One Month Gone

February is a lousy month, am I right? Sure is where I live; it's just cold and dismal and often rainy, and sometimes snowy, and right now, full of intense world-destroying winds. It's short but it feels like forever. And things always go south for me in February. I mean, life is nothing but ups and downs in any month. But I always feel like I really go into this massive monthlong slump around this time. January is the first month of the year, full of possibilities. March is the prologue to spring, and also houses my birthday. February is nothing. It's just this annoying period in between that I don't know how to manage.

In any case, I have not made a sound over here in quite some time, and it hasn't been for lack of trying. But I feel lately like I don't have much to say. I still don't, I just got sick of never updating. Right now, my novel (Berlin Confidential read it here) is going really well, enjoying a little growth spurt of progress and activity. Which is awesome. But it's sort of been at the expense of every other project. It's really hard to balance that much mental activity at once, and as my single-project focus gets better and better, I lose my ability to multitask and write short fiction. Which is sad. I want to write short fiction. I really do. It's strange, as I gain this incredible self-discipline for my big adolescent first draft novel, I am becoming more and more undisciplined elsewhere. I have ideas, but man am I lazy. Writing them takes work! Screw that, man. Netflix is RIGHT THERE. You see my problem.

I think the answer is to just suck it up and write something. It probably won't come easy... gotta stretch these muscles, and I'm out of shape... but maybe I can get back into some kind of rhythm. And hopefully I'll be able to balance it with novel-collaborating. These are both important things.

Anyway, this post is not very interesting, but I wanted to just say something. I hope to be back with a video or a piece of fiction soon enough.

How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Girl, Mister Death?

So, one of the things that characterizes me, for which this project is probably going to end up being a big outlet, is my sometimes insane ability to make connections. Everyday objects, concepts, ideas, passages of writing, and things people say to me... these can all be logged away in my brain as something quite a bit different than the intent, or the actual meaning. I am full of personal associations and patterns and motifs, and I can ascribe them to almost anything. It's like if you think you're being stalked by a certain number, you start seeing it everywhere. I'm aware of how false this is... how much it is a product of my obsessively pattern-seeking mind. This is very similar to the way I read tarot cards, as it happens: the cards start to take on whole new meanings as I associate them with newer and different things, until "Death" no longer means anything but my growth as an individual and as an artist, particularly within this project, and "Knight of Swords" no longer means anything but "me."*

(*The Knight of Swords is depicted as a woman in the deck I use, and the meaning given is a little bit of a departure from the traditional one... it's sort of about calculation and strategy, and I've turned that into a message about my intellectual side. But that's another story for a later time.)

When I get enough of these symbols and keywords going, I start to construct whole messages for myself until my weeks become thematic, all converging on these ideas, which I may or may not have shoehorned into place. Lots of times people can't follow me when I go on these tangents. Sometimes saying things like "it reminds me of ___" makes people sort of tilt their heads at me and squint a little, trying to follow my particular brand of logic. I remember distinctly that one of the essay-writing critiques I got most often from all my professors in college was related to how they couldn't follow the jumps I'd made, that I had to explain myself further. I guess I don't really have the patience for it. I play it fast and loose, gliding over this myriad of unrelated references with this beautiful big picture in mind, unable to really clarify it for anyone else. When I ascribe personal significance to something, or a series of things, it really just becomes my own language of symbols and meanings. It's hard to explain, but I'll try to give an example.

Let me start with a relatively simple word: Yes. Yes, or one of its variants, gets used multiple times on a daily basis. Generally, conversationally, it's meaningless. But there are occasions, when it occurs in poetry, where it becomes really important to me.

The first time I noted the significance of Yes came, perhaps predictably, from James Joyce's Ulysses. This is a monstrosity of a classic work of literature that I'm slightly ashamed to admit I still haven't read, though it's definitely on the docket for 2012. My familiarity with it comes from a play I saw at college, more of a performance really, called Drunkards Walk. It wasn't strictly written by anyone so much as it was created by the director and the ensemble, which included a number of my friends. It was a highly postmodern piece, drawing from sources that included Ulysses, Spanish telenovellas, and the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It's sort of impossible to explain, and I won't try. The point is, they quoted a great deal from Mr. Joyce's large book, and pulled from the very famous final passage, one of eight massive run-on sentences, that famously closes with "yes I said yes I will Yes."

I don't know about you, but holy god that's beautiful. Ever since encountering it I've tried to mimic or replicate it in my writing countless times. And I've started to sense it elsewhere.

There's a poem by James Broughton called Wondrous the Merge, which is one of the most extremely homoerotic things I've ever read, and there's a verse that goes:

until I cried out 

until I cried      

    I am   Yes

           I am   your Yes

                      I am   I am   your

                    Yes   Yes   Yes

And this sort of stream-of-consciousness feel, both Joyce and Broughton trying to capture the sense of an orgasm, has started to crop up elsewhere, in situations completely unrelated. The final sentence of Dave Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an entirely different situation, sentiment and intent, and there is no "yes" to be seen. But it doesn't matter; it also captures this rhythm, and it makes me feel the same way. I mimic that writing in the same way, trying endlessly to capture the style of a rambling, frantic mind, whatever the circumstances, whether it's sex or anger or madness.

When I think of one of these works, I think of the other. It's as simple as that. They have little in common, but I have created connections. And that is how I live life. It's sort of complicated.

Today, I've managed to tie all of them to my Death-adventures that I've been exploring in this blog. In my first vlog post, I quoted some from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, explaining that the line "And be glad and confident" was a terribly important line, and that I sort of adopted it as a message and a mantra. I told my dad about this, and he remembered, and bought me a wonderful book this past Christmas: A Year With Rilke, a sort of daily meditation book, where each day has a passage from Rilke's poetry or letters. I've been reading my daily excerpts alongside my daily tarot readings, and sometimes the combination of messages produces interesting results. Today's was about death, and it was also about Yes.

Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer.

It stands before eternity and says only: Yes.

Today's card was Death, yet again.

And this, finally, makes me think of another poem, by another poet.

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
       who used to
       ride a watersmooth-silver
                                stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                 Jesus
he was a handsome man
                     and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

I like to think about the last line, there. I don't really think about what the poem means... my relation to poetry is very selfish, inwardly focused. I don't have a lot of experience with analyzing it. I just know how it makes me feel, and what it reminds me of. And that becomes important, even when it takes on a significance that is utterly unrelated to the poem itself.




These days, whenever I draw Death, I think about this poem, like a song getting stuck in my head. I have blue eyes myself. It's easy to get there.




e e cummings has a lot of things to say about death. He is also responsible for that beautiful phrase "for life's not a paragraph / And death i think is no parenthesis".




This could lead me down another proverbial rabbit hole of cummings and Dickinson and Donne, which would get further and further estranged from my points contained herein, but I think it's best to let that stay in my head, where I can try to make sense of it on my own, and try to capture it when I write about these things. Or anything.




Sorry this is so jumbled. There's sort of no other way to go about it, I guess.

10 Weird Things I Do As A Writer

This is a list of quirks, habits and storytelling devices I tend to exhibit/employ in my writing, all of which can be either extremely interesting or sort of distracting/cumbersome depending on how well I manage to carry them off.

1. Identifying each character by a consistent pronoun and nothing else. See I Am He You Are He You Are Me, where "I," "you" and "he" are three specific people, none of whom have actual names.

2. Using tense shifts to denote alternating timelines/perspectives/atmospheres.

3. Debasing cliched lines for my own purposes. Examples: "this is the start of a beautiful et cetera", "in all the gin joints of all my relationships in all the world", "they call us Mad As Hell, and don't you sometimes want to threaten not to take it anymore".

4. Crafting a whole narrative universe around nameless figures who straddle the line between distinct characters and abstract archetypes. They always come in pairs, and are identified by symbolic titles rather than names. Examples include: Spider and Fly, Snake and Flightless Bird, Pea and Pomegranate Seed, Carrion and Crow. These universes are also often characterized by a complete lack of linear continuity.

5. Gradual deterioration of grammar/syntax over time. Usually corresponds to downward spiral of narrator's sanity.

6. Direct address, wherein the narrator and the reader become locked into an intimate and often destructive relationship. See also: incredibly unreliable narrators.

7. Similarly: the narrator is possibly everyone. Or rather, I have become obsessed with the solitary mindset, and also with multiple personalities as a storytelling device. More and more I find myself introducing the ambiguous possibility that the narrator is imagining all events and all other characters, only to never confirm or deny it ever.

8. By the same token: ambiguous devices/developments so ambiguous that even I, the authorial god figure, do not actually know for certain know what is going on.

9. Increasingly obscure tangents and references.

10. Eschewing actual genres to the point of complete incoherence, instead using random phrases to separate different categories of story. Examples: "Mad As Hell", "Escapist Variations", "chaotic fragments".

Killing Days with Death

Haven't written in a little while. Fell a bit behind. No matter; I intend to catch up.

Today was an interesting one. I slept past noon for no real reason, which put me in the troublesome position of having to struggle for a good mood. Ever have one of those mornings, where you overslept or you just feel groggy, and you can sense the desire to just do nothing, like you've already failed, already lost the unspoken battle against the days, the challenge to get up and make something. That turned from a question into a statement, but I guess it was rhetorical either way.

Anyway, I came dangerously close to just giving up right then and there, feeling miserable about how late I'd slept. That outcome was averted by a fortuitous twitter exchange with blogmaster Zac Little, who demanded I get up and do something so as not to waste all the precious time I have by being a member of the unemployed. I decided, in a sudden burst of energy and willpower, that I was going to make a video; not just any video, but my very first "vlog" post. I only recently made myself a youtube account for this very purpose. Vlogging is not the sort of thing I envisioned doing a few years ago, but what can I say? I'm fighting boredom and inactivity with all my might, and vlogging is comparatively easy. So here I am.

In the video, which is called Killing Days with Death, I reiterate my personal definitions of Everyday Panic and quote from Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, both of which I also did here, weeks ago. I also discuss excerpts of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, as well as my Tarot card of the day:

This is Death. As I explain in the video, Death is deceptively frightening: in truth, it is a mostly positive card, referring to change and rebirth. The Archeon booklet includes "death of the ego" as one of the card's meanings. It is a card that I associate strongly with this project. I drew it as my daily card before starting this blog, and found it to be a challenge of sorts, to see if I could make a new go of things, essentially. Death of the ego meant death of my former self, I suppose. It was a powerful, enlivening message, and along with the Letters to a Young Poet, which I had also been reading at the time, it helped push me into this whole project.

Drawing it again today, I feel like it represents progress. In some ways, this is the completion of a first step. I've made the blog, the tumblr, and now I've started the vlog as well. And it brings me back to Rilke, and back to that line from Steppewolf: "The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life." Today, I can make the joke I didn't even think of during the making of the video. Today, I killed my day with Death.

Here's the video itself -- nearly eleven minutes of rambling. I expect they shall get shorter, or at least more entertaining.

Something I'd have liked to go into more detail about was that last line of Rilke's, "And be glad and confident." I remember distinctly that read that letter, the sixth letter, that very same day I drew Death the first time, and I came to associate the card's symbolism with that line. In keeping with Rilke's style, it is a simple but elegant and gently put piece of advice: to appreciate life and to hope for the best, essentially. I want to be glad and confident. I want to be glad and confident every day. It doesn't happen, but I have these little tools... a network of images and objects and ideas... that all relate back to it, and help me to remember, and to stay grounded.

I have always been very good at relating one thing to another, often in ways that are so quick and abstract it becomes impossible for anyone else to keep up. I can't begin to explain the mental connections I've made tying Rilke to Death to Steppenwolf and back, and tying to other people and other things as well. But I can try to tease some sense out of it. I can try.

Enough thoughts. Tomorrow I shall bring you a story. If not tomorrow, then soon.

But Enough About That

Onto to greener pastures, etc.

My goal with this blog is to develop better writing habits, and to start writing every day, whether it be fiction or personal ramblings, for a project or just for me.

In addition to this blog, which is where I shall put the writings, I've also got a tumblr for other forms of media and the kinds of thing you find on tumblr, and a twitter for... whatever twitter is for. And I will be making a youtube channel, which will maybe be the greatest adventure of all. So far that process has mostly taught me that youtube is really incredibly irritating. But whatever. All these accounts are connected but slightly different. This is a new thing for me, having a unified internet identity. We shall see where that takes me.

This morning I did a one-card Tarot reading. Tarot is another of those things I mean to do every day and often neglect to do. But I keep trying. I'm not a super spiritual person, but I enjoy finding meaning in the random symbolism of the collective consciousness, by which I just mean... by ascribing meaning to these cards, we derive messages from them, and that is significant all by itself, whether you strictly "believe" in Tarot or not. And that is the only time I am going to defend Tarot.

Today's card was "The Lovers," which in this deck (Archeon) carries a positive message of something new -- relationships, beginnings, projects.

Sounds good to me.

Let's Begin With A Little Explanation

"Everyday Panic" is a phrase I started using to describe my general state of being early in November 2011. Weighed down by the depression that typically accompanies a long period of unemployment and creative stagnation, I struggled to channel all that sadness and stress into writing, with limited success. The first thing I wrote within that goal was a deeply personal piece which, true to form, turned out pretty depressing. I am including an abridged, edited version of it, to better explain what I mean when I say "everyday panic."


[DISCLAIMER: This is kind of heavy and, I expect, not terribly fun to read. But I think it's important that I say it now and get it out there. I do not intend for this blog to be All About Depression. It's best to think of this as a little history.]


You know that book that opens with the line about killing the day in accordance with routine? Maybe not. It’s Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, and the translation goes “The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.” It's an amazing way of putting something. Leave it to a German. It’s such a visceral idea: to kill the day with monotony. I guess I could take comfort in the fact that Hermann Hesse also knew how this feels, but at the same time, Hesse will be remembered forever. I’m still in this state of post-graduate uncertainty, floundering with the rest of my generation, unemployed and unsure. Schrödinger’s Cat.

My days are difficult, and they are difficult in the way that Hesse describes. They are burdened by the increasing length of time it’s been since any one of them was marked by anything significant, much like those signs with the adjustable numbers, “no workplace accidents in ___ days.” Of course with those, a bigger number is preferable. With me a big number represents the ever-widening gap between the despair of now and idealism of then. I’m not in college anymore; there is nothing separating me from the reality that I don't really know what I'm doing with my life. And with nothing to distract me, there is nothing to do but think, fixedly, about that. Self-awareness is the bane of my existence. I am so good at figuring myself out that I can beat almost every therapist I’ve had to the punch. I know how to pinpoint the various sources of my grief, and there is nothing extraordinary about any of it. I am an ordinary person who suffers from ordinary post-college malaise, ordinary unemployment and ordinary writer's block. Ordinary depression, ordinary anxiety, ordinary insecurity. As anyone who suffers from these things can attest, knowing that you're not alone doesn't really make you feel better. The misery is still there, lurking. And if you're anything like me, it plants itself in the powder keg of unstable emotions until something small sets it off—going the wrong way in traffic, running a red light, almost getting into a car accident. I don’t know why panic sets in so often in the car, but the car is a terrible place to lose one’s shit. Every day I must treat myself with great delicacy and care, just to avoid falling back down into that dark hole.

The only cure for a panic attack is to get over it.

Everyday panic isn't exactly what it sounds like. It isn't panicking every day. It's a lot quieter. It's the voice in the back of your head that says "you're happy now, but it's not going to last," or "what exactly do you think you're doing?" To suffer everyday panic is to be forever on the edge of panic, tamping it down by succumbing to a dull, relentless existence. It's panicking at your own mundane routine. Becoming painfully aware of your own loss of inertia. It's sort of hard to explain, I guess, in a way that makes sense outside my head. But I am sure there are many people who know exactly what I’m talking about.

(Something I'd like to add now, which didn't occur to me at the time of writing that, is that "everyday panic" doesn't have to be negative. It can also mean staying active, making an effort to stir things up on a daily basis. The panic doesn't have to be mine; it can belong to my characters. And that's a positive thing for me. That's productivity.)

When I originally wrote that I had no intentions of showing it to anyone. But over the past several years, I've started noticing more and more how afraid I am to show people anything. Part of it is a fear of rejection and part of it is my own pathological need to be perfect, which gets me into this space where I have to edit the shit out of everything before I can show it to the world. On the one hand, my insanely high standards mean I tend to produce pretty decent work. On the other hand, no one ever sees it.

So, from out of the void I have created this blog. I don't really know what I'm going to put in it. I don't know if there will be any cohesion to it. But I haven't got anything better to do. So I am going to indulge my panic, internet. And I am going to share it with you.


Onward and upward, as they say.