWriMo is complete. It was an experience that taught me a great deal about discipline, which comes down to simply sitting down, sitting down, sitting down and doing the work. It was a huge leap from how I used to do things, which was much more laborious and stressful and took about five years if at all. I think the ideal method is probably somewhere between the two, but I suppose in a way you have to experience both ends of the spectrum to know where the center is.

The book is a strange one, but not intentionally so, not for the sake of it, because that's something I never do, never even read books like that let alone write them. It's on Smashwords and Amazon, on Kindle and in paperback.

On another note, my list of "Top 5 Post-Apocalyptic Television Shows" was just put up on The Post Apoc, a good site for the apocalypse enthusiast. It was fun to do and I'm sure I'll do more like it in the future.

Hands

2011-02-05T11:32:00.003-05:00

Good amount going on right now, strong momentum, staying busy. In November I took part in National Novel Writing Month, hit 50,000 word mark on time and kept on going. Finished the book in December and now giving it a polish. Decided against any heavy edits to preserve what happened- a strange book came through, surprisingly clear, that I never intended to write. Plan to put it out there as soon as possible and keep moving.

Wrote a short story called "The Mountain and The City" for a post-apocalyptic site. http://www.survivetheapocalypse.net/fiction/ is the link, free to read, free to enjoy. Thought it came out well. More involving other sites to come soon, small things.

Posted a giveaway contest on Goodreads in January, signed copy of A Chemical Fire. Random winner chosen by site but I was happy with the choice, a girl in Minneapolis who reads horror/zombie fiction. Wrote to her and she seemed like a good person. Happy with the choice.

Sci-fi novel started a few months ago hit a snag; false-start, not quite ready yet. Rather than fight it, let it sleep. It will tell me when it's ready. Not giving up on it by any means. Decided to do some short stories for now, explore some ideas, put out possible anthology. Also series of novellas, more to come on that, but has to do with "A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean".

Good momentum. Staying busy. Only way this works.

**edit** "The Mountain and The City can now be found on Megaton.us or downloaded on Kindle or Smashwords.

Sympathetic Braking

2011-01-04T21:08:00.012-05:00

A guy I used to work with had the strange habit of laughing at inappropriate moments. By that I don't mean he was bizarre for finding humor in awkward moments because, Jesus, I hope we all do, but rather that he would laugh at things that simply weren't funny. I would tell him about some new procedure we were supposed to follow or maybe a product we had gotten in and, absolutely guaranteed, what would follow was a laugh of some kind. Now me, I have a pretty decent sense of humor. In fact I do what I can to laugh everything off since it's the closest thing I've discovered to a perfect defense mechanism, so I can tell you with some certainty that if a joke was present, even the slightest inkling of a grain of an iota of a speck of a joke, I would see it for what it was. But this guy, he would find it where it simply didn't exist. I swear his default response to sound was laughter, immediately followed by processing it in the auditory cortex of his brain to determine volume and pitch. The result: it reduced me to shambles. I would lose focus entirely, stop talking long enough to return the laugh or ask what was funny or try to roll with it and find some non-existent thought-train. Just trying to keep up, my face became a roller-coaster. It went like this. Talk. Laugh? Scowl. Smile apologetically. Laugh. Talk? Continue. Repeat? By the end of the ride I could barely stop my own face from spasm-twisting through a tense supply of vibrating clown-smiles. This was one minute. One minute of an eight hour work day.

Absolute shambles.

The reason I bring him up is he taught me a phrase, which is sympathetic braking. Telling me one day about his pet peeve, he explained sympathetic braking as a driver applying the brakes because they see the brake lights of other cars, even those of oncoming traffic. He told me how it really pissed him off because it slowed down the flow of traffic for no good reason. I suppose it's another defense mechanism. A way of responding to danger, of saying, "What do they know that I don't?", of playing it safe. Maybe there are horrors just out of sight, ready to be driven into. I can see what he was getting at. But I can sympathize.

Lately I've noticed the power of smiling. This isn't where I try to convert you to Christianity or preach the power of sportsmanship by showing you a kid who refuses to cheat at basketball, this is an honest observation on surface-level instinct. Working with the public, I've noticed how little you can get away with talking to people if you just flash a smile. It's become almost a science experiment, to see human interaction reduced to its most simple form. Subject One approaches Subject Two. Subject Two smiles. Subject One returns the smile. One minute later, Subject Two smiles again. Subject One smiles and exits. I don't mean to brag, but it's been working.

People read into things. They infer and they fill in the gaps, which is another defense mechanism. Mystery breeds confusion. The less you give them the more gaps they're forced to fill, in order to enact the completeness required by their psyches. They seem to have only two filler materials at hand: if they don't like you, it's everyone they've ever hated. If they do like you, it's the one person they like the most: themselves. Neuro-linguistic Programming is based partly on this idea- reflect a person back to themselves and they will like you. Cross your arms when they cross their arms. Adopt similar speech patterns. Smile when they do.

It's so easy. People want to smile and feel comfortable. They want to fit in. They want to be among like people with like thoughts and like actions. Give them a chance to do that and they'll love you for it. And then you've got them.

If this all sounds very artificial of me, it is. In public, at work, I tend to be a bit awkward. Not crushingly so, but a bit alien at times. I don't know if I'd call it self-conscious as much as I'd say self-aware, like a computer which has come to realize it's a computer. So aware of the impact of my sounds. Constantly streaming footage of my own expression in the top-left corner of the screen. I understand the effect I have and so I second-guess it, see it vividly halfway through and become forced to analyze it in real-time. It's a bit like when you're watching a talk show and you see the guest notice the monitor with their own face on it. They stare off, entranced by their own image and how it appears and how it moves. There's just no disguising that look, so specific in its spiraling horror, and I've come to recognize it as my own, as my standard, funny as it may be to say it. If it were more pronounced I might not function at all. Less pronounced and I might be someone else entirely. I seem to have a handful of such malfunctions.

The reason I fell apart working with that guy is simple: I used up all my energy in a race against his smile. I distrusted my own, often stoic but not unhappy expression and darted back and forth trying to follow his map. But his map was wrong. I tried to fit in with an earthquake.

You have to trust your schematics, the way you were built. Me, I waste too much time on face upkeep. I should be my own madman.

This Woman

2010-12-29T22:48:00.001-05:00

Woman I know
Woman I know
There's a woman I know with glass in her eyes, this woman I know
She has contacts made of mirror shards
She had them made this woman made them special order so she can see you, so you can see your faults See what's wrong with you
But never with her
This woman I know, she had them made, like the hair on her head this woman had it made
Had it made so she can wear her old self the previous self the younger woman
What she looked like before the baby came and ruined her complexion
The child who can't speak except to cry
This woman
This woman I know
Her husband doesn't want any more children
Because of that boy
Because of her
It's all the same anyway hey if it's not his motorcycle hey
His motorcycle, his precious baby, all cherry red,
Had it made special order so they could shout at each other across its cherry red chassis
When she hears the motor running she knows not to knock, just keep making the dinner he disapproves of over
Bedtime kisses and
Prodding of
Just one more kid, one more kid, this time we can get it right, this time they can get it right,
Just one more kid
One more time
They can have it made, special order, have mirror glass inserted in his eyes, in her eyes, beggars can't be choosers
As long as it's healthy that's all that matters
As long as it speaks that's all that matters
As long as she likes to cook
As long as he fixes motorcycles
Beggars can't be choosers when they have alleys like this
This woman I know
Her appetite runs heavy and her
Smile runs thick
This woman I know, she takes classes and likes perfume
And if you met her in any other spot you might come to like her
But you met her in this one, same as I, and you looked into her eyes and you saw the mirrors
Not the reflection like she'd hoped you would
But the mirrors themselves
Let her lottery ticket come up
Let her rave diet work like a charm
Let her ovaries unwrap and spit like a viper
Let her become this woman she knew
This woman I know

Free-Writing VI

2010-10-29T19:00:00.001-04:00

10/29/10, 11:31 am-

In 1993 I broke my parents’ hearts. I got suspended from school for stealing, and to make things worse I did it right before Christmas. The way it happened was I was with a group of friends who weren’t trouble-makers and weren’t nerds either, but somewhere in-between, thinking ourselves the occasional rebels while still being liked by our teachers, still maintaining decent grades, some better than others but all passing, doing well. The way those groups go is if someone decides to start trouble everyone joins in, and then a group which was fine before suddenly starts some shit. One of our group, I don’t remember which at this point, noticed our social studies teacher’s keys were left unattended, and this teacher also happened to be the lacrosse coach. I don’t know how he knew this but somehow he realized that one of these keys was the master key to the boys locker room. This meant that every, single locker in that place could be opened by this single key. I’m guessing it was someone elses idea, because in these situations each player always seems to add one ingredient, that those lockers during gym class held dozens of wallets filled with cash. It’s amazing to think back now and not realize that these were people, kids like us, whose money was in those wallets, but one of the painfully unaware realities of childhood is you don’t fully understand the consequences of actions yet. I remember, and with some of those same people, standing at the side of highway underpasses where the trees are dead and no one goes, and throwing small sticks at speeding cars. Then it would graduate to larger sticks, until the point where we were throwing entire branches and once even a baseball at cars to watch them smash and make sounds. The fact is we could have killed someone, sent something through their windshield or made them panic and swerve and crash, but at the time all we could think of was how funny it was. The sounds it made. Who could make a bigger sound, get a louder laugh. This is how kids are, and like I said, we weren’t even bad, just bored. So back to that stinking locker room, we took that key and did exactly what we’d set out to, we used it on those lockers and it worked perfectly, opened them right up, and most of them had wallets in them, and some of those cash, and we snuck in and snuck out with our treasure and divided it up and thought we were just the coolest kids out there, just quality product, and we wished we could brag about how cool we were but it had to be a secret. So of course we did what everyone does when they don’t get caught- we did it again. And again. The problem came when one of our group, a kid named Juan who no one really liked just tolerated, which is another insane symptom of childhood, hanging around people you don’t even like and you don’t know why, but the problem was he got greedy and when the end of the gym period was coming close we told him to stop but he said, “One more” and then when the ten minute bell rang, which was to let the gym kids know they could hit the lockers and get changed before the true end of the period, he still said “One more, just one more” and when he was happy and we were yelling we all piled out of the locker room and went right past the kids who were heading in, saying hey to them, one of them even starting a conversation, and we anxiously said bye and headed off and split the money as always. But this time we’d been made, because obviously kids started noticing their money was missing, and I’ll never know who it was or how it happened but someone obviously remembered seeing us leave the scene, and it doesn’t take a genius, and they told who they had to tell. Still to this day when I think of impending doom and rapid heartbeats, one of the worst times, best examples, standout memories is of the day we were all called down to the office, but not as a group just one at a time, a few minutes between. We were all in the same science class because that year they were trying something new at school, which was that all eight periods were filled with the exact, same kids, we shared identical schedules, so that in every class would be the same group of thirty-odd kids, which is a good idea for familiarity sake but I guess the down side is it can cause miniature clutches of boys who scheme all day long and end up stealing. I still remember that, the first of us being called to the office, and we watched him go suspecting what it could be but not convinced. And then the second name came and kids started to whisper, and then the third, and at this point I wanted to scream, to run, but where would I go, what would I do, and finally they called my name and my face went hot and I grabbed my bookbag and my entire body went numb, but somehow my legs took me down to the office, stopping first to hide most of the money I had on me in my sock, down to the office where I found the group was all split into separate rooms for interrogations, the prncipal and vice-principals keeping us apart like the half-assed detectives they were, coming on tough, looking at us with odd expressions because we weren’t the usual suspects, all of us or nearly all of us invisible because we were those middle kids. Not popular, not picked on, not jocks, not criminals, but apparently we were. Those idiot detectives, they played us against each other, and I tried to say little but I knew they knew some of it, and they’d say things like “The others are blaming it all on you, they say you planned it” but that was ridiculous and definitely not true, and I doubted they were saying those things but even if they were it just wasn’t true, and I maintained that and eventually they said “Open your wallet” and I showed them how little I had and they said something like “That’s all you got? They held out on you” and on the inside, even in the middle of my life crumbling I had to smile a little bit because on that level I’d outsmarted them, made myself look like the lackey and even managed to keep some of it. But the victory didn’t last long because then they were calling all of our parents to come get us, suspending us from school for four days, and this was the day, literally the day before Christmas break started, which meant it was just added on to the end of break, which in a way made it seem less real, made it less effective because it just felt like a longer break. When my mother showed up she’d clearly been crying and that was the worst feeling I could think of, and can probably still think of. She walked me to my locker so I could collect my coat and when we got there she said, “So are we going to fight this thing?” and I had to look at my mother and say, “I don’t know what to tell you, mom, there’s…nothing to fight” and in that moment I saw her heart break. I can’t even remember the ride home, I think it was silent, and when I got home I was sent directly to my room and didn’t come out until I heard my father come home from work. I heard him come inside, heard my mother say something to him which made him say “What?” and then the footsteps down the hall, my door opening, his face there, and just his hand coming up and his finger telling me to follow him. We sat at the kitchen table and he held in his hand the letter from the school, the notice of suspension, and for the reason all it said was “stealing from lockers”, and I can just remember him reading it over and over, trying to take some meaning out of it, trying to extract everything possible from those few words, but he couldn’t, and he talked low and quiet to me. Never lost his temper, and that made it worse. As he spoke he had indigestion because it was bothering him, upsetting his stomach, and to my father’s credit the best thing about this was his speech involved Star Wars. He explained, “You know Star Wars? There’s the good and the dark side? Things like this,” and he held up the letter and the three words I could see through the back of it, “this is the dark side, this is going over to that. And that’s not who you are.” It’s funny to think of now but it’s probably the best way to explain evil to a kid. And so I disappointed my parents that year, my first year of high school and already this, and I had to earn their trust back, their words, and I did my time at the end of Christmas break, and Christmas was a little quieter that year, and then I went back to school and got raked over the coals by my classmates, including one older kid who was friends with us and apparently we had stolen from him though I had no idea, and definitely wouldn’t have if I’d have known because he was that rare kid from an older grade who threw that aside and still hung around with us, or us with him, and we looked up to him. And finally things got back to normal, but for a long time I was so embarrassed by that story I never told it, in fact barely ever have, and because of that very few people know it, and it’s silly to feel that way now because enough time has passed that it was something stupid I did when I was a kid, and all that, but still some part of me knows yes, that was me, I did that thing to those people, but these are the things, and we live with them, and they make us, and sometimes that’s just our history, and history can’t be chosen, only told and written.

12:07 pm, 36 mins, approx 1,782 words

Free-Writing V

2010-10-27T20:35:00.000-04:00

10/27/10, 1:37-

I’ve seen myself through the bayou. I’ve gone through gas stations and trees, broken down shacks and stores with jukeboxes and second floors with holes down to the first. I’ve shot men for the noises they make. I’ve called for rafts and then called down the vengeance. I’ve ridden boats pulled by rope, debarked and continued. I’ve passed outhouses, walked over walkways, found what I needed and moved on. I’ve been there when the panic set in. I’ve seen the monsters men become. I’ve held my drink to the sky and lit it on fire wishing I didn’t have to waste it but knowing without that sacrifice there’d be none later. I’ve seen their legs trail through the muck as they closed in. Gone through windows and come out into hell. I’ve kept the path until it ended in steel and supplies. I’ve known these headspaces more than most men. I know this will serve me well in the end, but until then it’s drying my eyes out.

I was there the day the satellite fell. Pulled men from the wreckage and didn’t bother asking if they were okay because all I had time to do was run as it all crashed down. I’ve seen the outcome of this, and it’s not good, and it’s never good, and I look forward to the day that this is all a story but until then it’s my fucking nightmare life extension mission and it’s not a living it’s a dying, so the guitar man says. I saw him on the corner as he sang his sad song and the walls closed in, and the line broke. I don’t wonder where he is now because I know where, and I’m heading there myself but I’m putting it off as long as I can. Our group was larger back then. Larger by one. Now I’m a nothing, an alone, a weakness they watch from rooftops, the others, the every others. This is what I look like through sights. The call goes out and I have to put my knife into another neck. This isn’t a living, this is a dying, and I can still hear his song. What a sweet kid I saw back in that town, but that’ll be a problem for him, always is with his kind. I wish I knew how to help, what to do, but every time I come close it just gets worse and they cry for me to leave and I hesitate. They insist and I go, knowing I ruined it again. Such a sad way, but I suppose it’s always been this way just not as pronounced, not as obvious. The trail is just worn in now. Ancient paths. Deer have those kinds of paths. You see them in the forests between the trees, worn down places where they’ve been cutting through, going to food sources, and you can almost miss them, seems like a trick of the light, a space between bushes, until you see one of them emerge, come out there, and then you might still miss it but you see it again, and you realize these are the legacies cut into the dirt for them, left to them by their parents and grandparents and going all the way back farther than there’s been a name for them, father back, farther back. The forest bends for them, loving them, knowing they bring with them seeds and berries and rubbing their fur on the bark to itch themselves at shedding seasons but it doesn’t just help them, helps the trees too, takes off the old bark to let the new stuff grow. And that’s how it works, feeding. Sometimes the whole arch just shifts on you, drastically, and you find yourself on the bleeding end of it, and hey, it’s nothing personal, and it’s not business, it’s just eating. Just a living that’s just a dying.

That’s how I see that guitar man and the kid and all the guitar men and all the kids. All those towns I found as obstacles. All the ones that fed me before driving me out on horseback and rifle. My memories of them are travel guides of the damned, laminated in panic sweat and worn at the edges. I miss the rest of my group. Just one, but what a one she was. I can’t talk about this anymore or it’ll show on my face. The next time I pop up on a scope they’ll see it on me and then I’m a dead man. Can’t let them know these things unless you’re ready to draw back, throw it in, let them turn you into another week alive. Never could get past the taste myself. Not the stuff I’m used to, though everyone needs a way through.

-1:51, 14 mins, approx. 799 words

Free-Writing IV

2010-10-26T20:30:00.002-04:00

10/26/10, 11:53 am-

When I’m walking with my dog at night the world feels so empty and perfect. All those houses with lights on but no activity, no one in the yard, rarely in the windows, just the cool street and the rustle trees and occasionally the sound of a dog barking because we’ve come too close. We pass garbage cans and get a peek at their inner worlds. Old playground pieces, toys, television boxes, an old toilet, sticks from pruning, books, bottles of beer on recycling days along with spaghetti sauce and water, all these things that explain in filthy terms what’s been going on in that house for the past few days. Our lives, boiled down to the bi-products. The moonlight makes it look better, the starlight barely there, and it’s disappointing, genuinely, when someone appears on the street. Cars are okay. Their headlights slice past and invent shadow, illuminate hidden things in the gutter, so long as the car doesn’t stop and give birth to a driver. Drivers give berth, cars give birth.

When I look at a yellow notepad I think about all those days in school, taking notes, reporting the words of a teacher and their plans for us. I never used yellow notepads, though, just looseleaf in binders and then later when I got tired of carrying around binders I would just take a folder around with loose paper in it, and that’s when things got much messier, but I tried to keep them together as much as possible. Then a teacher would spring a trap, a binder check, even though they never warned there would be one. If I knew about it ahead of time I would find an empty binder, or rather a useless one and make it empty, and then sort through the omni-folder to take out everything from that one subject and push it into the binder according to date. The other problem was that half of my notes were drawings. At some point I found it impossible to listen to what a teacher was saying without doodling at the same time, still hearing them, just drawing also, but they could never believe that, didn’t want to, never listened. That was how I distracted myself into paying attention. That was my method. But schools only allow one method, their own method, and anything else looks to them like laziness or disobedience. I was only learning how I knew I could, and I did, my grades were always good, I learned the material, but somehow they needed to see that binder. I guess like a lot of other things it’s because they need to control a certain percentage through behaviours like that, but that’s not fair so they have to apply it to all. Not fair or it’s just easier to do the same thing across the board. And I can totally understand that now, looking back and realizing that my teachers were people with jobs, didn’t exist for us only, and it takes a really rare person to apply individual methods to several hundred students. The problem then isn’t the teacher or the student, it’s something more, because more can be learned, more can be achieved if its specific to the person, so new systems have to be in place, and teachers need to be paid what they deserve, and not over-worked and stressed and be made to fit certain goals without the environment to achieve them. I have no idea how yellow paper turned into this but so it happened and I have to deal with that. This is the brain in action and I’d like to think I’m unique but I’m definitely not, this is just why people sound the way they do when they talk to themselves, because thought processes are interwebbed and forever darting and that’s a symptom of complexity. The problem comes in with a lack of filters. And is it so crazy? Maybe we’re doing this to each other, living in constant censorship, "I don’t want to hear this or that", but we’re all thinking it. It would be interesting to see a world where everyone’s thoughts and spoken words are exactly the same, and maybe it would be more peaceful, but maybe there’d be no use in living anymore, because the mystery is what makes things interesting, the distance between knowing and not knowing, what’s said and what isn’t, just like men and women confuse each other constantly but if we didn’t what’s the point, no more mystery, less laughs, no need to keep on digging. Maybe we need our secrets.

-12:08, 15 mins, approx. 961 words

Free-Writing III

2010-10-25T22:06:00.001-04:00

10/25/10, 9:39 pm-

She was a frightening girl. She had eyes like icicles, if you looked too long they'd shake and fall and penetrate your head, bleed you out. It was as if fire had no troubling her, heat had no stance, as if the ends of the earth were too brittle to hold the weight of her being there in her fine shoes and tight pants. I watched her every day like that, talking on the street with the winos, breaking the quiet morning with her easy laughs and taunting screams. Men in suits looked at her like a nightmare version of their wives, the worst parts of them distilled and pasteurized into something so pure you could only snort a little or you'd drop. She bled men out. She was the end to their boyish dreams. If she spoke to you, if you were lucky enough to catch her attention, you'd find yourself ten minutes later waking in a daze with no money, no will to live, lipstick on your teeth. She was what the boys called a blood diamond. Sure, she'd solve all your problems, but at what cost.

The day I broke into the convenience store for a pack of smokes I learned her name. Something with an E, I think. I did the smartest thing I could think of and went about forgetting who the hell she was. The way she screamed at me, I knew it would end in love, and that would end in crime scenes, and that would end in my mother coming down from the mountain house and crying in a chair. I couldn't have that. She couldn't see me now, not when I was so close to dying completely in her eyes. It was the second nicest thing I could do for her.

When the train shook me awake that morning I could smell the diesel in my hair, the rattle of bones and veins, the old men coughing up vodka phlegm. It was a way of life for them, a job, and they'd tease me about my clear complexion saying it was a liability of the highest order. I knew one's name was Lem and the other King but I always mixed them up. I'm not sure they knew the difference themselves so I left it alone, let them eat their ketchup and cereal, towel their armpits with paper bags they threw to the ground and let blow into the fence in yellow shame. I remember something about a dream, and in the middle of it Lem or King asking me what her name was, and me saying something with an E before I could catch myself and they laughed themselves hacking.

When I hopped down, I could see her eyes already. Something with an E. She'd be the death of me and you could tell she knew it the way she watched me across the street. It was an inkstain. A bleedout. She was the reason I'd hopped down, I was sure of it, felt it in my toe-bones, felt it in the hot gum of the morning blacktop, the shuffling, the magnet that took me into the backroom of that store where they kept boxes, and when I turned around she'd followed me in before I could tell her not to, not that I could, and she held her hand out smiling, not smiling though, maybe mock-winking, I can't remember her face only the brush against my hand as I put the carton in hers and she ran and I ran, and she pushed the clerk and he grunted and went down and I laughed, I think I laughed, I can't remember, just the wind and the whooping of Lem and King thinking they'd get their share but they never would, I gave them nothing and they gave me nothing, not the usual rules of the streets but fuck them, they'd watched those bar kids fuck with me, kicked my stuff, so fuck them, I don't owe them anything.

I remember when we stopped. There were shopping carts and it smelled like chinese food from last night's drunkeries, and we were breathing lungfuls of acid and she was looking at me knowing she'd be the end of me. I was looking forward to finishing the cigarettes. They felt expensive the way they weighed. I was sure it started with an E.

-9:58 pm, 19 mins, approx. 740 words

Free-Writing II

2010-10-25T19:34:00.000-04:00

10/25/10, 12:32 pm-

Sometimes I think, when people ask me the question “what’s your book about?” I should tell them, “It’s about a pair of magical shoes. A little boy finds them and gets into all sorts of hijinks”. The reason for that is, against all my better attempts, I just end up fumbling my way through a ridiculous simplification which has nothing or next to nothing to do with my book anyway, and in the end I get strange looks either for my ideas or probably more accurately my portrayal of them. This has a lot to do with who’s asking the question, however. If it’s someone my age, especially a guy, but the age is the most important factor it seems, I’ll give them a one-liner which comes pretty close to what a Hollywood pitch would be. “This guy does this in the middle of this. It’s like this existing property, only better” and the reaction is more or less positive. If they’re as little as ten years older than me, it’s time to REALLY simplify, because any more seems to incriminate me as some sort of maniac who spends his time murdering imaginary friends. Which, of course, is what I’m doing. The best example of this was when I started at my job and I let it slip for the first time that I was a writer. I usually stall out this reveal as long as possible, not for the sake of mystery, like I’m an onion that can be peeled at random times and still show new layers, but to delay the disappointment and horror that always follows. In fact the only time I reveal this information about myself seems to be to justify why I’m thirty-one and working at a job which I have no intention of turning into a career. I explain that every job is a temporary job to me, because in the long run I plan to make a living as a writer, at which most people get fairly excited in a bewildered kind of way, and then ask me what I write, is it poetry or essays or movies, somehow they always seem to avoid the right answer. It used to be, when I was younger, that I’d tell people I wrote short stories since it was all I did in those days, and that would seem to awkwardly end the conversation. Now I tell people I write books, novels, and at the outset they seem much more impressed, more interested, more able to keep the conversation going in that next logical step, instead of attempting to ask something like “Oh, short stories?...What are they about?” and I say “Like, all of them?” and they say “I don’t know, I guess so. Are they mysteries?” which makes me laugh to think how accurate that actually is to so many conversations I shared over the years. So now it’s novels and they can simply ask, “Ooh, what’s IT about?” pertaining to whichever came up, likely A Chemical Fire since it’s completed and in print and so on and so on, and I can answer and then we can move on to them talking about how much they love Dan Brown. But the best example of having to simplify and censor that answer, and I can’t remember if I started talking about this or just thought about it but I can’t stop to look back now, was when I was surrounded by my new co-workers (and yes, I did start saying this) and they asked me what my first book was about. And I looked at my bosses, and the other employees, and three of them were mothers and one a very strict Muslim, and I thought about my book about zombies and painkillers and the awful people I’d dreamed up who burned up and put bullets into one and abused the other, and I thought about the questions it would raise, and how it would make me seem like, AT BEST, a weirdo, and at worst a drug-fueled murderer, and I thought about it a second and I replied, “It’s pretty much about the end of the world.” And then I realized that maybe it made me seem like I WANTED that to happen, like I was a pissed-off Travis Bickle type (is that his name? From Taxi Driver?) so then came the fumbling even if I’d tried to avoid it, and I explained that I always enjoyed movies like Children of Men, which was the most respectable piece of art in that genre I could think of, which sort of worked because none of them had seen it, and most of them seemed to buy it and smile and go about their business happy to have something a little different around walking among them. And then I got into a weird conversation with Kulsoom, the Muslim of the group, about how her religion is so much about waiting for the world to end, and how did I envision it happening, and it would be interesting to compare that with how her faith did, and then I realized something interesting which was that in her own way she was far, FAR stranger than I, because she was telling me how she passionately prayed every day for the end of the world, especially for her kids, and it highlighted the truth about how I feel so different from these people, which is that I feel out of place for not being as crazy as them, or not the same type. Every time I start to think my processes are a little out of whack I turn around and see a married mother of four who is convinced of some idea which I literally think is that of a sick person, and I compare it to how I feel, which may be the opposite, and then I objectively weigh them against each other and realize, no, I’m right here, it’s not right to think that way, and so all that time I feel apart from them it’s not that I want to be a part of them, because to do that would be to accept their fucked up way of thinking and being, their isms nd phobias, and so its not that I want to be a part of them but maybe just appear that way, just wear the camoflauge, like small talk, god I wish I could do that mindless small talk thing. Not that I can’t be friendly and have a good conversation, but so many people are capable of that “So how’s things treating you? Good, good. And the kids? My word, he’s getting so big” and I try it on and it always seems to fall off like a pair of overalls ten sizes too big all floppy down to the floor, and the sound it makes when it hits the tile is so fabricated, as if a .wav file with poor compression plays on impact. It just feels wrong and so I get by on smiles at places like work, and it’s shocking how well that works, but I’ll never memorize their names, or rarely, never get into ten minutes of filler, but people like that, without it they think I’m shy, but no, not really, maybe at odds and maybe anxious and maybe quiet when there’s nothing real to say, but not shy. How could I be? They never give you the chance.

-1:07 PM, 35 mins, approx. 1,237 words

Free-Writing I

2010-10-24T08:09:00.002-04:00

10/22/10 12:15 pm-

A few days ago I woke up in the middle of the night, or maybe it was the morning, about 4 am and I looked over at my wife sleeping there to my right, and I looked down at my dog, our small Pomeranian mix Frankie who weighs seven pounds and six of it is attitude. It was quiet and peaceful, really peaceful, and I knew I had to get up for work in a few hours but I didn’t care. It normally would spoil the moment, push feeling into my stomach pit, a dread for my job, which always happens but especially when you don’t like your job. But this time, it didn’t effect me. I don’t know why I was impervious in that way on that morning, but so I was. I had the distinct feeling in that moment that I loved my life. Not my job, of course, and not our debt and the absence of end in sight to that and other problems, but my life, the one I’d created for myself. I chose the right person for me, or had the right one chosen for me depending on how you feel about fate, which I feel mixed but generally positive about, in agreeance, believing that it does exist but not to use it as an excuse for why things happen, simply as a way to smile at them when they do. So whatever it was, fate, choice, all that combined, came together to make a life that I appreciate, that I love. I knew in that moment that I had friends off sleeping somewhere who I valued as people, who were smart people, funny people, good people, that I’d surrounded myself with a wall of quality. I knew in that moment that while I don’t enjoy the company of my family, being so different from, feeling so alien, so wrong, so childish, so something, I knew that I did love them and that they were also good people. The apartment was right, if for now. The things I spent my time on, enjoyable, at times worthwhile. I had the passing feeling that I liked the person I was if for nothing else than I was a sum of those things. Even if my mind may be off, and my way of dealing with people can be flawed, that my anxieties hinder me and make me odd, even if I’m self-conscious and bizarre I’ve still managed to attract and keep these things around me long enough to let them define me, and I believed, in that moment, and now, and hopefully always, that that should mean something, and so it does.

It feels good to let go. I know that this project is a daunting one but I think it’ll be great for me, great practice, build up the muscle memory of free-flow, turn off the inner editor until later on, when it can come out and thrash and knife. This is how I need to write. I need to grow the grass and then cut it. A terrible analogy, but what I mean is, perhaps better, to make the block of ice first, then take a chainsaw to it. That probably sounds better. Fifty-thousand words is a lot of words but it’s not like I can’t repeat any. I wonder how many words I’ve written in my lifetime, not a fully grand total but just the ones for literature's sake, enjoyment, language, not the ones for work but for me. I wonder if I’ve succeeded at hitting the ten-thousand hour rule as defined by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve absolutely spent hundreds of hours doing it, and I feel it could be up in the thousands. The ten-thousand hour rule has to do with being not just good, but great, but I don’t think it should be something to look at like, hey, I hit ten-thousand, now I’m a genius. Of course that’s because I was born a genius. No, really. We’re all born geniuses is what I mean, not to say that I’m full of myself, but I think that kids are capable of the most brilliant thoughts and wordings and ways of being, that in an adult would be crazy and what’s the word for crazy with money, eccentric, yes, and just the way they live is in a constant state of brilliance that at some point we shed along the way like an old shell for the next kid to come across and move into, and I think the struggle, always, the struggle is to get back to that point, let go, go mad, and I’m really trying very hard to lose my mind. If I could lose my mind I’d be set. People would point at me and say, “Look at the incredible way he went insane. I’ll pay to see that.” And then I’ll have a career being insane, but with structure, always with structure. No one wants to see a man painting the wall with his shit, but hey, some artists do so I shouldn’t even say that, but in general people want to see a very refined madman. Jack Nicholson is a perfect example. I’m positive that Jack Nicholson is insane, he just happens to be really good at it and really charming, and what is charm if it’s not egomania, and people just love to watch him, love to be around him, tap into that energy, hoping to absorb the power he has. All the best actors, comedians, writers, and possibly directors, photographers, designers and so on are all insane. I think that’s why they all move to one place, so the normals will stop judging them and they can relax among the people who are just like them, maybe worse, and that’s fine because it’s better to keep them all in one place where we can keep track of them. So I think what I’m saying is I need to be tagged and tracked too, because there’s good money in it.

-12:45 pm, 30 mins, approx 1,013 words

Vocabulanche

2010-10-22T20:19:00.004-04:00

I made the decision to take on the challenge of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. This means during the month of November I will write an entire novel of at least fifty-thousand words. Some people use NaNoWriMo as a way to finally write a novel, which I can fully respect. The goal of writing a book is something too many people plan to do but never quite get there, and nothing motivates better than a deadline. For me it will be a personal challenge to write as fast as I can without being harsh on myself, shake things up bit, and in a lot of ways have fun without over-thinking anything. I want the thing to have a stream-of-consciousness feel, to be almost a road map of thought that finds its way through the story rather than be a very rigid, planned-out affair, which is my normal route. There's nothing wrong with that of course, it achieves an effect, but at some point it's good to step outside the normal path to get a better look at it. So I'll be writing as fast as possible, almost too fast, to bypass the internal editor, to stumble into new ways of wording things before they're pushed away by years of school and such.

Until then, I'm practicing. I'll share the results up until the end of October. Then I'll disappear.

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part V

2010-10-10T22:55:00.001-04:00

"I'll be damned."

The old man stopped, scanned the room. I waited to hear what he'd say next, made sure not to give up my position, my angle. Finally he said, "He actually cleaned."

That's the problem with erasing, a place has to be pristine to let you get away with spot-cleaning. Otherwise you have to keep going as far as it makes sense, until you leave no line where it's clean on one side and dirty on the other. Some places, with all the work I put into them, I've had half a mind to send the landlord a bill. That's why most guys will tell you to bring the whole mess to a second spot, something you can control, something unrelated, outside a cop's eye. You hear it a lot in prison, which in my eyes makes it worthles advice. Myself, I make house calls. Find them where they sleep.

The old man wheeled into the living room. He strained against the carpet, going around the craters, the ones that showed where every piece of furniture had sat in the place going back a decade. I glanced around like it was all new to me. The art posters, so proud of being up their own asses, the used appliances I was sure some fashionable store had labeled vintage to jack up the price by forty bucks. Somehow these things came together to make a man she chose over me. His touch, his everything. I didn't understand the math.

"Anything to drink in this place," I asked.

"Jesus, you're still thirsty?" He was parked three feet from the TV screen, banging the remote against his thigh bone. "There's usually a beer in the fridge. Grab me the closest thing to seltzer you find."

I took the green dish towel that hung from the oven handle and used it to open the fridge, then did the same to grab the one can of seltzer in the middle of Malcolm's pussy beer. I didn't want a drink anyway just the chance to offer the old man one. I popped the tab on the way over, before he saw.

"Get out of the way, would you? Trying to watch the race." He craned left, right, left again to see around me. All it did was make him look like a bird, maybe a chicken, something they keep in a cage until its time. I held out the can and he reached for it, then I pulled it away.

"You didn't answer me," I said. He settled back down.

"What would he do, join the circus?"

I said nothing.

"Look I'd be as screwed as screwed can be. Is that what you want to hear? Shit, you're the only other guy helping me out and I just met you an hour ago. If that's not the saddest thing I can think of, then, well, I don't know what sadness is."

I handed him the seltzer, promised I'd help the best I could. Then I sat on the couch and watched him drink it. His eyes were intense as they traced the race cars in their screaming paths. Every so often he took another sip and it would ripple down his neck.

"The wife used to drink this," he said without breaking his stare. "Me, I could never stand the stuff. I don't know why I keep drinking it, guess I got accustomed." He seemed weighed down, his eyes having trouble following the action on-screen. "Does it seem purple in here to you," he asked after a while. His words ran together, mixing like cold cubes in a warm glass.

"I think so."

"Damn kid keeps the purple too high. Waste of money if you ask me." He'd barely finished the sentence when his head slumped down and his fingers let go of the can. It fell to the carpet and glug-glug-glugged into it until I bent down and grabbed it up, put it to the side, most of the seltzer still inside along with the pill. I'd have to remember to bring it with me.

I pushed my fingers to the loose skin of his neck and felt the weak pulse, felt it go slower. And slower. And slower until I felt nothing at all anymore. When it was done I wheeled him to the bathroom, put him in the tub and took him apart.

Some guys throw up at this part. Others cry. It doesn't really matter what you do, the bleach takes care of it.

Picture a man finds a poem. It's about love, about a woman, about a love for a woman stronger than acid, older than the mountains, all that shit. The kind that can't be waved off. The woman is supposed to read the poem, but the woman doesn't read it her man does. Picture what happens to the poet when the man who reads it isn't a good man. Is paid to be who he is by men worse than him but without the gut for it.

Picture what a man like that would do for free.

I ducked out the back. The bag was easy to carry, couldn't be more than seventy pounds. As I felt the weight of it going up and into the back of the pickup, I realized it was the nicest thing I'd ever done for someone. No matter. I went to the ocean, then I left town.

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part IV

2010-10-09T07:12:00.002-04:00

It took ten minutes of cursing and two minutes of struggle. After half the block was leaning out their windows with their necks stretched as far as they'd stretch, the old man was finally sitting in the passenger seat. I walked around the pickup and got in, found him talking to himself about how the same assholes who make the cars must make the barstools, too.

"Why do people think they need to drive goddamn tanks? You, I get it, you can't fit in no sedan lookin' like you look. But I'm telling you, nothing scares me more than a soccer mom behind the wheel of a plexiglass Panzer, while her kids are jumpin' around pullin' at her bra straps." He put up a fight with the seatbelt until he realized he didn't care.

"I use this for work. It holds a hell of a lot of tools." Duffel bags and handsaws, mostly. I pulled away from the bar knowing I could never go back there no matter how bad a jones I got for shitty gin. I wasn't about to come down with nostalgia over it.

"You know where you're heading?"

"The bartender filled me in."

"He's got a name, you know. It's Andy. I think. And I didn't hear him do anything of the sort."

The old man was sharp. Sharp for an old man. "Twenty-two Holland Street, fifth floor," I said. It was an easy enough address to remember. Especially when it shows up on an envelope hidden at the bottom of your woman's shoe closet.

"That's it, alright," he said, squinting at the sun.

We passed a cop dicking around by his squad car, meaning we'd have to drive all the way to the building for sure, no stops. A few minutes later and we were there. It was one of those hotels people check into and end up living in until they can't pay anymore or someone smells something coming through the wall. I hadn't expected to ever go back there but there I was, just a few hours after I'd left. Just shows you, you never know where a chore might take you. I helped the old man back down to the ground and we went inside.

The same puffy-eyed kid was behind the window in the lobby with headphones plugging up his ears. Flyers were hanging around his head advertising girls with limbs twisted in uncomfortable poses, laying between red phone numbers. I recognized one of them. She'd had a good body but a total lack of dedication. I tried to sneak the old man past but the kid noticed and looked up from his book, taking his headphones out.

"Hey...you're back," he said. He seemed to live in slow-motion, like his button got stuck.

"Don't know what you mean. Just bringing my friend here upstairs."

"No. Yeah. You were here already, before."

"Afraid not, kid, I'm not even from around here." I attempted a smile.

"What? No-"

"How many times," the old man blurted, "how many times have I told you to stop smoking that shit?"

The kid looked at me, then back at the old man. "A couple," he admitted.

"You only remember a couple but I tell you every goddamn time I come. By all means, chew and snort whatever you need to, but lay off the smoke. It's destroying your ability to be a helpful dipshit instead of just a plain ol' nitwit dipshit." He went on walking, leaving the kid to his headphones and book and confusion and embarrassment and just a little suspicion. Our eyes met until they didn't.

The hallway still stunk like it was someone's job to throw up in it. I had expected to see a clock where a guy punched in and got to work, but instead there was an elevator and next to that a dinged-up wheelchair. I'd seen it before, wondered who it belonged to. The old man was already lowering himself into it, again with ugly sounds. Then he leaned back to slap blindly at the call button. I came over and pressed it, asked him if he was stealing someone's chair.

"No, no, it's mine. Malcolm leaves it for when I come over." There was a ping and then the elevator opened. I wheeled him in and shoved myself in, too. It was small and I could feel it complain as the door slid closed and as it did the old man said, "That idiot at the front is always trying to throw this thing out, but every time he does Malcolm takes it right back. I tell you, sometimes it's good to have an asshole on your side."

I pressed for the fifth floor. "Have you thought about what happens when he's not here?"

"If. If he's not here. Christ, try to be positive about things."

"I'm pretty positive."

Searching his pants pockets in clumsy stabs, he chuckled. "Friend, pretty and positive are two things you certainly are not." He pulled out his hand to reveal a rusty key with a yellow twist tie looped through the hole. He held it up, showed it to me, victorious. "Don't worry, you're not stuck with me."

When the elevator hit the fifth it dipped down as if right at the finish line it had given up and was ready to snap from its cable and tumble all the way back down the shaft. There was a hesitation, a real quiet one. Then the five light pinged and the door opened and I wheeled the old man out. I could almost hear the thing sigh as my feet came off it.

We rolled to Five-Fourteen and the old man pushed up in the chair to knock on the door. When there was no answer he did it again, this time with angry shouting. Then he used the key. "Don't know where this boy disappears to," he mumbled as the door swung in.

"Maybe he's at the beach."

It was a cheap shot, even if he didn't know it. I pushed him inside and locked the door behind me.

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part III

2010-10-06T07:13:00.002-04:00

Malcolm Greenstone was dead. I knew that because no one could live through what I'd done to him.

"I can't do booze," the old man said. "I spent twenty years pickled in the stuff but my stomach just can't take it anymore." The more I looked at him the more I saw Malcolm. The chin. The nose. The way they'd looked before I got to them. "I'm switching to beer, you want the rest of this?"

"You've given me enough."

"Don't go pussy on me, just take the damn drink. If it's not you it's the sink, and I think just enough of you to give you first shot." I pulled the glass over and my hand came close to his, nearly touching it. His hands were impossibly dry. Malcolm's were not. He called for a beer while I worked with what I had. "What line of work are you in then?" He was playing with the veins in his hands, pushing them around under the surface.

"I'm between jobs at the moment."

"Of course. Only two men drink that way- the heartbroken and the unemployed."

The bartender brought a beer; shitty, domestic stuff you could see right through. He said, "Women are like jobs and jobs are like women. What do they call that? Interchangeable? You put on your best suit at the start but by the end you can't be bothered."

The old man took the beer. "A big guy like you could find a new one in no time."

"Which are we talking about," the bartender asked.

I said, "You're not making this easier."

"Don't imagine I could." The bartender finished wiping the bottles off and moved to the wood, taking a thin layer of greasy dust up with his damp rag. Then he took out a spray can of lemon cleaner from under the counter and set to filling the air with a choking citrus as fake and constant as the people you find on boardwalks.

"What's that gonna do," the old man asked. "Nothing but a squirt of piss. This place is filthy. It needs a good clean, a harsh clean, with real chemicals like, like..."

"Bleach," I said.

"Did you know that shit kills HIV? Doctors are out of their minds looking for a cure and it's right under their noses. 'Course you can't go injecting people with bleach, but I'm sure they can figure something out, you know they can, just have to be willing to break some eggs."

I pictured Malcolm's white basin sink and a spiral of pink swirling around and around and down the drain, and in my hand the jug I'd brought from the car, spreading it around, covering my hands when the sink was done.

"Listen, the bartender said, "shut up. Neither of you knows a thing about running a business. You think customers will stick around if the place reeks of noxious fumes?"

"What the...noxious fumes?"

"Yeah. Noxious fumes."

"You really think that's a problem? Look around, you have no customers!" The old man turned. "You wouldn't mind the smell, right?" I shook my head. "See? If you're gonna clean a place at least do it right. It's called being thorough, and people appreciate it."

I stood and walked along the bar, past the stools and to the door with a sign that read 'men', not that there was a second one for women. When I reached for the handle I missed, reaimed and found it, and I wondered if it was the gin screwing me up or everything else. Then I went in.

The bathroom was small, dim, a toilet and a sink and a fluorescent strip in the ceiling with one tube working, the other a faint, purple pulse with a voice like cicadas. As I pissed I could still hear the old man talking out there, arguing, giving his opinion. He never stopped. He had a gift for words which he'd passed down to his grandson, though it hadn't worked out as well for him. Words get people into trouble. Especially ones that rhyme. I tried not to think about it, then I flushed. When I came back the old man had the bar phone to his ear, the cord stretched across the bartender's workspace and over the counter. He seemed annoyed.

"He's not answering," he said, handing it back. "How the hell am I supposed to get home?"

The bartender hung up with his finger and waited for a dial tone. "I'll call you a taxi."

"Are you crazy? I can't afford that!"

"You're drunk, even if you had a car you couldn't drive it. Hell, I'll pay for it if it gets you out of my sight."

I sat again, noticing my drink was gone. I realized it looked done but the ice holds onto some. "Problem," I asked and he sunk down.

"No, no. He lives a few blocks away, I'll walk, see what's going on. He falls asleep in front of the TV sometimes. Lazy idiot."

The bartender said, "It's none of my business but you probably shouldn't be walking that far at your age."

I threw some bills on the counter. "Don't worry. I'll take him."

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part II

2010-10-03T08:37:00.004-04:00

Standing behind his hunch I could see the old man's spine through his sweater. It stuck up like a range of old, wind-worn mountains that stretched from his collar to his belt, and I wasn't sure where to put my hands, not out of some idiot's need for appropriateness because, let's be honest, he'd become sexless years before I met him, but because it all looked way too brittle. Might as well ask me to push a bag of glass onto the roof.

"Here we go," I said, more to myself, putting a hand on either side of his waist. As small as it was to look at it was actually even smaller to touch, the cordorouys, baggy on his pelvis, pushing in under my grip until they hit bone. I lifted him up and he couldn't have weighed more than seventy pounds. It all went easily enough, except maybe for some ugly straining on his part.

"You got paws bigger than some bears I've met," he said, settling in.

"Which is it then?"

"Hmm?"

I recaptured my seat and grabbed my gin. "A minute ago I was an ape, now I'm a bear."

"Well. A lot can happen in a minute, don't you think?"

"Suppose." I took a pull and it tasted right, like always. I watched my fingers flex around the thick glass.

"I used to have hands like yours, believe it or not. Somewhere along the way I lost track of them. Let them..." he trailed off. "Now if I so much as get a weed in the yard I need my grandson to come pull it out." He sipped his drink and said, "Shit. Now you think I'm some lonely bastard who buys a stranger a drink so he can complain about his lot."

"I'm not that perceptive about these things."

He breathed into his glass, a long, lungish thing, and it took me a bit to realize he was laughing. The bartender glanced over to make sure it wasn't a death rattle. "You're very good," the old man pointed a strange fingernail at me. "You play the oaf but that's not you at all, is it?" I tossed back the rest of my drink until cubes hit teeth. Then I waved for another. The bartender did his job and the old man was still on his second sip. "You would've fit right in with the Gentlesin's Club," he said, "bastard like yourself, they'd have made you a member for sure."

I grabbed a swig, phrased like a question.

"It was a men's organization of sorts, glorious shit-starters hellbent on anarchy. Beautiful men in our own right. Used to get dressed up in our best tuxedos and chew peyote. We liked to say, 'If it's not right, we'll wrong it.' See, we understood what all the greats have- that you can do more damage in shined shoes than you can in stompers."

He went on like that as I finished my second and ordered a third. We sat drinking for a bit listening to a television try its hardest. Eventually I said, "What line of work's your son in?" He looked up slowly from his glass. "He must be busy if it's worth skipping over him and bothering the grandson for help around the house."

"You think so?"

I shrugged.

"And you're supposed to be the 'not perceptive one'." He moved his head around, mocking me. He slid his glass around on the bar and watched the way the puddles moved. "Didn't mean that. It's just, sickness took that boy a long time ago. Sometimes I get a stick up the ass about it."

"Understandable."

"The only phone number I got left is my grandson's. Now don't get me wrong, he's sort of an asshole, but at least he picks up. Speaks to a man's character if he can pick up a phone fully knowing I'm on the other side of it."

"Cheers to that." The bartender came over and topped us off. "In fact I'd say Malcolm qualifies for fucking saintdom for putting up with your sour routine all these years."

"Nobody asked you," the old man mumbled.

All of a sudden all that gin in my gut felt like it was weighing me down, ready to fall out my ass like a wet diamond. I pretended to take another slug but instead let it burn at my lips because it bought me some time, kept things casual. "His name's Malcolm?" after I'd counted to ten.

"Unfortunately. It's no wonder he fancies himself some sort of poet with a name like that. But what else can we do but grow into our names? Like goddamn potted plants."

I looked at my hands, wondering if he could smell the bleach on them.

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part I

2010-09-30T10:16:00.000-04:00

Between a factory which makes plastic things, odds and ends like dolls eyes and adult toys, and a slaughterhouse, a kosher one, meaning a man at peace with God comes there early each morning to approve of how the men are killing, I found a bar, a hole-in-the-wall. It didn't have a name, just weak neon tubes in the windows that spelled out words like "beer" and "cold", at least one of them a lie. So I went in. I figured that way when she asked me where I'd been, and I said "Nowhere", it would be the truth, and it would show on my face and the questions would stop.

It was the kind of place, you know it, where a lightbulb burns out and they figure, shit, one less drain on the electric bill. There were corners you couldn't even see into. Pushed up to the bar were four wooden stools, the first wet with something, so I took the second and when I did duct tape crinkled under my ass. In the jukebox there was a 45 spinning. Some guy crying about not knowing where his woman was sleeping that night, and all I could think was, Jesus, it's so much worse to know.

The bartender came to life and trickled over, a nice enough-looking guy with a lazy eye asking me what I wanted. "Gin," I told him, "and don't go sneaking top shelf shit on me."

As he went to find the bottle I took my hand off the bar, realizing it smelled like bleach. My hand, not the bar. I've always hated the way it dries me out, the skin puckers in like not just water but the life has been sucked out of me, leaving it cracked and throbbing. Though I have to admit the smell isn't bad. It's the smell of a clean slate, a clear conscience.

Someone to my left cleared his throat and you got the impression he had cancer; something nasty had woken up in his neck and was tearing it apart, putting blood in his spittle, which, by the way, is a word I hate. Probably why I use it so much. I turned to see an old man pulling himself out of the dark, shaking to his feet up from a chair at a table I couldn't see, yellow eyes pointed at me, worn down teeth propping up a mouth gravity was winning against.

"How do," he asked. I nodded to him because it was all I could think to say.

The bartender arrived with my gin just in time, spilling a little when he poured, which I tried not to hold against him. He noticed the old man and called out to be careful, not to fall in his establishment and break a hip or what have you. The way the lids tightened around his good eye made it sound like a joke.

"Shut your yapper and pour another, and I'll pay for the both," the old man said, his breath obvious.

I shook my head. "Thanks, though."

"Listen, friend, anyone who puts a foot in this sunuvabitch's hole obviously needs a drink bad enough, and I'd enjoy the opportunity to buy it for you."

The bartender poured a gin in reply. I shifted as the old man put two hands infested with blue and black veins on the stool to my left, preparing himself for the task of climbing up. He'd been a strong man once judging by his voice and his shoes, but now he was looking at that barstool like he was standing at base camp. "I'm not stopping at one is the problem," I tried. He laughed a little and it seemed like it hurt him. He looked up at me.

"I'll get the first. After that you're on your own. There's just no fightin' it, I'll have you know."

"Well then thanks, I guess."

"Don't bother, we're Even Steven if you just help me up this fucking thing. I'm telling you they're makin' them taller all the time, every year, taller, and for what? Hm?"

The bartender slid the second drink to the hilt and said, "Would you stop with that?" He threw me a look, sucking air between his teeth and dismissing the old man and everything he'd said, ever said, with a lazy wave of his rag. I leaned over and grabbed the old man's arm. Felt how cold it was.

"Not like that you ape, unless you're aiming to break it!" The jaundice in his eyes caught flame. He regarded me in loathing tones, a sudden snap of intent. I held it there, his arm, and my tongue, telling myself he deserved a free pass, just one, considering he'd bought me a drink just seconds before.

"I'd have to get to know you better before I decide what to break," I told him. He eyed the gin.

"Well, here's your chance then, isn't it."

The bartender chuckled to himself, busy dusting bottles. I let go and got to my feet.

And After That, I Want Everything

2010-09-04T21:07:00.001-04:00

I drank a large bottle of beer with my sushi. They were salmon rolls with masago; fish roe; tiny, bright orange beads that burst when you bite into them. The kind of food that the very concept of horrifies you as a child but then there you are, you're an adult and there you are, loving it, considering it a treat and a delicacy. We watched an action movie as we ate. In between chopstick shovellings there were explosions and laughs and a sense that life is incredible if you find just the right combinations of it. When the movie was finished it was time for coffee so I prepared it, pouring a cup from the pot already made, stirring in artificial sweetener and heating it in the microwave. As I sat back on the couch, hot cup in hand, I felt something between my teeth. I dislodged it with my tongue. It was misago- one, final bead of it had been my passenger. This was an egg. A fish had pushed it out, or more accurrately had it massaged out by a factory worker, and now it had been in my mouth for the better part of three hours, just sitting there, stuck between molars. Life. In all its various combinations, disgusting and otherwise, there for us to pop between our teeth. It still tasted good. I smiled and washed it down with the coffee.

A Compendium of Invisible Icons

2010-08-24T06:59:00.003-04:00

I saw the film Inception recently and fell in love. It's so much the kind of movie I adore- something with style, with depth, with passion, with a kind of truth to it, with a new way to look at things. It also made me realize, once and for all, that Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite directors. The Dark Knight for me is a flawless movie, something which I can and do watch repeatedly and just absorb it, take in the power of Heath Ledger's performance, a performance that could in and of itself be a film school, marvel at the building rhythm of the story, the flawless editing of sounds, sights, senses, all of it coming together and never stopping for a moment.

Seeing and falling in love with Inception pushed me to finally watch Following, Nolan's very first film, an indie made on the cheap when no one knew they should know him. It was just as expected, good but not great, promising would be the best way to explain it, and while I was watching it I noticed with some surprise that on the door of the main character's apartment, there was a sticker of nothing less than the Bat Symbol. It made me laugh, and then it made me think: was this a coincidence, or the sign of an interest in Batman on Nolan's part? I put it aside and moved on, amused, interested.

Then, still being on a Nolan kick, complete with Inception soundtrack playing on loop in the car, I went next to rewatching Memento. This was the film that I, like so many others, watched in shock wondering who the hell this director was. It was so good I bought it twice, the second version offering little more than a new cover and menu.

Halfway through the movie, still just as taken in as I've always been by it, I noticed it: the Bat Symbol. Again. This time just briefly, in the window of a comic store across the street as a car left an alley. It was so incidental as to seem completely unplanned. I sat forward, pausing and rewinding to make sure I'd seen what I'd seen, and sure enough I had. This was too much. This was the second time in as many films. His first two he'd ever made, containing an image from the one which would define and seal his career, his success.

What signs fill our lives? What symbols, literally and figuratively, float around on the edges of our sight, trying to warn us or prod us, steer us or taunt us? How much don't we see because there's simply so much to see we can't possibly take it all in?

It can be pure coincidence, of course. Of course.

I went to Google and typed in "Bat Symbol in Nolan Films" and came up with some hits. It did for me what the internet always does- tells you you're not alone in this world while simultaneously stealing from you the possibility of a unique discovery, thought, moment. The article or post or whatever it was included a quote from the cinematographer, I believe, of Following, who did his best to explain away the phenomenon. He explained that the apartment had been his own, a common thing when shooting on the cheap, and he had put the sticker up when he moved in in 1989, the year the original Batman film was conquering the world. It wasn't magic, he was saying, it was a series of common events.

I was angry at first, having the epiphany ripped from my hands. Then I realized he'd done no such thing- he'd proved it, because how else would, for lack of a better word, fate work but through a sequence of events which on the surface would seem random, innoccuous? The symbol being there on the door wasn't planned, wasn't an interest or an obsession of Nolan's, it had arrived there on its own. A movie coming out. A sticker purchase. A hiring of a cinematographer. A choice of location. A choice of shots.

If you look at anything close enough you find it's made of cells. Look closer and you'll identify the parts of the cell- the membrane, the nucleus, so on. Look even closer and you'll see the very protons and electrons that make up the thing, make up all things. It's all biology and math, numbers and science, and some people will use that to say it isn't incredible, it isn't a miracle, but I'll always, always, always use it to explain why it is. Just because a thing has skin doesn't mean it can't be a phantasm, an apparition. Maybe you look for symbols. Maybe you don't. It doesn't change their being there, toiling in the fringes, like electrons, unaware of eyes and needing no praise, busy with their work.

The Drive

2010-08-02T20:46:00.001-04:00

He was free now. Before that he lost all sight and sound. Before that he felt the head-pain fade away. Before that he saw his blood fan out around him like inky wings, and he realized the fucker did good work after all. Before that he was pushed to the tattoo parlour's piss-wet sidewalk, connecting it with his skull. Before that he took a swing at the big, bald fucker. Before that the big, bald fucker smiled and said, "But every good one, too, right?" Before that he told the big, bald fucker, "So every bad word I speak is soaked in her name." Before that the big, bald fucker said, "That's it? You're not gonna tell me why?" Before that he turned to leave. Before that the big, bald fucker said, "Get the hell out of my shop." Before that he said, "Can't? Or won't." Before that the big, bald fucker said, "You're serious? I can't do that shit." Before that he stared at the big, bald fucker. Before that the big, bald fucker bellow-laughed. Before that he said, "Open me up, ink my lungs." Before that the big, bald fucker said, "Come again?" Before that he said, "Can you tattoo my lungs with her name?" Before that he slid her photo across the glass. Before that the big, bald fucker said, "How can I help you?" Before that he approached the counter. Before that he entered the tattoo parlour. Before that he came in out of the drizzling rain. Before that he crossed the parking lot night. Before that he got out of the car. Before that he parked. Before that he noticed the tattoo parlour. Before that he drove. Before that he turned on his windshield wipers. Before that he hung up the phone.

Barrel Dredger

2010-07-26T20:15:00.002-04:00

This is from a long time ago. Jack Scatter is a hard-news journalist of ill-repute. He doesn't believe in typing, so I volunteered.

"Scatter's Matters"

A column by Jack Scatter

as dictated to Brian Martinez

Celebrity News

“I don’t use them anymore. They’re like, whatever.”

That’s former President Bill Clinton, talking about his ears. He was spotted at a restaurant recently eating a man’s face. Speaking of faces, Ted Turner has one. Hey, remember Jim Carrey?

This past Tuesday I ran into Nicole Kidman in my garage. She punched me in the mouth and swallowed eight pounds of taffy.

First O.J. Simpson and now Kylie Minogue. Will celebrities never learn?

Robert Deniro is apparently still distraught over the holocaust. Sounds like this taxi-driving Goodfella needs to relax and Meet The Parents!

All anyone can talk about these days is the war. I mean c’mon, war? When was his last movie, ’92?

What’s truly disturbing is news that Sean Connery’s head has detached from it’s body, sprouted rockets and is currently terrifying residents of a small town in New Mexico. Still doesn’t mean I forgive him for ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’.

In the Hush-Hush Department, word on the street and in the home my mother was put in last year after the steak-knife incident on President’s Day, is I’m dead to her.

NBC is eyeing a giant robot, to be released next Fall.

Did you know if I mention Britney Spears, I get a quarter?

Is it just me, or does Cedric the Entertainer transmit love poems directly into your cerebral cortex by using special satellites on top of the Chrysler Building, in which the poem always ends with the line “And we shall be united, rifle in hand”?

Hey, hear about some celebrity who did something somewhere sometime?

And excuse me, but when did wiping become so popular?

President Lincoln update: still dead. And come on, guy. Lose the Lincoln beard.

In a bold and no doubt lucrative move, Paramount Pictures has optioned a remake of a film they’re currently in the process of filming. The remake is scheduled to hit theaters a week before the original. Ted Danson, who stars in the original, is set to do a cameo.

Stay tuned!

Of Sirens and C-Sections

2010-07-02T00:14:00.004-04:00

Hey
Hey there
Lady
Let me burn your night down
Let me disassemble your functioning drunk
Your parallelomilligram
Your revolting insights, your
Twilight years transcribed via phonechainmailorderforms

Let me fill your calendar with made-up holidays
Infinite Looping Parade Day
Anti-Matter Deathday (Observed)
Celebration of The No
Because the fire trucks are screaming
Through terrified neighborhoods,
Blaring their horns in a portent of smoke
And jelly-flopping legs
Turning circles through parking lots and into
The telling of legends

So hey there
Lady
Come back and hear me out
I've got a pretty good deal
And you should really just
Hear me out
You might find something you've been looking for
Under ant and egg sac-stained stones

And you just might
Understate purpose,

Justify talons,
Pull back the teeth of your bear trap with
Nervous construction

And when you do,
And you see the inscription
Carved out by the marrow of dying animals
You may find it spells out your maiden name
Dressed in the scabs and fur of
Exodus and such

On Display

2010-06-08T11:45:00.001-04:00

Standing in the window, I could see from my angle a family standing in the parking lot of a fast food shop. The mother was smoking a cigarette in sweatpants and leaning against their car. The father, in a muscle shirt, was miming a machine gun, spraying it left and right over the head of his son, who watched and laughed and clawed at his dad in approval. After his father had waved him off, I watched as the boy went to his reflection in the car's paintjob and squeezed his arms, checking the development of his biceps. I had a realization then, an image. I saw exactly who that boy would become. The radio to my left was playing a song by Soundgarden. Chris Cornell was singing, "How did I know this would be my fate?" I looked at it and a passing truck interefered with the reception, warbling his voice into an undulation. By the time I looked back, the family was gone.

Dryfacts

2010-05-30T07:51:00.006-04:00

This is what's happening right now:

I made my first novel A Chemical Fire available as an ebook about a month ago. It was a fairly frustrating process, especially in the area of formatting and uploading. The end result was decent though, and sharing it has been an enjoyable time. It's a bit like a coming out party. Like yes, I actually do this. This is what I am.

As was expected, it hasn't sold much. That's not disappointing because I know the majority of people, even avid readers, simply don't buy ebooks. They either don't have a device for it, hate reading anything of length on screens, or haven't adapted to the technology yet. The point of making it available this way was to have it out there, to have a place to point to and say, interested? Here. Read a page. Read a sentence. While I've only sold a few copies there have been far more samples downloaded, and that's just as, if not more, rewarding. To know that people I've never met are checking out my stuff, and possibly enjoying it, is so much of what this is all about.

More importantly, I'm in the process of getting it into print through print-on-demand. I wasted a little time with Wordclay before realizing the book would end up costing a person, all told with shipping, about 21 dollars. The last thing I want to do is rip people off, so I abandoned that and went to Comixpress. Not only would it cost less but the cover would be full color and my own design. It's a little strange to go with a comics printer but I really like what they're about over there. They seem passionate about what they do and they're not out to swindle. I'm currently waiting for proofs so I can move ahead.

I started a website, http://bloodstreamcity.com, an official site of sorts. That more than anything is my place to point to.

I'm making moves to get the word out, which I'll start in full force once everything is set and I have a real, physical book to sell. I printed up bookmarks which are right now in a box on their way to me, and I made up mini-flyers to bring to coffee houses, bookstores, etc. Yesterday we went to a swap meet and slipped a flyer in every book we gave away. Things like that are what I plan, rather than waiting for a literary agent to approve of my form letter enough to request a sample and like that enough to request a meeting and like that enough to think it's marketable and want to pitch it to publishers who like that enough to request a meeting who like that enough to think it can capture enough percentage of the market to clear printing and advertising costs to be a profitable product.

I want to write. I want to be read. I want to make a living at it but I don't need the approval of businessmen, because they certainly don't have mine. If I get an agent and a book deal I'll be very happy but I'm not going to wait around for it to come to me. I need to move on and keep writing and keep getting read and get better and do more of both, which is what I'm doing. I finished the first draft of my second book, which is going in a drawer for a while until I'm ready for edits, and then I started right away on my third. This one, if I pull it off, could be great.

A Book in Titles Only

2010-04-13T22:15:00.003-04:00

The Chainsaw Handshake

Chapter 1: Nosegreaser
Chapter 2: The Social Circles of Power Plugs
Chapter 3: If Your Mother Was Alive to See This
Chapter 4: Gestation in Germany
Chapter 5: Trigger: Finger
Chapter 6: Awash with Discourse
Chapter 7: When Chorus Girls Malfunction
Chapter 8: The Ink from a Printer Runs Through Him Now
Chapter 9: A Warm Blanket; A Cancer on the Evening Wind
Chapter 10: Mixerfixer
Chapter 11: House-guests of the Devil Proper
Chapter 12: Time Zones Used to Mean Something Around Here
Chapter 13: Enter Now The Bludgeoner
Chapter 14: An Ungrateful Pulp
Chapter 15: The Prevailing Wound

The Voluptuousness of Air

2010-04-07T07:10:00.003-04:00

I have medical phobia. It's not all aspects of medicine, it's certain things, like needles and dentists. I don't know where it started, it just sort of snuck up on me over the years. As long as I've been alive I've been hearing about my father's intense fear of needles- how he avoids all treatments that involve injections, how when he was young it took four or five orderlies to hold him down so the doctor could work. I can't say that I've ever enjoyed being poked and dissected but it certainly was never on the level my father is on. But something about those constant stories might have planted a seed.

As part of the hoop-jumping my job at the bank required before they'd hire me, bloodwork and a drug test were on the menu. Being trusted with money, it was important I had good credit, good health and a virgin bloodstream. Luckily this kind of virginity is the kind that resets with time.

I showed up at my closest laboratory with an empty stomach. This is already a losing battle with me, since I have some blood sugar issues. What I mean by that is I get hungry. A lot. Every couple of hours alot. And if I try to ignore it long enough I'll get a flushed face and become a real bastard. I don't even know it's happening, I just suddenly find myself getting worked up about something that's not really an issue. Arguing. Attituding. It's not easy to identify what's causing it because at the time it's genuinely how I feel. The connection between sugar and anger is not an obvious one.

So I showed up and they stuck me. They pricked my arm so they could plunge blood from it. I looked away because it wasn't something I really wanted to watch, but beyond that I didn't need to be held down or anything like that. I've done it before. No big deal.

The woman taking my blood asked my turned-away face: "Are you okay?"

"Fine. Why?"

"You look white."

"I guess I feel a little light-headed."

I'm fairly certain this is what I said. I don't know for sure because at this point I had stopped seeing. My vision had gone dark and I was only aware of sporadic voices doing their best to help keep me sitting up, or whatever it is you do for a person in this situation. At one point I felt as if my bowels were going to unleash hell and I consider it an act of pure skill that I was able to reel them back in. I never actually lost consciousness, but I did toy with the idea.

When I was able to see again I was fed water and noticed how frigid the air was on my body. When my eyes were closed someone had come along and coated my whole body with sweat. Which seemed a rude thing to do. I was told later that my fainting-without-fainting inadvertently exposed a pregnancy. Not mine of course, but one of the nurses. When they were certain I was about to explode with vomit (not likely, I'm vomit-resistant to dangerous levels), a nurse had to suddenly excuse herself from the room due to her already nauseous state. It was the first time she'd admitted she was pregnant to anyone at her job- all because of the needle phobia I didn't realize I had. Oh, but I had it now. The seed had been planted in my childhood and now had become a tree, complete with shaking leaves.

Until recently, I hadn't been to the dentist in seven or eight years. I wish I could say I'm one of those lucky ones with strong teeth who never gets cavities and this is why I haven't gone, but the opposite is true. My teeth are, as far as I'm aware, made of tracing paper. Bad teeth run in my family. Weak enamel. Misaligned, little things with a tendency to fail, and fail hard.

So I more than anyone should have been going to the dentist regularly. Not just regularly but frequently. Dutifully. The problem here is me. Me, but not me. See I brush religiously. I use mouthwash and all that. The thing is I was scared off the whole thing by my childhood dentist, a man who for me is some representation of The Devil. A man who shoved a thousand needles into my mouth but somehow never seemed to numb it enough to stop the pain. A man who ignored anything I said because I was a child. A man who told me a tooth was ready to come out so I should just signal him if he should stop pulling and when the pain started I waved at him and he kept right on going, and when the pain was excruciating I made sounds with my throat and writhed in the leather seat, but he kept on going. A man who ripped a tooth out of my jaw under poorly-applied Novacaine and didn't give a fuck when it felt like exactly that. I was a child, and it took a lot for me to wait until I got to the car to lose my shit.

I'm not complaining. I'm not looking for sympathy. But fuck that guy. Fuck that fucking guy.

So when I got married and moved out from my parents' house, one of the first things that stopped was the dentist. No one was going to force me to go? I wasn't going. Even when part of my mouth felt a little sensitive, I didn't go. Even when I bit a potato chip and the crunch was way, way too loud and accompanied by pain and I looked in the mirror and found a tooth had split apart, I didn't go. Year after year my mouth fell apart and I just readjusted how I chewed and kept on living. I didn't go. Then one day the left side of my neck felt a little strange. The day after that I had what felt like a hard ping pong ball growing inside. I knew I needed a doctor this time, no way around it, and besides I couldn't see them needing to use any needles or anything. The doctor took a look and said it was likely caused by an infection. I told him to look in my mouth and when he did, he strongly recommended I go to the dentist. Now I had to go. So I did.

And by the way, one of the major ironies at work here is that I personally find science and medicine to be incredibly interesting. I worked in a supplement store for seven years. I watch television shows about medical oddities. I get into conversations concerning illnesses. It even sneaks into the things I write fairly often. This here is such a case. But this seems to be controlled by a seperate part of the brain, and the only thing I can do to bolster myself in times like these is try to reintroduce these two parts.

Left side? Meet right side. Or maybe it's: fascinated intellect? Meet pounding heart.

A few hours later a dentist with bad skin but an understanding demeanor was standing over me, wiping his forehead and saying um every few words. I had to explain to him that what he saw was fear-based. I'd been scarred. He understood my phobia and assured me it was incredibly common, and this came across as a combination of comforting and belittling. But ultimately, I appreciated that he heard me when I talked. I was not a child; I had a voice. He ordered a full set of xrays and then I was putting my head into a machine that studied me like a fascinated alien, and then I was back in the chair and the dentist was showing me pictures of my skull and saying um some more. Then we set up my next appointment.

By the time it came around, the dentist had changed his schedule to the point where I couldn't see him. They switched me to another doctor and this meant that once again I, a full-grown man, would have to explain to another full-grown man that I was afraid.

I tell him, "If you can use that sweet air stuff it would really help."

"Not a problem," he says. "Have you ever had it?"

"No." This is easier than explaining that my former dentist preferred to do his ripping undulled.

"Most people don't know what to expect. Mainly it helps you to relax. Some get a little high. We'll still need to numb the area because it doesn't stop you from feeling things, it just stops you from, you know...caring."

We laugh nervously.

"That's exactly what I want to stop doing," I assure him. I'm barely done saying it when a nurse slips something over my face. It's as fast as garrote wire in spy hands. As it turns out, it's a tube and a small breather, fixed over my nose.

The dentist tells me they'll start off light since I've never had it before and don't know how I'll react to it. He says, "You're a big guy so we may need to up the dose," and he gestures to my monstruous legs.

He turns and begins to prepare his death tools. I lay there and entirely forget how to breathe naturally. Is it in through the nose, out through the mouth? Is it short inhales or long ones? The simplest, most automatic act of life is to me now a doubting game. Along with that I find myself taking the first-time-user drug census- how do I feel? Is time distorted? Can I move my feet? Is everything...funnier?

He smears my gums with a gel and instantly they feel like floppy rubber. I feel panic set in. This thing is around my nose and I don't like it. It cuts me off from my mouth. I can't see it. Maybe that's a good thing, though, maybe I don't want to see it. But I feel suffocated. Trapped. I want out. I want out of this tube and this chair. I want this dentist away from me or I'll grab one of his tools and hostage-crisis my way out of this cursed, muzak-filled dungeon.

That's the moment when I realize something pretty interesting. Panic: it's kind of hilarious. We, and especially I, spend so much time scared of this thing and that thing, but it's all just what it is. I have a mouth with teeth in it. The dentist has a stomach that's growling for food four inches from my ear. It's late and he's probably hungry. It's all just what it is.

"How's that sweet air treating you," he asks.

"I'm feeling distant," my mouth says. It's on the other side of the tube which to my measurement is ten-billion miles away from my nose. "I'm, you know...high."

He and my mouth laugh at each other. Then he starts to work. I notice how the light fixture looks like the pupil of a tremendous eye peeking in through the ceiling. I listen to the Nitrous machine and pay attention to the two, distinct sounds it makes. Slowly I make the connection that the sounds are my inhalations and exhalations. This is my breathing, audible for all. I slow it down if only because the sound is hypnotic.

At one point the dentist picks up a new tool, leans over me and says, "Now, this is going to make dust in your mouth." It may be one of the greatest things I've ever been told as pure fact. Nothing dressed up. No lies. It's all just what it is. It makes me realize what this man is capable of. He says a dozen more things just like this, with all the weight and directness his profession demands. I struggle to remember them all for later but they keep slipping away. The only one that sticks is when he asks the nurse, "Is this machine causing an odor?" and she tells him no, that someone burnt the popcorn. This seems to me a stroke of genius.

There are awful smells at times. There is the splashing of water, the drilling of teeth, the hot push of fillings being applied. The usual atrocities. They just seem now like things happening to someone else, someone I don't particularly care about. I'm more interested in how if I concentrate just the right way I can imagine that my fingers start at my elbows. Whenever things start to get rough and I'm aware of what's happening to me, I just breathe in deeper through my nose to get more of the air.

When he's done he switches the mixture over to oxygen and lets me breathe for a while. Clarity comes back. I stand when he tells me to, but I still feel like I'm drifting. I feel the surreal calmness that makes me wish I could walk around with this tube on my face, wish we all could and we'd be having intense conversations from light years apart, and whenever things got bad you could just breathe deeply through the nose.

Having a bad day at work? Breathe in deeply through the nose. Get into an argument with your parents? Breathe in deeply through the nose.

I wash my mouth out and I spit. I look down at the chair. It's just leather, that's all. He tells me I was the perfect patient. I tell him the drugs were all the difference. I ask him if he wants me to sit down again and he says no, we're done. It seems to me almost a shame.

I'm not saying I'm cured, but maybe the solution to medical phobia is more medical. Different but the same medical. Like how snake venom is also anti-venom. On the other hand, this might just be the Nitrous talking.

afterthoughts

2010-03-20T09:58:00.007-04:00

The other day I finished the first rough draft of my second book, titled The Scapegoatist. I'm still too close to it to make a judgment, so I don't know what to make of it exactly other than I believe it's a good story and that it probably needs a good amount of work. With longer pieces like this I'm finding it takes some time to find the voice of the book- that point where you stop trying too hard and everything clicks and the tone becomes locked in and you start to really understand the character or characters and who they are and why they do the things they do. By that point, though, you've already written half the thing. So now the job becomes to go back and delete all the jokes that really aren't funny and just overall make everything match up. That's what's next for me. Once I do that I should be able to share.

All of this owes to the fact, which I'm not only discovering for myself but have also read, that every time you write a book you have to relearn how to do it. Not to say that you forget exactly, but that each one is different and has different challenges and problems and ultimately solutions to those challenges and problems. On the one hand this can be a little frustrating, to feel like an amateur every time out (which at this point I still am), but on the other it's also what makes the whole thing interesting, and I'm always a believer that if it's boring to write, it's boring to read.

Probably the biggest lesson I learned this time around was to let go. Instead of obsessively editing as I went along, I stayed in writing mode and didn't allow myself to scroll back and start picking things apart. I also didn't sit with my fingers hovering over the keyboard for thirty minutes waiting for the perfect word, as I often have, but rather just drove forward and kept moving, kept moving. This does explain why the book needs so much work now, but on the other hand it was a far, far more productive way of working. My first book, A Chemical Fire, was around 51,000 words and took me a few years to complete, while this one passed the 80,000 mark and took just one. I believe the next will continue the trend, though no matter what I'll forever be a fan of brevity; of quality versus quantity, of saying what needs to be said in the shortest form it remains effective.

A funny thing happened the day after I finished the first draft of this book. A good amount of it was written on my breaks at work- I get an hour for lunch, which most days I take alone in a basement break room. While this SOUNDS lonely, I actually love it. I generally finish eating in about ten minutes and then spend the rest of the time writing down what I spent the first half of the day thinking about, unless by poor timing someone else happens to come down for their break at the same time and decides to spend it, as most of them do, bitching about the job. This has given me quality time to work and sends me home most days with at least a head-start. When I get home I type up what I have knowing that if nothing else I've written at least this much today, and most times once I'm done transcribing I go further and continue to write.

I've been at my job for around a year and a half and have been writing this book for about a year of that, so (barring interruptions) writing The Scapegoatist is what I know of lunch. The day after I finished the first draft I was walking down the stairs and I had a realization: while there's still work to be done on it, I need to give myself time to gain some distance, to edit from an impartial view. Also I need to give Natalia time to read it (she's always first), and even when I do start editing it's all done on a computer screen, so will all be done at home. So my realization as I went down into the basement was this- I'm free. While I love writing, novels can be tedious work. Not every moment can be ecstatic and enervating, sometimes you just have to head-down-shoulders-forward trudge forth and hack away at the work of it. The only way this is possible is to do it whether you feel like it or not. Period. If you wait for inspiration you're lucky to write one book in your lifetime. And very often, inspiration comes because you're already in motion.

"I'm free," I thought. I can spend this hour any way I want. I can sleep on the couch, read a magazine, maybe try to punch the old television set into getting reception, watch something. It doesn't have to be writing. I have another book lined up that I want to write next, but I need to edit this one first so I shouldn't start it. I'm free.

I finished my lunch, then tried to decide what to do with my next fifty minutes. After I'd been sitting there for a while, silently staring off, I took out a pen and a notebook and I started writing. I'm thinking about writing a book that doesn't end. What that would mean. Maybe periodic volumes of an ever-changing thing. Something that would occasionally rear its head. It's a thought.

Approval

2010-02-10T22:24:00.003-05:00

This scene came to me the other day.

FADE IN - INTERIOR WORKPLACE

Typical workplace. Store. Bank. Etc. A CUSTOMER stands on one side of the counter, an EMPLOYEE stands on the other.

We join them in mid-conversation as the Customer has just asked for something.

EMPLOYEE:
"Sorry, I need approval from my manager."

CUSTOMER (JOKING):
"Don't we all?"

EMPLOYEE:
"Yes. Well I'm afraid I can't do that right now."

CUSTOMER:
"Really? Why not?"

EMPLOYEE:
"He died an hour ago."

CUSTOMER:
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

EMPLOYEE (NO EMOTION):
"It's fine."

He turns his head and we PAN with his line of sight to find a LARGE EGG. It begins to pulsate and hatch. We watch as it opens to reveal a MANAGER. He is already wearing a suit.

He calmly walks over.

MANAGER:
"I am the new manager."

EMPLOYEE (TO CUSTOMER):
"Okay, NOW I can do it."

FADE OUT.

Introduction to Dear, Dead Thomas Coffin of the Third-Tier of The Scabby Saints, Part One: He's Got Class and He Ruins Everything

2010-01-15T11:47:00.008-05:00

I hope you remember Thomas
He's the one who
Throws rocks at girls and sells their Blood to charities

The man who Pissed into a jar that one time
then
Sucked it up into a straw
and
Spit it into the Sky and
Called it the Sun
And everyone believed him because that's what you do

He's the one who stands there
Behind you
Raging about this, and about that,
Boiling his Skin 'til it
Floats off the Muscle,
Turns your Head sideways,
Shares you his Syphilis
so he
Feels that he Owns you cuz he
Knows that he does because no one will touch you looking like
THAT
Enters your car and Fucks the exhaust pipe
Tongues the transmission and
Squeezes the air bags and sweats on the windshield
Whispers to your brakes
that he'll
Take them to dinner
if they'll Just take it easy the next time
you Pump Them

He's the blackfirenegativemisprint
Straddling Ear Hairs
And
Taunting Dead Animals and His Fingers are Commandments
And when you Shake his Hand He Breaks them all Laughing
All I ask is that you remember Dear, Dead Thomas Coffin
Because he can't
And because he always liked you
And you never know when he might come back into town
And ask for his shoes

The Faith Eraser

2010-01-05T18:17:00.001-05:00

There's something interesting that happens with time: the longer you live, over and over you prove yourself wrong. You believe certain things so strongly as a child or teen or young adult or larvae or egg, and then as experience piles up those original ideals become crushed under their weight. That doesn't make it wrong to believe in things. A person has to live. No, the only wrong is to disallow the update. I've been thinking about it in mainly terms of writing, only because I've been so thoroughly buried in it.

For instance.

I used to believe that editing was sacrilege. That it destroyed the original moment of creation and was untrue to the work. Now I know these are the words of the lazy writer, that editing is a focusing and tightening in order to be as clear as possible, as beautiful and flowing as possible. You can get away with not editing on smaller pieces, preferring to preserve them as they are, but anything of length will wither without the caring and the watering and the snipping. Some will say that Kerouac didn't believe in editing and use that to prove it. I say that a) Kerouac was a genius and you and I most likely aren't and b) to my reading of him so far I believe he was concerned with dictating truth and experience through poet's lips and that, in his work and in his life, he didn't seek structure or unity and that's fine for what he wanted but, unless you're doing the same and possibly copying/borrowing/stealing/plagiarizing from his worths and contributions, I say you can probably do with some editing.

And also.

I used to believe that mapping out a story before writing it would ruin the journey, because the real excitement lay in typing forward into the gnawing darkness, pushing it back without knowing where it went, what was at the other side, what goal waited with glistening and safety. I was right, somewhat. That feeling is still pure and mystical-god-like. But with age comes the ability to stave off short-term payoffs to enjoy long-terms, comes the craving of world and country travels that hold meanings and not just sporadic runs through violent neghborhoods. Now I know that a basic outline, a simple sketch will get you from point A to F to K to P to U to Z and still have odd detours into rat dens and farmers' wives that enervate and shock and keep the senses vibrating but still with a goal in eye, still with that final leg and leap with the knowledge that I made it, that I won, that where once I was lost now I confound.

Furthermore.

I used to believe that it was dangerous to read other writers while I myself was writing. I was, and am still, so prone to admiration and envy that it would pull me to write more like this, less like that, so that cohesion would break down and I would find myself with four different stories across eight different styles in the space of twelve pages. Now I know the key is in reading as much as possible. Get pulled in all four directions and you stand in the same place but find yourself looking up. The more you drink in the more you spit out. Words are an evolutionary gift and I want them all.

And.

I used to believe that style came from adding more, more, more. I would cover myself in bracelets and rings and pins and stickers, gels and watches and earrings and big, bright, floppy clothing. My stories would drip with blood and scream into ears. Now I know that style comes from adding correctly. The right pair of shoes. The word that kills.

Finally.

I used to believe that since there was no God I could do anything and get away with it. I remember the exact moment as a child, walking down the block to elementary school with a backpack on underneath the tree that dropped acorns two houses from the corner with the crossing guard, that I had this thought. I couldn't have been more than seven and I stopped walking at the impossible weight and size of it. There is no God. No one is watching. It was a pivotal and precise revelation, and may, I now realize, have been had much too early in life. But now I know the opposite is true. That without God I can't lean on absolution and penetence and confessional to erase the things I've done, so I either must do these punishments myself through words and dwelling or do my best to avoid sins and wrongs in the first place knowing that, in this house without foundation, there's no guarantee the columns won't shake and crumble and come down on my soft and splurting skull.

I used to believe a lot of things. Now I know a few.

On Time and Careening; Electrified Wrists

2009-12-29T22:27:00.015-05:00

Man stands on
elevated train track,
sleeves bristling, wind
flapping his lapels and mussing his
Hundred Dollar Haircut and
fifty dollar coat as he
waits in the quiet, the cold

Commuters, not a
group but a
series of islands too
bored to war
too busy shoving
music in ears and
fingers in pockets
to ask each other to move,
instead bump and huddle and
accidentally
keep each other company

Younger man asks him if the
train is late and he says
yes or
no or
maybe, he's not sure and can't hear himself over the
wind and anyway
so what does it matter and
here comes the train now rumbling and scraping along
and something's wrong, the sparks and the screeching and the
shrieking of brakes as they fail and fumble to
stop it but can't

Cars begin jostling and
metal begins screaming and
younger man's running but
no one's else moving so he
pulls the other away as the
train is derailing, a thunder of terror and a hot wind of reckoning the
commuters all falling and going to pieces,
meat is a murder and blood is a-following and the
dust is a-settling and the
wind sound's returning

Younger man pulls himself
up and the other, helps him to
feet they're the
only two standing in this
newsworthy rendering
"Why'd you not move" the
younger man asks him with
look of confusion and blood and dust spattering

He straightens up tie and rebuttons button and
smacks dirt off his newspaper and kicks off an eardrum to
check on his watch and cross-reference schedules,
doesn't look over just says to the younger man,
"Happens every day, you just
have to get used to it."

My Heart’s Starting to Bother Me Now (A New Base-Line Condition)

2009-11-21T07:22:00.005-05:00

Recently I’ve been reading two things: Kerouac and a book called Obedience to Authority, and both have me thinking about fear. Fear of what others think. A fear we put in ourselves, constant, a worm bore into the brain, put in the ear with our own hands.

Obedience to Authority is about a study that was done in the fifties or sixties that tested the extent to which ordinary people will follow the orders of a superior, even in the presence of a moral dilemma, of inflicting pain on a fellow man. They used an actor and the guise of a fake study on learning in which the teacher (the mark) shocked the learner (the actor) with electric shocks at each wrong answer. But the trick was, the shocks, ever increasing in power, were fake. The learner only pretended to be in pain. The plan was to see how many people continued on with worse and worse and worse shocks, go against their own feelings and the begs of the victim (fake). It was scary and depressing to see the ratios. How many people went through with it, hurt another person, a screaming in pain person sometimes complaining of heart condition always pleading to be let out. Only because a man in a lab coat with imagined power said so. This man had no real authority. He only represented a higher order, a system, a man above. For this they threw themselves out, their humanity, their compassion. Sweating, protesting, still they went on, barely prodded by monotone phrases like "there is no permanent tissue damage." But the ones, the few that stood up, stopped and refused to go on, I was so proud of them. A swelling in the lungs.

Jack Kerouac is a man, a poet, a writer. I read his Book of Sketches, a kind of journal of writings, a transcription of the pads he kept in his pocket over the course of several years describing scenes and moments, and it felt like writing class. I sat with it close to my face unblinking, shocked at the constant command, the honesty, thinking I wanted to soak it in, physically into my pores, the talent, the honesty, the vocabulary, the rhythm, I wanted to have that for myself. I’ve never felt more in my life after putting down a book that I knew the man who wrote it. I know his loves, his lusts, his paranoias, his surroundings, his nineteen-fifties, his cities, his equal compassions and hatreds for the Common Man. Just a journal but it held exactly the reason to write- to talk about the world, document, list what you see, try to find an order to it, say what you think of it, leave a message for after you’re dead, to say I was here, I was angry, I loved, I was here.

From his writing I feel a fearlessness. I don’t know if he displayed that in his real life- I know he traveled, he drugged, he drank, he divorced but also that he hated his life at times, became a slave to his image, his movement, became bitter with the times and fames, died of the drink. But while that means so much to me, it also means nothing. His writing life was not that. It was fearlessness. Never did I feel he held back. He talked about everything. He talked about his brother who died. His sister he disliked. He talked about wanting to be the greatest writer in the world. He talked about his disagreements. About when he thought a friend was wrong. They would all read it at some point, but still he talked. No censor. No fear. Everything he saw and felt. And I need that. I need that. I like style but I love honesty. His writing gave me, more than once, that feeling I search for. The ultimate jaw drop. The shocked eye-open. The Yes, Yes, Exactly, the something that so perfectly speaks to your heart, to your exact sensibilities, to what art can be and how it can shake you and affirm you and connect you to the person who made it in ways that are godly, soulful, impossible to replicate. I’ve gotten that from my favorite bands- Heresy by Nine Inch Nails, human screams used as an instrument while combining acoustic guitar with broken keyboards. The Great Destroyer, a song becomes an electronic cluster-crumble instrumental. Forty-Six and Two by Tool, the sound of that voice and that filter-up guitar sound as it comes back in. Bjork, buying the greatest hits after so many years of thinking about it, sitting on my bed pressing play and just being shocked and sad it had taken me so long but happy to have the short-lived honor of experiencing it for the first time, the reason I always wish I could erase my memory of an album I know too well, heard too many hundreds of times, wishing I could listen to it virgin-like. The very first and perfectly pitched still melodic effortless scream from Karen O the first time we saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs live. Deftones, Elite, "When you’re ripe you’ll bleed out of control", so heavy and filtered and wrenching. Portugal. The Man, a track name I can’t remember, possibly AKA M-80 Wolf, a song that sounds like Castlevania and 8-bit and southern and electronic and dark and smart and right. Muse, singing of the Apocalypse, being so falsetto calm and then suddenly Stockholm Syndrome hits. Creep by Stone Temple Pilots, the most perfect acoustic. Various moments of Radiohead and their paranoid androids, Pink Floyd and their walls and childhood fevers and numbness. Marilyn Manson when he couldn’t be stopped. Saul Williams singing U2 through Trent Reznor’s sound.

And movies. The long shots of Children of Men. Forrest Gump driven to punch by jealousy and protection. Edward Scissorhands driven to kill by the same. And books. Laughing at Fear and Loathing, smiling while reading but not a popcorn smile, not a sugar smile, a real one, a dark one. Opening House of Leaves by Danielewski and seeing what a book can be. Same for Atrocity Exhibition by Ballard. Perfect sentences of Denis Johnson in Jesus’ Son and his journalistic Seek. Simple sadness from Amy Hempel. Surreal degradation and depravity from Craig Clevenger. Jack Kerouac, of course, everything is poetry. A quote from On the Road before I even read it- the burn, burn, burn, and before that Scattered Poems and after that Sketches and just eyes open.

This is what I want. I want to leave behind fear, shake it from my fingers. I want to earn a living doing this but it would mean nothing without the other. I know I’ll probably never be one of the greats but I’ll be happy to be one of the goods trying to be one of the greats, not selling out, not giving in to the crush of the Franchise, the Pander. No hovering over keys, just saying it. No holding back for marketing. Never putting sales before anything, never becoming a cartoon, a joke, an embarrassment. I try not to be Elitist but I get honestly truly disgusted by what I see on the outside, when I read around other people outside my circle, my type, and I hear things like "Reading? Good for you!" like it’s impressive. The worst was a woman saying "I can’t stand reading," such contempt in her voice, like "Books. Fuh." and what I want to say is, "I appreciate your opinion but you’re the one who shit out two babies for a man you don’t even entertain the idea of marrying and actually laugh at when I bring it up. That is your life and you will die dumb." Like Bill Hicks when he said a truck stop waitress asked him through gum, "Why you readin’? and he said "Wow, why? I never thought about why. I guess first and foremost so I don’t become a waitress in a truck stop." And the few that read, excitedly bragging about reading another from The Five People You Meet in Heaven Guy, pointing to it like "see?" and this is the best of them on a scale of readers. The rest don’t have time. Don’t have time, yet "Did you catch the nine hour season finale of Dancing with Surgery Victims?" but this is also the reason to write, the signal, to find other people like me, share something with them, give them another shield for The Fight. And maybe this never works, maybe in person it will never be an honest, human connection. But if I can have one on paper at least that’s something, and it can only be had by fearlessness, an avalanche, the ability to say it all and mean it all, honesty, fearlessness, pride, and that’s what the poets and doctors are saying.

This Business of Sweating and Bleeding

2009-10-31T22:11:00.012-04:00

To my experience, the act of writing is the act of fighting with oneself. It means constantly questioning- things like, is this good? Could it be better? Should it be more like (blank) writer? Is it too much like (blank) writer? Is it funny? Should it be funny? Is it boring? Is it clear? Is it honest? Can my family read this? Am I wasting my time? Are people just humoring me? Will I have to explain this? Has this been said before? And taken far enough, it all tends to bunch up into one, wrenching question- what's the point?

I think about that one a lot. What's the point of telling a story? I don't think of myself as someone who has all the answers, but I find myself doing a thing that tries to give some. When I was a kid writing was a kind of reaching out to communicate. It still is, I suppose, but that's not a piercing need the way it is during those hormone times. However maybe it is still just for me, maybe the act of writing is how I focus on things other than myself, picking apart a story instead of myself, my working out the answers on paper because I can't do it aloud. Maybe, if you'll forgive a borderline lame joke, it's cheaper than therapy. But if that's the case, why let anyone read it? Doing that might help me, but it doesn't do much for them. On the other hand, finding that someone else has the same thoughts, the same issues, that they're like you in some way, that can be comforting for them. That can be important.

On a larger scale, I see the importance of storytelling historically. So much of what we know of dead cultures comes from their mythologies, their passed down stories. Writers intending to set a scene end up documenting the minutiae of their world for future peoples. Their words tie generations together. Even the smallest, most unknown books float from store to owner to used store to garage sale to owner. People seem unwilling to throw books away, as if there's a responsibility there to preserve something, pass it along.

My general answer, the one that satisfies me most days, is simple- it's that I love art. I fill my house and my time with media, with frozen, thawable experiences shaped by the fingers and eyes of others. It's the closest I come to worship. Music, novels, comics, short stories, movies, television, video games, paintings, sculptures. I love, love, love these things. So what sometimes satisfies that question of why, why, is that I want to put something back into the pot. If I can make a thing that other people like me can enjoy, use to pass the time, get lost in beloved places, connect to and be part of and take as their own, then I'm paying back the favor and hopefully in the process becoming a part of that massive, messy shape that tumbles on.

I don't know if the fights with myself will ever stop, and maybe they're not supposed to and that's part of the process and it makes the product stronger for it, but the good thing is that these days I win more fights than I lose. I've been doing this thing, this storytelling, intentionally and with purpose at least, for what I estimate to be almost twenty years. And yet only recently did I come to the point where I think I know how to do it. I don't mean that to be deceptively humble or self-effacing for the purpose of compliment fishing, I genuinely think I got by for a long time by writing quick pieces caked in every fancy word and trick I knew, in an attempt to run-stumble to the finish line of decency and quality. That, coupled with youthful impatience, amounted to my inability to reach novel length.

And that was still my problem when I started writing A Chemical Fire. But a few years later, when I quit my job and decided to make that book my job and got down to the actual grind of daily writing, I started the process of learning how to actually write. And now having continued that learning and finding myself some forty-thousand words into The Scapegoatist, I find the whole thing becoming more natural, more authentic. I repeatedly find myself saying "Oh, okay. That's how you do that." I feel less and less like a guy trying to impress and more a guy who decided to tell a story and who is going about doing it. I used to think that making that switch would sacrifice style, and maybe sometimes it does, but I see now there's a balance to find. It's dead middle between dry, chronological recitation and crushing heads with the witty stick.

Things are going well now, better than ever before. I'm aiming to have this book done by year's end into next year's beginning. After that I have two definites lined up and a third eventual. I'm setting myself up on a schedule of a book a year, minimum, so long as I have a job slowing me down. When that's no longer a factor I'll see about speeding it up but never rushing it.

I don't want to sum this up with one, single thought, but there is one more answer to that question of why, why, that seems to answer without answering, to put it to sleep without gutting it, ruining it, demystifying it. It's that I write because I always have. Because I sort of have to. That I can't remember what it was like before I did, and that seems like as good a reason as any. At least that I'm ever going to come up with.

Pushpull Fascinations

2009-10-10T07:26:00.003-04:00

They shake their heat all over us,
Lost in their liquor shimmy
To the pulsing, to the
Dwindling wick of fornication
Retro Disco Figurines with Realistic Grinding Action

We stand as land-locked lovers at the
Center of their sweaty sea just
Watching, just
Stage-facing, just
Hugging tight against the Dancestorm

Needful nuclei with
Bonded cell membranes
Refusing to split
Saying
"This has always been my rhythm leg."

Suffocating Dragons

2009-08-16T17:58:00.009-04:00

Earlier today, we were swimming in the pool. The day was hot enough for it; a hazy, Sunburn Sunday, the kind where the question on lips isn't "are we going?", it's "is it too early? Should we wait just a little longer and not seem desperate and slothful?"

As I was paddling across the pool, I noticed a dragonfly bobbing in the water. It was floating there- wings outstretched, waterlogged, and entirely still. It was sad to me, seeing this. Dragonflies have always seemed amazing to me, like whip-fast helicopters buzzing through the heat, a sure sign of summer.

I knew I shouldn't leave it there, if not out of some sense of dutiful respect of nature, then at least so someone wouldn't swallow the thing while enjoying their swim. I plucked it by the wing, still surprisingly stiff, and brought it to the edge of the pool. I looked at it a while, admiring its tiger stripes, its hologram-green eyes that shifted shades in the light as I swayed left, right. It may have been dead, the neck appearing broken, but it still had a kind of authority to it. A regal design.

I left for a while, swimming around in the sun, doing what it is you do in a pool. But after a bit I came back to look at the dragonfly, and that's when I noticed something. Only because I was looking so close, I saw that it was breathing. Just barely, but sure enough the abdomen was rising, falling. Rising, falling. This was something it hadn't been doing before, I knew that for sure. Just by laying there, somehow, it had come back from The Pull.

For a while I bobbed in the water, watching this thing. As I stared it went from barely breathing to fully breathing. Then the end of the tail began to manipulate. Up, down. After a minute of that, the wings began to twitch faintly, then rhythmically, until they were trying to fly, trying to gain momentum and get away. The head, still sitting on what might be a broken neck, was moving. Trying.

I grabbed my camera and took a few photos of it. This was a comeback, and it felt important. This was a living, a struggle, a drowning turned into a waking. It was sadness and incredibility, on a tiny scale.

When I'd gotten the shot I got out of the pool and put the camera on a table, out of the way, then got back into the water. I went back to him, back to see the progress, to see what was moving now. Would it be the eyes? Would his legs be feeling around, trying to get a grip, trying to lift him off the ground and ready him for take-off? But when I looked at him, I knew. Nothing was moving. Not anymore. There were no twitches and no try-spirals. There was no partitioned abdomen expanding and contracting to let in air. There was nothing. Just a dead dragonfly. In the minute I'd been away he had given in to the water and the broken neck and the curing sun. I thought of the saying "A watched pot never boils," and I wondered if it applied to resurrections.

A little while later, I checked on him one more time. His body was dry from the heat, his massive eyes gone from hologram-green to cloudy gray-black. He was an ant treasure, a photograph, and nothing else.

The day could take him now. It was time for lunch.

A Wet Subway Map

2009-08-14T14:37:00.007-04:00

A little while ago, I Twittered this:

I wish my Wikipedia page read, "Widely recognized as having invented the 'flatbread pizza of condoms.'"

Sometimes, I feel I should explain my thought process. I think my mind might work differently than some other people's. Maybe not, but for the interest of science, this is a breakdown of how it happened:

Last night, Natalia made cupcakes for a girl at work. For home she made a pan with one big, thin cupcake in it. At roughly 2 pm today I was standing over this pan with a fork. As I'm something of a food vacuum, I ate a pretty good amount before stopping myself. That's when I thought:

1) Natalia will get home tonight, see the damage, and say something like "Jesus! Hungry?"

2) I'll have to explain myself.

3) I'll say, "Come on, it's a really thin cake, how much did I really eat? If you think about it, that's only about one cupcake's worth."

4) Then I'll say, "It's kind of like the flatbread pizza of cupcakes."

5) That's when I think: the flatbread pizza of anything is pretty funny. Like, what would the flatbread pizza of condoms be?

I should interject here. This particular moment, this synapse firing, may be the true illustrative moment. I literally can't explain why this was the example I jumped to.

6) Realizing how great the flatbread pizza of condoms is as an abstract thought, and not being able to immediately picture what it could possibly be, I realize I would love to invent it.

7) Then I think, I wouldn't actually like to invent it. I'd like to HAVE invented it. Be famous for inventing it.

8) I think: that's it. That's what my Wikipedia page should say, for anyone who comes across it to read.

9) Then I imagine people pointing me out across party crowds, saying, "See that guy? He invented the flatbread pizza of condoms." The other person says, "Oh, wow. (pause) What exactly is the flatbread pizza of condoms?" and the first says, "I'm not really sure, but," and rubs their fingers together to mean "there's a lot of money in it, though."

10) Then I think how great it is to be famous for outlandish, peripheral concepts. Like how in the movie "Inner Space" the Cowboy character is said to have made a fortune introducing Velcro to Asia, or something like that, and it makes him seem like a real person, because he's just colorful enough to have done something like that and, really, someone had to have done it.

This was not exaggerated and happened in the span of, I'd like to say, less than six seconds.

As I said, I think my gift of sorts is a unique mind. Maybe not, but I'm aware of all the what-the-fucks I've gotten over the years. I'm also aware that this happens even with the industrial-strength filter I slid over my mouth years and years ago. From a very young age I realized that much of what crosses my mind is not for the public, so that often what I say has gone through three or four edits before being let out. I believe that I define my friendships that way, by how few revisions I need to do. I think I get all my friends by saying all this shit and they not only stick around, but occasionally laugh or say yeah. It also says a lot about my closeness to my family, because despite my frequent tries at removing them I have more filters up around them than most other people, even co-workers.

My saying all this is very borderline for me. Already I've resisted deleting it all more than once, and the reason for that is I have an uneasy relationship with the word and concept of "imagination". It's an inherently silly idea, one that more often than not is used to write off the amazingly random, untainted minds of children. It's easier to look at a kid's drawing and say "you have some imagination!" than to give an honest reaction. That, also, speaks a lot about my relationship with my family, because that's exactly how I've always felt around them. I've always been the weird one there, the one who reads weird things, the one who listens to and wears and likes and draws weird things. My mother has read two books in her life to my knowledge: The Davinci Code and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. My father, also two books- both autobiographies by Chuck Yeager. Chuck Yeager was the first airplane pilot to break the sound barrier. Two books. He read two books written by that guy, because one doesn't cover it. So every story I ever wrote and handed to them as a kid was met with "What is this?" or "You misspelled a few things". When pressed for feedback, they would almost invariably say "It was...interesting." Which, I believe, is code for "Can we FORCE him to like baseball?"

The other problem with what I'm doing is it's much too close to people who say, "Don't mind me, I'm crazy!" as if that's so interesting of them. Like kids in high school who would try SO hard to be weird, and freaky, and the more they said it the more you knew they were secretly the most normal person on Earth. Like Steve once said, the Korn kids who think a t-shirt that says "I do what the voices tell me" is the HEIGHT of comedy. White bread nothings. Ready to anticlimax into the world, flatline through life and be laid to rest in a coffin with a "Beer me" bumper sticker.

I don't know where this goes from here. Don't mind me, I'm crazy.

Footprints in the Sand, Version 2

2009-08-09T08:16:00.003-04:00

So I asked God.

I said, “God?”
And he said, “Come on, what?! What now?!”
So I said, “When I look back on the proverbial beach of my life
And see my most difficult and trying times,
Symbolically represented by medical waste
And crusty condoms washed ashore,
And the occasional homeless man
Having terrible sex with beached sea-life,
Why in those times is there only one set of footprints?
Did you abandon me in my times of need?”
And God looked at me with his all knowing eyes, and said,
“You dare question God?! Fuck you! Die now!”
And exploded me.
But many years later,
By the glory of our Lord Satan and all the power he commands,
I was resurrected.
And so I hunted God down,
Surprised him when he least expected it,
And slit his mighty throat.
Then I fought his angels like ninjas.

(06.2004)

Digging

2009-07-30T22:00:00.005-04:00

I was looking through some older writing and enjoying some of the stuff I found. Some of it I recognize as necessary practice that got me to where I am but serves no purpose now, and some of it I think still holds up. It's interesting to look at things that were written in bad times or strange times with some distance, and appreciate them from the outside as just writing, instead of what they were at the time. Which, were I to say it aloud, would make me sound like the high school kid who wrote them. I think what I mean to say is I've always loved to write, but now I need it for different reasons. Now it's just a part of me.

One thing I always love is finding something I simply don't remember writing. Often it's a note I wrote on the closest piece of paper, a reminder for later that probably wouldn't ever be used. Finding these notes is like finding money in the pocket of an old jacket, but way funnier. It's like a time-capsule self-gift of brain blabber.

This was something for a cartoon I wrote half an episode of before getting bored of it. That's another thing I used to do a lot. I'm happy that with age came patience to stick with an idea until it's finished. Here is the entire contents of a file called "parts that worked", which I guess was salvaged from some larger first attempt that didn't:

MARK
"If you keep angering the man, they eventually
censor you into a pale version of your former self.
Isn’t that right, Mickey?"

PAN TO other side of room, where MICKEY MOUSE sits.

He holds up his hands.

MICKEY MOUSE (POUTING)
"They took away my middle fingers!"

I read that and died, partly because I really don't remember it at all. Soon I'll probably post some more things- notes, poems, pieces, entire objects. I feel this is as good a place as any.

Excerpts Usurped

2009-07-20T14:51:00.003-04:00

Along my clicks, I come across quotes that stop me. I read them as part of something, expecting nothing. Then I go back and read them again. Slower. They open my eyelids or slack my jaw or drop my heart, and I say some variation on the word "yes" and I copy and paste them into a notepad file to make them mine, so I can come back to them when I need to.

Most of them have to do with either the creative process or perception. Those are the kind that hit close, the ones I find useful being who I am and how I feel and what I need. This is to share them, and to clean folders. Some quotes:

"They say that the human smile is in fact one of those primordial things - that in fact it's a showing of teeth, that it's a warning. That when we smile, in a primeval way it has to do with fear." -Christopher Walken

"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness." -Franz Kafka

"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far away from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe." -Franz Kafka

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." -Anaïs Nin

"[The poet] arrives at the unknown: and even if, half crazed, in the end, he loses the understanding of his visions, he has seen them! Let him be destroyed in his leap by those unnamable, unutterable and innumerable things: there will come other horrible workers: they will begin at the horizons where he has succumbed." -Arthur Rimbaud

"The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus." -Bruce Lee

"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." -Aristotle

"We cannot mature and be fully creative by burying or displacing anxiety, but only by moving through it." -Soren Kierkegaard

"I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face." -Johnny Depp

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." -Jack Kerouac

The Scapegoatist (sample chapter)

2009-07-14T00:01:00.007-04:00

A bleached-blonde kid bumps into me, his spray-on tan bleeding at the edges. "Hey, sorry my man," he stresses every syllable with orthodontically-straightened, chemically-whitened incisors.

"You're over-acting," I tell him before he gets swallowed up.

The hallway flows with fakes- nerds with braces held on with adhesive strips. Girls with pigtails tied in color-treated, gray-removed hair. Full breasts under freshman soccer team shirts, wrapped in gauze and held down.

"What agency are you with," my girlfriend asks through the pink bubble of her gum. She hikes up her skirt, the old tattoo hiding on her stomach, the pom-poms in her hands, crow's feet forming at the corners of her eyes.

"I represent myself."

She scratches under her wig. "Well that's dumb. Everyone needs to be represented by someone."

Kids along the lockers talk loudly, over-projecting with character breakdowns sticking out of their back pockets. Yearbook photos are attached to the sheets and some have lines of dialogue, but most of them, being for extras and bit players, simply say "General Speech."

The Math Club Treasurer says, "We watch it religiously, it's an excellent send-up of modern life in your typical, suburban landscape."

The Class Clown says, "I'm telling you, with the market drowning now's the time to refinance."

The Basketball Forward, recast here as a round guy sharing custody of two kids, says, "Twenty-six. But the Casting Director says I read seventeen."

With her weight shifted to one leg, my girlfriend says, "What school of acting did you study, Method?" Her mouth chewing, chewing, a tuft of too-shiny hair twirled around her finger. I tell her to stick to the script and her face suddenly comes alive. "That's what I'm doing, asshole. My character is supposed to be flirty and distracted." Then she lets the focus drain from her eyes and she's gone.

Here is a remake of the Class of '86, a photocopy that stinks like pancake make-up instead of ozone, a surface-only re-enactment while I keep telling myself I'm Lee Simpson, I'm Lee Simpson, I'm Lee Simpson.

Mister Felner enters stage left, lurching down the hallway in an A-Team t-shirt, working hard to hold the books in his hands and the drink in his head without touching arms. His movements are erratic, his eyes watch feet, and I have to say- he's the most convincing actor in this place.

"Hey, Felner!" I shout. He looks up suddenly. "Did you get fries with that complexion?"

My girlfriend's face says, What the fuck? but the hallway booms with laughter anyway. It's a forced laugh but it still makes me grin, still makes Felner wince, and I realize, watching their glazed, insane faces, that it doesn't matter what I say, that it doesn't have to be the goddamn Canterbury Tales- I'm the Captain of the fucking football team.

Felner looks for an escape as I push kids out of my way, shoulders clanging into lockers saying "hey" and I lock in, going right for him. I knock his books to the ground and say, "Pick them up." He gives me a look, not knowing if I'm serious until I show my clenched fist, and then he swoops down and does it. "So whatcha reading?"

"Nothing."

"You're reading nothing?"

"Y-yeah."

"That's dumb," my girlfriend says, "you can't read nothing."

"Hear that, nerd? She says that's dumb."

"Seriously," she adds. I knock them down again and a guy chuckles. I give him a nod, then tell Felner to pick the books up again.

"This time," I say, "with your teeth."

"Hold on a second, I'm not comfortable with this."

I look at my girlfriend and she flashes that hot smile, and I know she wants it, and I turn back and punch Felner right in his hollow, gummy gut, and everyone goes "Ohhh." Fish-gasping for air, he bends to pick the books up again but I get behind him and pull his tighty-whities up so high he's hanging from a wedgie, screaming nasal, and again everyone is laughing.

"He's so lame," my girlfriend says.

I lay down an assault of spit-smelling wet willies, saying "Whatcha gonna do?" Saying, "Gonna do something, Felner?" I hit him with purple nerples, crotch taps and nose flicks until he's red in the face, but still he takes it. He takes it like a queer, hands in his pockets saying, "Lee, please," and no teachers are here to stop me. No principals are here to drag me into the office and rip me up and call my parents. No hall monitors to save him this time. He's mine. I own him and he's mine, and no one's laughing anymore.

My balls explode.

I fall down holding them, my stomach like burning rope, and everything is quiet. I roll in it, white light behind my eyes as I suck air in Morse. My eyes open to Felner over me, breathing heavy, fingers squeezed, face dark red, and everyone is watching him shocked, silent, and then a screeching roar bursts and everyone is cheering. He looks at them as if they're an alien crowd, but then a recognition fills him and his mouth starts to twist, replacing slowly with a smile. "Good job, Felner," someone pats him and he smiles wider. They pump their fists, clap, hug each other, everything a background player can do to shine through. Felner scans the crowd and takes it in. Then he looks down at me, and the smile is gone.

Then, he starts to kick.

Connecting with my stomach, saying, "who's the queer now," his foot in my side, saying, "who's laughing, you fucking beast, who's laughing now?" The hall is whispering, everyone watching, weighing the gig against their fear of seeing a man beaten to death.

The Trombone Player says, "Should we stop it?"

The Class President says, "Should we leave?"

The Future Leaders of America say, "Will we still get paid?"

Someone clears their throat conspicuously but Felner doesn't hear them, doesn't see them, because right now there's only him and me in this hallway, and not really me at all, just these clothes and what they mean and who wore them and what that person did to a little, oily kid a few decades ago. And still, he's kicking. Through the blows, despite the ribs, I'm proud of him.

When he's had enough, Desmond the butler steps up and stops him, telling him to calm down, waving the actors away. Felner's breathing slows as the crowd files off telling each other how great it was to work together before collecting their checks at a table by the door.

I'm coughing when a hand is put in front of my face. The palm is made of mutilated skin, a knotted twist of flesh. The scars look old and caused by fire and I look up- it's Felner, his arm out offering a lift. I take the hand and feel it soft and waxy against mine as he pulls me to my feet.

"How can I thank you?" His eyes meet mine for the first time.

"With one of those checks."

He looks over at the table, the bored worker handing out envelopes. "You don't want one of those, they're only getting paid scale. I'll write a better one for you."

I feel my ribs and they're barely bruised. "Whatever they're making is fine."

"Suit yourself."

"Is there some place I can change out of these clothes?"

He looks at them with new eyes. "Keep them, they're just clothes." He turns and calls an assistant over, walking down the hallway. He says, "Take out a pen, I'm about to make a million dollars."

Desmond comes over with an envelope. "You're some kinda idiot, aren't you?"

"How did he burn his hands?"

"Him? I told you, he doesn't tell the little people shit. All I know is the rumor, which is something about fireworks." He hands me a bag with my own clothes in it. "I hope you're not planning to use those." He nods to my clothes. "Those belonged to Lee Simpson. They aren't replicas or some shit, they're legit."

"And?"

He steps back as if I should know all this, as if Felner tells us little people shit. "And? Motherfucker died wearing those. It's disgusting."

I watch Felner walk out the front door of the school, leaving it behind. I ask Desmond how long ago Lee Simpson died and he says, "Like twelve years ago."

Untackled

2009-06-25T09:21:00.009-04:00

Sometimes, the ideas I have just wouldn't work.

These concepts that come to me, for stories, novels, shows, movies, media, most of them don't belong in reality. Some of them fall within reason and I follow them, see where they go. But most of them couldn't be pulled off, or it's just because they're funny, or they'd take too much patience, or funding, or six people would enjoy them and the rest of the people would be shoving pitchforks through my windows, lighting Molotovs for having their time wasted, their brains jostled. And they'd be right, I suppose, so I'd have to let them in.

Here's a partial list.

I'd love to write an incredibly long and elaborate Victorian novel about honor and nobility, full of sweeping panoramas, fanciful dinners, aching romances and marriage proposals, and title it The Cum Fuckers. Or ditch the name, keep it dignified, but on the last page every character in the book commits ritual, orgiastic mass suicide.

I'd love to make a movie, plot and genre unimportant, centered around two people. One person would whisper every single line of their dialogue, just barely loud enough to be heard. The other would scream their words as loud as a person can scream. No explanation would be given, and no mention would be made of it at any point.

I'd love to produce a completely vapid television series. One of those like Gilmore Girls or The Hills or whatever. It would run for six seasons as expected- gaining popularity as it went as reward for it's predictability and ability to cater to the basest of audience needs- then, three episodes into the seventh season, the zombie apocalypse would set in. That or a gateway to Hell, or a brutal alien invasion, or some other survival horror scenario, and viewers would watch in shock as half of their favorite characters died within minutes, leaving the rest of the witty, self-centered gang to fend for themselves within this crumbling and fiery version of the town they've come to know and love. The next morning in workplaces across the world, water coolers would explode. A huge portion of the viewersheep would instantly abandon the show while a whole new audience would flock to it, run to stores to purchase DVD collections of the first six seasons to catch up and understand. And hopefully, some of the original fans would stick around, too, exposed to a kind of story they never would have sought out actively.

Some ideas could work, if I had skills beyond an overreaching imagination. For instance, I think an entire story could be told in a real-time format through updates of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and maybe a few other outlets. Something multimedia and modern, something that can be experienced somewhat out of order and still make sense. People would experience it "as it happened" to the characters that owned the accounts. The amount of planning it would take is staggering, though, and the real trick would be getting people to watch from the start or close enough to it so they could get the true feeling of it, instead of the after effects.

There's more, of course. There always is. Most of this stuff, I just live with it. I use it to laugh when there's nothing else to laugh at, or think about when the going gets gray. They're the things I usually don't even put in my file of unused ideas. Which I do have, and it seems to get staler and staler. For instance, the idea about a story told from the first-person perspective of someone trying to figure out their indecipherable, oddly gesturing captors that reveals at the end to be told by a dog, it just sounds dumber the older I get.

Maybe a few of them will cough to life eventually. Until then it's as the song says. And All That Could Have Been.

The Build-Up, The Reset

2009-05-22T12:03:00.014-04:00

Today I'm taking a break from writing my second book- a story about holding on versus letting go- to do some cleaning. You see, the mail piles up. The leaves fall, the dust builds. Rolling up your sleeves and attacking it, it's all you can do to keep from getting buried under.

Part of it is cleaning the cage of our most recent hamster to die. If that sounds blunt or in any way down-played, it's because having hamsters means seeing them die. You don't like it, but you get used to it. You get a good year out of them, if you're lucky, and then one night you go to feed them and realize you don't have to. All that's left then is to find something to dig with and to bury them, in soft voices and a wet rose garden and an envelope that will have to do.

This guy's name was Jett. Not to say they're all not special, we all know everything is, but he was our Monster. We called him that because he had no morals. Just a dirty, shameless little man who liked to hang on the cage bars and show you the balls he wasn't supposed to have.

The story with how we ended up with, at the high point at least, something like twenty hamsters all comes back to Jett's balls. After seeing our first hamster die very quickly from a sickness we decided we wanted another. This is what you do, instead of learning and moving on you cover it up with an even bigger mistake, that way the first doesn't burn so bad anymore.

When we hit the pet store we found a different breed altogether, a smaller type called Dwarf Hamsters that the sign claimed were semi-social. A term as it turns out that means non-social. So we took home not one but three supposed sisters, a little family that could crawl on each other and share seed. Where that went, well, it was sharing seed all right. It was one hamster with undeveloped, undetected nuts coming of age and developing an attraction to his sister, and two owners walking in on the whole, shameful scene. And that led to babies. And that, led to more babies.

He'd been named Jett after Joan Jett, the female punk icon. This was when we thought he was a she and because he had markings like a mohawk and the fact that, with rodents, you don't have much to go on. Luckily it worked as a boy name, too, until we settled into the more accurate nickname Monster. As you can imagine, watching a fat hamster air out the balls he used on his own sister, it doesn't cast him in the best light. But through all of it, you had to admire his sheer lack of apology, his continued hedonistic outlook right up to the day he went to his usual sleep spot and really meant it.

After the burial, the next thing is you clean out the cage. Wipe away the piss and fur, dump out the half-eaten sunflower seeds of something that isn't alive anymore, and that's what gets you. Seeing the teeth marks and signs of a thing that once was here and able to make teeth marks and leave signs. Not to make too much out of it, but it's an odd feeling. All that constant moving, that munching of pellets and sleeping like a Buddha, the running in wheels, the climbing bars to display covert testicles, it all comes down to a quiet dehydrating and the shit and piss you leave behind, the piles of fluff arranged just so, the cardboard you chewed to pulp. You do what you can and you hope to leave an echo, a smile and a story at your name. But sometimes, all that's left is someone cleaning up your mess, spraying to sanitize where your corpse fell, dealing with your children, illegitimate or otherwise, and watching them go and go until they go.

This is what I did to take a break from a story about what we leave behind and what we bring with us. Which is to say, I never left it in the first place.

Tirede (Between Asleep and Awake)

2009-03-05T09:16:00.008-05:00

Oh Fire Emblem, the Chieftain makes the prettiest remarks in regards to your benevolent hotel rooms. Fall, motel rooms. FlyfullspeedbreackneckcrackBOOMyou've got to stip the bleeding.

If I was of sound mind and could extradite the whole group of you anarchist thuggs, I would have. All the waking up with typewriter keys under fingers, the problem is they get gummy and they trry to stick on.

What it is with the wsawllling x x x swallowing, as long as we're rewinding grab these, grab my fooot, i forget whywe're fighting so lets say it was valid and i won.

This was entered as an adventure tAKEN PLACE WITHIN THE REALMS OF N,M. ( NOTE: I WOKE UP PANNICKED AND READ THE LAST SENTEN CE AND IT'S NOT MINE. sOMEONE ELSE CAN CLAIM IT, I DONT GIVE A

tHIRST? IT WAS MORE ABOUT FOAM-CONTROL.
pISS WAS DIZZY HEAt FELT WRONG LOOKED WRONG SMELLED right

I wish you could see this, the letter framing in soft, at channels set three dementia. it's like this foam has moved in for good, But really we have to discuss the premonition phenomoni this. vent piece GR+ID

Terndu ty syd, the Piano March lights for you, and this candle raised a war ghost.

Iff i take the heel in my voice, the foam will go out of control. the dog will be LOUD freeking out freeking out SOMEONE SE T THE CONTROLS FOR THES E KNEES WRO NG. myspit has entered that city, that city of texture and false sentiments
bk n frth bk n frth

W e have to, have to stop the sugar. It tries to smothher the colorfull; and licking went as chaoticc as pland

I will now try marching if marching means stomping nauseous to the mirro r and seeing a gray-green monsterchilld unbliink at you

my alarm is the eighth bit.

Geist/geist

2008-12-22T22:50:00.002-05:00

There’s a club downtown where the ghosts go, their movements trailing as they order Bloody Mary’s and toast to the coldness. Their eyes are clear as they laugh and draw diagrams of their deaths on the backs of napkins. Through the bathroom door you can hear crying, behind the bar the bottles are empty but you couldn’t cut a throat if you tried. The house band plays the same song again and again, a fast-moving number with a back beat that gets sadder every time you hear it. At the end of the night the bartender kicks everyone out and they fall through the floor, waiting in the rocks for happy hour to start.

Dismembership

2008-09-04T11:48:00.001-04:00

**updated to new version 12/22/08**

For two days I wait for my strength to come back while she goes through the motions with blankets and food. She feeds me soup made of cabbage, carrots, onions, turnips and celery because they’re made of mostly water and cellulose; fibers that don’t digest. When I reach for more she refuses, saying, “I know how much to feed you.” She spoons me little dribbles of the chunky, watery stuff and says, “This is a negative calorie food, it’s so low calorie your body burns more processing it than it gains.”

Food is chewed, the jaw muscles working, the tongue pushing, saliva beginning the breakdown of starches and turning it into a lump called the bolus. This is swallowed, the esophagus moving it down to the stomach through a squeezing, squishing process of peristalsis. Down in the stomach, acid is produced and mixed with the food before passing it to the small intestine where the gall bladder and pancreas send digestive juices, allowing the body to start absorbing the liquefied food. That continues on through the large intestine, until finally anything that isn’t absorbed is passed into the bladder and colon to be eliminated, of course, through the urinary tract and anus. All of this requires energy to perform.

“Metabolism is like a switch, with an on position and an off position.”

What she doesn’t understand is that seventy percent of human metabolism takes place in the basal metabolic rate, which is technical for staying alive. Twenty-five percent is exercise, leaving only five percent to thermogenesis, or the absorption and storing of calories. For all that work, the energy burn-off is relatively low.

“We can get rid of that stomach if you leave it up to me,” she says.

All the theories in the world fester in the absence of fact.

“Can you make out colors yet,” she asks and puts down the bowl to look through a magazine. Around us is a hangar filled with food and clothes stacked up to the ceiling. Rows of black-and-white family sizes wholesaled in plastic, sunflower seeds by the bucket and soaps by the dozens.

Like a clean pentagram we camp, surrounded by a circle of activated air fresheners. “You don’t want to know what the meat section smells like,” she says, “And I thought it was nasty at regular-sized places.”

“Is there a pharmacy here?”

“Of course.”

“Help me up.”

Past tomato sauce and chocolate powder, past the bakery dotted with gray-green breads, past tables of over-sized books and variety pack underwear, past rows guarded by the monoliths of this departed culture I find the pharmacy and tear through it. I know where to look and I know what I’m doing. I know milligrams and I want nothing else. Fuck everything but time-releases cheated on with splitting and crushing. Fuck the shriveled world like these displays of sitting fruit, this pathetic failed suicide stumbling and drooling with disappointed family.

I’m still pushing and throwing through bottles with a woman’s screams in my ears when everything kicks in and the sounds twist away, lost in the insulation of the compounds. I welcome the monster into my heart and let it tear as it wants to tear, burn and build and play in the black sand and shit of what this has become. I see only flashes, a scrapbook of what it wants me to see filled with photos of a new place built by broken things shove-assembled together, of fires lit and stamped, of arms coming up to defend.

Let the anger of the lost pour through me, the drowning of a billion destinies and plans, of legacies marching on and on into the brink of flame. Plans for babies and music and record keeping and record making. Let me put to rest the idea this was all going somewhere, let me sit at its grave and say everything’s square now. Let my fingers form revenge, and to hell with who I am.

Hours of this war pass.

When I’m seeing live again I’m marathon breathing and covered in cuts and blood in a rearranged place. I find Adena hiding behind the door of a plastic play set covered in motor oil and ripped cloth and she screams and pulls away from me, a look of murder witness in her eyes as I reassure and promise her but it does nothing.

It’s obvious there’s no going back now, so I find an axe and the door, putting the barricade back behind me and walking out through the putrid crowd and into a wind storm, all the time hacking, hacking, hacking.

Redox Signalling

2008-08-01T23:13:00.005-04:00

We keep our eyes shut as we drive, with sweaty hands, heavy collars. The rogues in our body cavities bouncing in solvent cages as we claw at the wheel. The two of us, painting pictures of burning places over each others picture I.D.

Skin on our cheeks tightened, we close in. Blacktop oil drawn to the rain and heated past our tires, waxen slick as the claw palms of water walker spiders.

"When we meet it'll be on the corner of Fist Street and Blood Puddle Lane," you joke, and in your laugh there is an echo that will reach past the deaths of our children's children who will know, for once in their time, something real.

Vinyl For Glass

2008-05-20T21:39:00.007-04:00

Break the beat of the gunshot
Clap clap fuzz
Five year ashes falling down and filtered out

Synthesizer punching ear to ear
Piano wrath slid to the teeth
Just a click to the world
And leave the nerve water behind

Hold

2008-05-15T18:23:00.003-04:00

The blade goes in slow as a kiss, her skin like wet paper with a pen across it. The ink seeps through her fibers a spreading flame taking secrets between them. Down to the ground, gentle, holding in close one more time. A deep voice whispering, “It was her.”

Scratch

2008-05-11T16:51:00.002-04:00

In nervous fatalism he crept
pulling himself down the streets
looking for eyes to win over
and push in

When he found one old enough
and she lit up at him
his return smile meant
I'm sorry

Soil

2008-05-08T21:09:00.004-04:00

Across thick tableau the gray trees stood,
Arthritic spines carved in scars and
Blue-green canopies into
Filthy question marks.

Holding close the cold bodies and nests,
Designed of fallen pieces, with skills born to ancient brains
While the roots grabbed and spun, eating earth,
Squeezing water through arms painted in scape and bacterium.

The seeds fell, the petals sank, the wind with it's tongue in everything.

The man stood above them wearing anti-suit,
Whitened teeth auto-dialing his wife to electro-disappoint his kids.

Telling them he couldn't make it home,
Blaming it on traffic when all he wanted
Was one lousy handjob
From the shorter of the two masseuses.

Spider Queen, Carved in Neon

2008-05-04T23:16:00.005-04:00

Fighting squalor to the faller, meningitis hooks breathe deep to the sea in no time. Bring the light to the dust of the child, flailing in brothers. Mincing worms to bring new rain. Planets cracked to eggs, dirt forming around the edges to show where the ghosts have brushed against. He sets a flame to rest, the knowledge, the schooling of a warmer time to sizes and sixes. Gas stations closing in like metal teeth, gasoline spit onto gasoline. When night bleeds it bleeds insects, when daylight bleeds it pretends not to. When the avalanche comes, make sure to shine. If you can't shine, make sure no one survives. A woman came from the ground and spit out moss. A man telling a story said, "When it ran it ran higher, into the sky, across the snow and into hieroglyphs. Caged and curious, we all sang to it and made sure it felt the way we felt right before we died. It should know, language or not, it should know that this is a lie and no one was ever born and nothing can kill what never lived." Files reviewed, there was no mouth and so no rape. The bandages cleared blame, detectors fit to the teeth and parades calling down knife rain. Winter fucked Summer, that's why they Fall. Winter fucked Summer, that's why they Fall. Spring watched like watch springs, lending eyes to the essay. When they said to show all work, he ripped out his skeleton and they laughed all the way to offices. If paper could catch it all it wouldn't be worth keeping around. Dance step murder. Two-timing swords of afterbirth, bags of powder to twitch in. His fists shit wrists. Mother of God. Madre de Dio, sus punos mierda munecas. Mirror-vomit translated and trial-sized children. If the gun doesn't know, I wouldn't go telling.

mock-band

2008-04-20T13:54:00.005-04:00

If I formed a band, I'd want people to describe it as "Imagine an electrical fire being being put out by an old boxer, but the extinguisher is filled with pig's blood." These people would have never met each other, that would be the thought that occurred to them individually.

At least one album review would have to contain the line "...the sound of a couple breaking up in a pile of bones and mice."

Response Track

2008-04-17T22:11:00.004-04:00

This started as a response to Steve's last blog post (http://iamnoimpact.blogspot.com/ title: "objects downstream propagate upstream").

Looking back on old writing, especially from when you were younger, just sucks. Buried on my old angelfire site is something called "discollection" which is essentially this big pile of shit that I amassed over a long period of time. It's complete garbage, and it's completely embarrassing. I keep it up though, I don't know why. I think it's a reminder to myself: don't ever, ever suck that bad again.

However, it's where I came from and I wouldn't be here without having been there. In that respect, on my computer I have my short stories in two major folders. They're titled "When I was a worm" and "Now I got my wings". Aside from being a really outdated Manson quote, they serve as a way to hold onto my past, while also knowing that it's in an entirely different category than what I do now.

As far as writing for your peers and heroes, I feel exactly the same way, to the word. On the one hand I miss the pure feeling of being thirteen and writing only for me; on the other hand, my peers and heroes are my peers and heroes because of their quality, and holding myself up to them isn't such a bad idea.

Dealing with confidence in art is a bitch. The reason we're doing it in the first place owes to some defect in our programming, and yet we have to get past those very defects to express them. Sometimes I think I have some kind of ability and talent, and then I go back and read and say "God, this was way better when it was all in my head."

I'm coming to the point where I want to share what I'm writing right now with someone for feedback, but I'm scared I'll lose momentum, or I'm scared that the beginning parts were written so long ago that they need to be redone before anyone sees them. And to, say, omit that beginning stuff for review, would mean the rest of the story wouldn't make sense. It's gonna be a long time before the whole thing is done, and I don't know if I can wait that long.

Delayed gratification is the worst part of creation. And it's not art until someone sees it.

In Robbery

2008-04-09T13:45:00.002-04:00

His head lay on the ground,
His house unwatched
The strain filling his eyes up to burst

The leaves killed each other,
One by one
Just to cover him up

Hypodermics in the Sea Foam

2008-03-01T21:47:00.003-05:00

These things tend to accumulate without homes further than files in folders. Might as well get them out.

-I wish N*Sync had gone out with one final album, called “Spit On My Dick”, and promoted the shit out of it.

-Supposedly there’s a video in which a guy sings the “Terminator” theme song while slowly, slowly raising a shotgun to his mouth. He pulls the trigger just a few notes into the part with the horns. The video is called “Possibly The Funniest Thing Fucking Ever”.

-When people ask me if I think Beyonce’ was good in Dreamgirls, I tell them no. But I don’t think they’re ready for that jelly.

-My grandfather used to say “I’ve never met a man I didn’t meet.” However he also used to call teardrops “Kid Lube”, so it’s not that cute.

-I don’t think I got the job. During the personality test they asked me if I thought rape was the same as murder. My answer was, “Did she enjoy it?"

-Best way to get rid of homeless people: yell "Get out of here, you GHOST."

-"I don't think we should be friends anymore. But hey, here's a t-shirt, thanks for comin' out."

Strepsiptera

2008-01-14T19:17:00.000-05:00

Under feet built of echoes the dead town sags, dreading and melting under the strain of the ages. Building down to the Hell of the Earth, breaking down in distances of half-lives and termites.

I feel my fingers across the brick, the tempered pieces holding back the tests of rain and wind. Holding in the insectae, the pupae of evolving beasts cowering in the cold of the hidden side. Bugs that fuck and birth until something is born different and better. Something to reign.

I walk around puddles now. All the breakdown means more than anti-freeze and dust. It’s skin, it’s polymers. The Age of Rot Resistance, one and all. What burns will burn as rain, what doesn’t will know ancestors of the next keepers.

Something shifts in the day and I finger the trigger. Turn everything into sound, wait and hear and decipher the Morse code of the dead. All that’s left now is hands and guns, and sex is both. The sound passes, the moment gone, and I put her back to sleep in my pocket.

The glass goes to sound, spraying the floor. Again I listen and then I step. A crowd of cigarettes watches, a pool of tickets and gum. Like most now the air inside is damp with things rotting and growing. Expiration dates like lame jokes. Shelves hiding abandoned nests, room corners made of animal shit and seed husks. I get behind the counter and collect foods. Beef jerky and pistachios first, the proteins, and then the breads and such.

When I bend down footsteps shuffle-step past the store. I sweat pills and canned fishes. A sour smell moves through the hairs and sinuses and I wait seven full before I even scratch. Ten and I move, onto the bottled water and beer. The pack feels better now, heavier but not excessive because pounds equal seconds when you’re running hard.

All this because the Fire Realm didn’t want me.

cRickets

2008-01-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

The book of vanishing people said: "His story started with bones," as the avenues of Manhattan collapsed into flooded subway tunnels and turned back into rivers. Rivers the otters could reclaim.

Speaking of such a thing, the woman smiled and said: "My bones are going to Hell in a handcart." Her body-frame light with laughter and degenerative loss in swiss cheese and honeycomb patterns.

And a Father, sitting in a cabin, preferred the sound of shifting wood to the voice of his wife.

The Planner

2007-12-11T22:28:00.000-05:00

He said, “This is a story about fire. The kind that chooses.”
Rubbing his fingers together, he spoke of a time when paper meant something.
A time without fifty years of plastic,
Floating in and out of fish.
He said, “Remember this.”
Then he left, appearing on the news later that night.
The headline read “Man Murders Wife of Forty Years”
And when they dragged him away he was screaming my name, saying:
“Remember this.”

Memo.ry

2007-11-16T14:09:00.001-05:00

With a tongue like a can of mace it jumps, eyes wide and monsterback flexed. Fire from the computer screen blowing out hopes of a failure, beasts at it’s side with paper mouths and corporate clearance. Each tooth is a gun aimed at each other in a standoff drenched in threat and laughing through sugar and caffeine and internal organs bloated with common abuse ignoring the irony of a murderer preaching peace spelled like price.

He crouches for two years on land like a sponge that absorbs but doesn’t give back. His home is set to self-destruct on Christmas Eve, papers on fire mixing with the snow. When the plows come their drivers will be paid extra to sift through the slush, handing in evidence for what may have happened here to cause such a harsh end to a six year love story told in long distances of silence, bruises and uniform smiles.

Miles, Dark Miles

2007-10-16T21:04:00.000-04:00

Hold out their hands
Beautiful things, dripping with the sight of the two-thousand
Raging raptures and vanity cuts
Entering into battle with the alarm of the sun

And it comes to the pitiful
And focused wrenching of eyes
Twisting in embers of a family taken by flame
Photographed for politeness sake

The ships will sink
Flying sails meant to welcome the glory of the new air
Salted and salivated and dancing with the blood and seed
Of victim eating victim eating victim
Eating victim

the meeting

2007-06-13T08:03:00.000-04:00

On a day like every other I met a man who smiled and laughed and talked to me for ten minutes until he mentioned his wife. With a different face than before he said she was

“terminAlly ill”

and the sentence started out strong but ended up _the other.

For months, he said, they’d been dealing with thi s. It’s history in the grooves of his vinyl record v0ice. Now he was here thinking he wanted to start being healthier, and when the door opened and he stopped talk|ng, I realized why.

I met his two daughters, young women w^nting a lon g puppy with little ears but not really excite.d about it. In the way they didn’t seem excited about anyTHing from now on.

He sm+led a little and told t hem he _wasn’t sure if he wanted a dog. But then his voi?ce didn’t sound like .::it::.wanted anyTH\ng an ymo re, except m

aybe o ne thin g:

to %not hav e to exp*la:n to a [d0g]

w((hat his wIFe %used t# be like .

Speed Shop

2007-06-09T21:19:00.000-04:00

A place like this will never give you a story that starts with I was there when.

Nothing happens, not even on Saturdays when the hours are longer.

Larry will just grow his hair longer as his scalp thins and Ed will leaf through catalogs of tuner parts and Louie will quietly watch the chests of girls as his kidneys steadily calcify. On Wednesdays Louie will disappear for an hour to walk across the street to the barber. He’ll sweep up around back and take the garbage out and for that they’ll cut the hair he’s still got. When he walks out he’ll put his hat back on, the one with the pins.

Filters will sit on top of gaskets on top of drivetrains. Water pumps on radiators next to ignition wires. Spark plugs and stems, tire chains, warmers and chargers and jumpers against performance boosters and starters and compressors.

The walls will never change here really, they’ll just fill up with cable ties and lug nuts and oily dust until it gets so bad that Larry takes notice. Then he’ll clear something out or sell something or wipe something to make way for the refill. Everyone will make jokes about it or cut out aerial photos of garbage dumps and write the shop’s name across it in red marker, but no one really wants it to change. It’s an easy joke, and the complaining kills some time.

Ed will have a mustache as people wonder if he works here. Leaning over his round stomach he’ll show them pictures of the car he’s spending a hundred thousand to redo the interior of. Then he’ll say how the property taxes are getting ridiculous around here, goddamn almost nine grand and that’s a lot of money.

If you say hi to Larry he might not answer you, because that puts him in control.

An hour after noon a honk will announce the silver truck with the fold-up sides pulling up with hot dogs and Jamaican patties and potato chips and everyone will walk outside for something. Everything slow. Squinting into the weather that wasn’t how they said it’d be. They’ll all come back inside and eat around the counter in a wet chorus and talk about people in the only ways that matter: how much they weigh, how much they make and what’s wrong with them medically. “How’s the wife?” will always be answered with her latest surgery.

When asked a question, everyone will make a sucking sound against their front teeth and pause for ten seconds before replying. Anything negative ends with another pause and then, But it’s not the end of the world. Anything to abort the emotion of the thing.

And Louie, Louie will look like an ashtray with a scar up it’s neck.

Off to the left, a counter will feature fishing supplies where lures are two for five and the friend who runs it hasn’t poked his head around here in months.

And not everyone knows this but if you walk through the back, into the garage, make a left into the tires and make another left at a machine there will be a tiny bathroom with a crate of porno in the corner, mostly girls but some boys too. A sign over the toilet will talk about bulls with short horns standing close when it means to say don’t piss on the seat.

If you come back in five years, this is still the scene. Maybe missing the chair that broke and wearing different dust. Ed will shift on his stool and tell you what cancer took Louie and that it’s not the end of the world. Then he’ll tell you he doesn’t like anything foreign and it won’t sound limited to cars.

Larry will say You never know.

If you look around, you’ll find the dust is winning.

deluge.

2005-08-18T01:11:00.000-04:00

There's something supernatural about words, the way they float around in the air like static waiting to be used. I can't count the number of times someone has used a word in conversation, one I've never heard before or maybe not in years, and it catches my attention. I let it roll around in my head, I might look it up or write it down. Then later that day I'll be reading, watching a movie, and there it is. A word I never see, never hear. At least until now.

Today I was talking to a woman about the storm that's expected. She referred to it as a "deluge", and I started thinking about the word. How I liked it, how it comes from another language. An hour later I picked up the book I'm reading, an anthology of experimental short stories I found under a table, in a second-hand book store. I read a story in it called "Motherlogue", and right there, in just the second paragraph: deluge. This is a story written in 1970, so the word isn't fresh in people's minds as if I were reading a current bestseller. No, this is just another random intervention; a word given to me and then regiven to me to highlight it's importance.

The word "deluge" isn't native to the English language, it comes from the latin root. Dis meaning off and lavere to wash. In the bible, the great flood is called The Deluge. And I've been told the Spanish word for storm is deluvia, an incredible word itself.

The only thing left now is to wait for the storm, along with anything else that may fall from the sky.

Welcome to the City

2005-08-08T02:50:00.000-04:00

bloodstream city (blud'stre-m. sit'e-) : The human body envisioned as a metropolis, at once both foreign and home. A frightening shell in which one spends a lifetime, coming to grips with while watching it decay.