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Publication: "Night-Vision Goggles" in SpringGun Journal

2011-04-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to my friends Erin and Mark's journal, SpringGun. In addition to putting out a fabulous e-journal, the site also publishes lots of really cool digital lit. I'm really stoked to be a part of issue four, along with a number of other really great writers, some of whom I know ; )

Enjoy!

Publication: "Dissection" in Eclectic Flash

2011-04-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the website where you can view the April issue as an e-book, or you can order a copy for $5, which would be a cool thing to do since all the money they make, they say, goes into turning the publication into a paying market for writers. Plus, if you buy a copy, and it's ever convenient, I'll totally sign it and in two or three years probably it'll be worth millions. Something to think about.

p.s. I'm on page 90 ; )

Publication: "Missing" in decomP magazinE

2011-04-07T16:52:00.001-07:00

This is a piece I wrote after second guessing what I told my students about never writing in the passive voice. Rules are meant to be broken, I suppose. Check it here: decomP magazinE

Publication: "Pulse" in Fogged Clarity

2011-03-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

Wew. Been a bit of a hiatus, but rest assured it's not for lack of labor. April's a big month for me publication-wise; I've got two coming out for sure and some others possibly later in the month.

My short story "Pulse" is up now at Fogged Clarity, and if you subscribe to the podcast you can even hear me read it (awkwardly)! I'll post links to the others as they become available. Enjoy!

p.s. Check out the rest of the issue too. It's great.

AWP Reflection + Diatribe

2011-02-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

I'm back! It was my first AWP and I did not leave empty-handed. I bought about 12 different books from various small presses, attended countless readings, but probably the biggest thing I've taken away from the experience is a greater awareness of The Book. I was really impressed by all the small presses I found--I'm talking about the really small ones, the ones who put out, like, a title or two per year just to do it, just to be the ones who gave the world this thing that it otherwise would not have. I could be wrong, but my sense is that their reasons for doing it don't even have that much to do with literature, so much as with the book itself. The book as event. The book as collaborative artistic effort. But most importantly, the book as subversion.

One thing I am learning--and this part is influenced both by my AWP experience, as well as my recent reading of Ronald Sukenick's "In Form: Digressions on the Act of Fiction"--but the literary market is NOT a bottleneck for quality. Say what you want about the free market as a general economic system, but the fact remains that, in the arts, its role is more complicated. The market does not favor the individual experience. After all, how is one to advertise to the individual? How is one to mass-produce for the individual? The one thing Capitalism and the free market cannot anticipate is the depth of individual experience, and for that reason it is its enemy. Because particularity is not in the market's interest, it seeks to destroy particularity via 'buzz'; via advertising campaigns that celebrate the collective, the 'new thing', the idea of belonging to this or to that 'class' of people who appreciate this or that 'type' of thing. Then, when someone tries to say something different, tries to create something that does not look like what we are used to, something the forces us to question what we are used to and to examine the reasons why, we dismiss it as pretentious, arrogant, or, horror of horrors, as academic.

A lot of times, I will admit, a work may be all of these things. And when it is, people are right to dismiss it. But one thing the market has conditioned us to do is dismiss anything that is strange, or that makes us feel uncomfortable, because when we are uncomfortable it means we are on the verge of change, and when we change, the market must then play catch up.

It's easy to take this kind of idea to political extremes and to start drawing up manifestos and declarations about what art should do. That's what Sukenick does. But I'm not interested in that--at least, not now. I only mention it as a way of congratulating all those small presses I ran into in Washington. Whether or not they are publishing the 'best' literature available today, they are wrenching some of that power away from the market, away from the big presses. They are providing the individual a platform from which to speak, and the public a way of accessing voices that promote more than just what is familiar, what fits into mathematical market strategies. As an artist myself, I find that hugely liberating: that there is more than just the market and the tastes of corporate executives behind what gets published. We should all find that liberating.

AWP Schedule

2011-01-31T10:13:00.001-08:00

Here's a tentative list of some of the stuff I might be attending, both onsite and off. For those who are also attending, lemme know if you'd like to tag along or if there's something better going on at any point.

Thursday (I arrive late Wednesday night, so this will be my first opportunity to do stuff):

9:00 am- Presses with a Mission
10:30 am- Things that go bump when you write: Monsters, Myths, and the Supernatural in Literary Fiction
12:00 pm- Narrative Structure: The episodic and the epiphanic
4:30 pm- Creative Writing and the University: A Conversation with Mark McGurl
7:00 pm- Off-site- A Pair of Teeth/Apertif--Articles Press, SpringGun and Flying Guillitine: A Readings + Afterparty @ IOTA Club and Cafe

Friday:

7:00 am: Gotta volunteer for four hours... That's the price of free registration.
11-3:00 pm: Bookfair, lunch, etc.
3:00 pm: Either 'Does the writing workshop still work?' or 'Bodies Politic'
4:30 pm: Building the Literary Robot: The Literary Journal as New Media

Dunno what's going on Friday night, but I'd be down for something off-site if anybody has a suggestion. I also thought it might be cool to attend some of the open receptions different schools are hosting, and I definitely would like to check out an art museum while I'm in town, maybe Saturday morning or something. Everybody who is going, please keep me in mind and let me know what's up. I'll see you in Washington!

Publication News

2011-01-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

Pleasant surprise:

Last night I received a newsletter from Danse Macabre listing me as one of their contributors for the holiday issue. Turns out they accepted my short story 'Hunger' without me knowing it! Thanks guys!

Please show your support by checking it out here.

Yule-Tide Laziness

2010-12-31T13:48:00.000-08:00

Well, this winter break has not been nearly as productive as I'd hoped. In my naivete I foolishly believed that I would be able to get some writing done while I'm at home in Georgia. Not so. Perhaps its the absence of routine and familiarity that's got me all constipated creatively, but I've grown pretty good at reassuring myself that it's alright. I'm just pulling a Hemmingway and letting things build in my unconscious for a little while before I get back to Colorado and let them explode on paper!

I've tried to compensate for my flagging creative output by doing a lot of reading and thinking, so to speak, about fiction. I'm very interested in manifestos at present, and in my spare time I've been compiling a list of what I deem to be fiction's 'responsibilities'. I'm not sure my attitude toward art and literature is really conducive to a manifesto--I've always been more interested in process than with form--but I'm trying. One thing I've discovered is that writing intelligent non-fiction is INFINITELY more difficult than writing fiction. Maybe it's because I haven't done it in so long; the process is all hazy and less intuitive. But once I finish my little manifesto I will be sure to post it here. Happy Holidays until then!

Biggish News

2010-12-27T14:14:00.000-08:00

It's only obliquely related to my literary life, but as of 8:30 am on Dec. 23 I am engaged to be married. I'm really excited about it. Shannon and I are both at home right now in Newnan spending time with our families and trying to get used to this new way of looking at each other.

Fiancee. Fi-anc-ee. Crazy...

Just to establish a literary connection here (which, in this case, is admittedly a superficial one) in his book on writing--BookLife--Jeff Vandermeer has a section on relationships in which he talks a little bit about spouses and the kinds of interactions that are healthy between creative people. Now I'm paraphrasing from memory, but he says:

"It's good to have a partner who values writers, and who thinks that trying to be one is a good thing."

Check.

"Because of the focused and solitary nature of writing, writers tend to have a lot of extra energy and can be quite silly at times; it's good to have a partner capable of dealing with that."

Double check. If only artistic greatness was measured in silliness. It's one thing Shannon and I both have in spades...

No details on the wedding yet, but they're coming. Thanks to those who have expressed congratulations.

What is Story?

2010-12-15T13:29:00.000-08:00

Story is an engine that combusts our sacred objects. Memories, beliefs, fears… Everything we hold and cherish in darkness, burns brightest there.

Story is a physical event. There are some things you cannot recognize from a distance. Some things you only know by touch, and, if you could see them clearly, would never pick up to begin with.

Zen Buddhists tell a Story of a caterpillar who suddenly becomes conscious of his many legs. What happens? He stumbles all over himself. The human mind is a fragile thing; it is a language machine that works best when you’re not looking.

Story is transparent. The best meta-fictions are still fictions: environments we enter into. And the best poetry is that which is still carried by the breath.

I am being contentious.

Story is contentious.

Story is greater than literature, it is greater than language, in the same way that a human is greater than flesh and bone. It is these things, but it is also something more that can only be grasped in darkness.

Storytelling is a carefully-constructed accident.

It is the Zen monk who wakes after thirteen hours of meditation and cannot say where he has been. It is the werewolf who rises in the morning in tattered clothes, his mouth all smeared with blood. How many hours did the monk spend staring at the wall, waiting? How many nights did the werewolf spend watching half-moons drift across the sky, until finally a full one arrived?

Story is alive. Story is life.

Checking In

2010-12-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

Apologies for letting this blog run stagnant for a while. There are a couple of pieces I've posted below that are a little more recent and have made their rounds with the publishers... suffice it to say that I feel comfortable consigning them here for now.

I'm just finishing up my first semester in the MFA program here at the University of Colorado. The friends I've made have been great, and though there are aspects of the program that have not exactly lived up to my expectations so far, there are at least some writers whom I've been able to connect with and whose work I respect. Most of the stuff I've been working on is longer, and is still making its rounds publication-wise, so I have little to share here other than news.

The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, the novel I've been working on, sort of went stale during revision and just as I was on the brink of putting it away I've begun working with it in a way that is once-again exciting for me. That's probably what I'll be working on this winter break. I'm finding out that sometimes not-giving-a-shit gives you a degree of critical distance necessary to take risks you otherwise wouldn't. I originally wanted to have it done by...well, now... but clearly that's not going to happen. My revisions so far have been changing the text quite a bit without really bringing it any closer to completion, so now I'm hoping to finish it sometime this summer.

Lately my work has been exploring mostly The Terrible (i.e. terror) and The Fantastic (i.e. fantasy), and it's about time. Much of it has been terrible for a while, but in a different way. Rainer Maria Rilke said: "Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror we're still just able to bear." That's something I'm trying to keep in mind these days.

Here's a link to my latest publication at Ghost Ocean Magazine (which was actually some time ago). Beautiful site. My story is in issue 1.

I will try to keep posting news and works of fiction here. I'm finding it tough to balance it all right now, but that is not an excuse. Just a plea for patience! Thanks to those of you who still check in from time to time.

Story: A Place to Sleep

2010-12-11T15:14:00.000-08:00

It’s been a long time since they slept in each other’s arms, but he wakes at night with her clawing against his chest. It is their first in the new bed. “What’s wrong?” he asks. She murmurs something and he rubs the back of her neck. Shhhh he says softly, until she is awake enough to speak.

The dream is of him dying—not once, but twice. She can’t remember how it happened the first time, only waking in a sweat and pacing at the foot of the bed, questioning whether or not she should wake him. She stands beside the bed and shakes him by the shoulder, although he doesn’t respond. She shakes him with two hands, but still he does not answer. She feels alone in the room. She tries to scream but all that comes out is a weak stream of air. She climbs back into bed still screaming, unable to control her limbs, and lays her head on her pillow. Her legs grow numb, then her arms. She knows she is dying, and then she wakes.

“I thought that people weren’t supposed to die in their dreams,” he says, lying beside her in the dark. He listens with his eyes closed, and the way she describes it, he feels almost as if it were his dream.

“Maybe I didn’t,” she suggests. “Maybe I woke up just before.”

They go back to sleep and when they wake the next morning he is squeezing her. She asks what’s the matter. He says he can’t remember.

She has an interview today, and he sits drinking coffee all morning on their balcony, waiting for her to return. The set of patio chairs is their only furniture besides the bed, and now they cannot sleep. She returns at noon and says they’ve invited her to a second interview on Monday. They have the weekend to themselves.

At night they lie awake. Most recently, he’s died and gone to hell. She cut her wrists to follow, but landed in heaven instead.

“You’re not allowed to do that,” he insists. Something is wrong with her dreams. He gets up and fetches her a glass of water from the kitchen. She takes a sip and asks what he was dreaming about, but again he doesn’t remember.

Saturday and Sunday pass with him in the apartment. She wants to go to the farmer’s market. She wants to try the church. He does not want to go to either of these places and does not want her to go either. He stays home and draws the blinds, wishes the walls were thicker, that there were more padlocks on the door. He does not want Monday to come, but Monday does come, and she silences her alarm clock without waking him. She has slept through the night. This is a good sign. She kisses him on the forehead before dressing.

At noon she returns with a bottle of Andre and a smile, searching for him on the balcony although he isn’t there. She pours them both mimosas, and takes them into the bedroom where he is as she left him. She sits his drink on the nightstand and tries to wake him. He does not respond. She sits her own drink down, and shakes him with both hands, but he just frowns into his pillow. She begins to panic and remembers the dream from several nights ago. She wonders if she is dreaming now. She lies down behind him and wraps her arms around his torso, shuts her eyes and recites a prayer to herself, trying to remember what she dreamed of last night. She cannot. Last night she slept as soundly as a stone, and no matter how hard she tries now, sleep will not find her.

2 Stories I Wrote For Halloween

2010-12-11T15:05:00.000-08:00

Dust to Dust

The plastic jack-o-lantern rests on its side, propped against a tombstone and grinning into the ground. Candy is pooled around it in the dirt, and she lies nearby on a damp plot of earth where the ground was struck but the grave never dug. The boys search for her among the stones.

Yoohoo. Come out wherever you are.

She closes her eyes and rocks from side to side, upending the dirt with her shoulders and shifting deeper with each movement. Worms writhe on top of her as the clumps of dirt break apart; centipedes, beetles, and slugs. The boys still are calling and she tries to remain still. A spider crawls along her forearm, eight points of contact. Her hairs stand on end. She can feel each of its legs on her skin—not quite a caress—and the beetles burrow in between her and the ground. Worms twist like curled leaves in the wind.

Her senses rise into her pores, like an electric current on top of water. Her body is a city, a sanctuary, giving shelter to the insects whispering into her flesh, filling it with a language none but her can understand.

Where are you sweetheart? I just want a treat.

Her fingers clutch at the earth by her sides. She feels along each slope and between her legs, at last grasps a pine cone and holds it against the seam of her pants. It pricks her hands. She twists the pine cone against her like a pestle—she is the mortar—and can feel her ashes mixing with the mud. The boys’ voices recede while she grinds it against her. Her mouth is open. She is sand. She is sugar. She disappears.

Hunger

The monster lives in a mansion outside of town, past forests of oak and juniper with high branches, so that your headlights shine a long way before being swallowed in darkness. You arrive at a clearing and the great shadow comes into focus above a steel archway, tarnished brick turrets piercing the sky and black windows flushing from inside.

When you were a girl, your parents would warn you to eat your greens, otherwise he’d come out of the woods and get you. This wasn’t true, but you ate them anyway. You had not met him. All you knew was that he didn’t have a mouth, and who knew what kinds of behavior would offend a creature like that?

Dinner guests arrive around twilight, and the host greets you at the door dressed in an impeccable dinner jacket. His skin is brown and spotty. His eyes are black. He has light blonde hair that is nearly invisible at the temples, and where his mouth should be, there is only a glossy plane of flesh, stretched tight as though there might be a mouth beneath it, though it is sewn up in skin.

You offer him your cheek and he brushes it accordingly with his own. He is a perfect gentleman, although he would not hesitate to swallow you whole if he were able. He is a monster, after all. You know this. When you go to the zoo you admire the tigers, but you don’t have any illusions about their nature. Their nature is what you admire. There is something about being eaten, isn’t there? Something about your blood on someone else’s lips that is… seductive. Not that that’s a possibility here. You pause on the threshold with your hand in his and concentrate on where his claws rest against your wrists, your blood vessels expanding beneath his touch.

Inside the light is scarce. Dark chestnut columns rise into a vaulted arch. The Persian carpet feels like moss underfoot. There’s a dinette table with black, liquorice-flavored cocktails on it, and you take one before entering the dining room where the other guests are mingling. The monster lives alone and prepares everything himself. This impresses the housewives.

“Have you heard about any more animals being discovered?” Mrs. Winston asks. “You know… drained?”

“Two last week.”

“My word! What do you suppose he does with it? The blood, I mean. It’s not as though he can eat it.”

“I don’t know. Bathes in it maybe?”

Mrs. Winston draws up in approbation. “Well good for him, I say. One’s got to cut loose every now and then, otherwise what’s the point?”

You are aware of the host’s presence as he shifts between groups. When he is close you talk of music—he is an accomplished pianist, after all—though when he is not you occupy yourself listening to rumors of his parentage. Some say he was spawned by a coven of witches, others that he’s the offspring of a wolf and earthworm. This last possibility intrigues you, although you know better than to take any of it seriously.

The women all wear rouge and low-cut blouses that cling to their flanks like saran wrap over prime rib. You’ve got on a sequined little number the others think is overdoing it—after all, you’ve got to go back to town at some point—but you don’t care. It’s him you are interested in. You can feel his black eyes stealing glances at your hips and inside your thighs. He does not have a mouth, but if he did you don’t mind fancying it’s you he would covet first.

You take your seat at the dinner table. There are places set for more than thirty, and the couples sit across from one another, alternating men and women. In the center is a row of sterling platters that the host unveils one by one. The menu is an array of forest creatures, skinned and broiled, braised in blood and infused with exotic spices and herbs. Certain morsels like the deer are a tad bit chewy, although the rabbit is succulent and delicious, tender like the inside of one’s mouth. There is another dish too, one you can’t identify, but which is the most wonderful of all. Your palette hums when you take a bite, as though an electric current were passing through it. It has been ages since the last gathering. You can hardly remember the gentleman’s name.

The host sits at the head of the table, elbows resting on either side of an empty plate, and watches the conversations go on around him. For dessert he distributes plates of stewed berries and homemade ice cream, smoked chicory coffee in silver tins.

The ladies eat until identical quarter-portions are left on each of their plates, and the men all recline in their seats from over eating, then follow the host into the drawing room. It is dark there. Long oak bookshelves line each of the walls along with faded portraits whom none can identify. The room is lit by a single set of candles positioned behind the great piano. You gather around in chairs and on stools, and the host arranges a score by Schöenberg on the stand. You are quiet, and resent even the sound of your breath. His spotty fingers rest against the keys and he remains there for a moment, head bowed, taking several deep breaths before he compresses the keys, commences with the melody, the complex descent into minor key. You listen to it with your eyes closed. The music is beautiful. He closes his eyes too and only opens them to glance at the music, and to turn the page when it is necessary.

His playing stirs something inside of you and eventually your eyes open. The guests exchange glances with one another and feel a tension gathering in their bodies. They stand and undress, hanging their clothes on the backs of chairs while the host continues to play, his eyes shut, hammering the keys as if he’s trying to convince himself that you’re still listening. You are listening, but you undress as well, spot a gentleman nearby and grab him by the arms, hold him between your legs and feel his body inside of you. It makes your organs shiver; your blood, your bones, your synapses. You are a flower waiting to bloom. You turn your head and watch the host, listening and regretting that others are not also listening, but then, it is like this every time. You permit yourself to enjoy the gentleman on top of you, knowing that what must happen will happen either way.

The music stops. The host is still for a moment. His chest heaves and he is slow to stand. He gathers the sheets of music and places them inside the piano bench, before facing into the room. The guests all freeze. The man on top of you withdraws, and watches, waiting to find out who it will be. The host walks in between couples, studying each, and your eyes follow after him, willing him to turn and face you. Your organs cry out, your blood is a chorus of longing. His black eyes find you out, and once more you can feel them roving over your hips, your thighs and bottom; all the tender bits. They other guests eye you too, also with hunger. They know a decision has been made.

He strides across the room and stands above you. You take hold of his claw and rise, trying to restrain your excitement. You grin into the carpet and allow yourself to be escorted into the center of the room, where the guests have cleared a space around a sheet of plastic. Their faces are unblinking. They are jealous and happy for you at once. The host stands before you and you meet his eyes, can see that his face is weary. For a moment you’re afraid he will change his mind, but he does not. He steps back. His claws stiffen. You lift your head and turn your palms toward the ceiling, feel your entire body pulsing with light. Air rushes into your stomach and you can feel the guests eyes upon you as a moment of blistering heat takes hold, and your body comes apart. The light escapes and what’s left is consigned to the following month’s menu.

We inch closer in an effort to be near. Our lips are wet, but the host stands still. His face is stern. It is time for us to leave, but we will see you again next month, briefly, one last time.

I Write Like...

2010-07-15T09:34:00.001-07:00

Here's a cool new website that uses coding to analyze your writing samples, and tells you which famous writer your style most resembles. Evidently, the two pieces I'm working on, Actor's Guide and 4'33", resemble writing by Stephan King and Kurt Vonnegut respectively.

What can I say? You don't always get the answer you want, but it is still interesting.

I Finally Registered for Classes!

2010-07-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

I've got to admit that so far the admissions process at CU has fairly frustrated me. For a while I had some sense of which paperwork was coming to me in which order, but now I've got no clue. I'm about ninety-percent certain though that I've done everything I need to before actually arriving there, and most of my efforts currently are being spent communicating with my realtor and finding a place to live in Boulder.

Registering for classes wasn't easy. First I was told I could do it through the online portal, but that didn't work. I kept getting a message that said I didn't have an enrollment appointment. Nobody mentioned anything to me about an enrollment appointment. I called the registrar's office, and the student worker there seemed really confused and transferred me to some other lady's voicemail who then did not return my call. I called again, and after speaking to another very confused worker for a few moments, she interrupted me by saying that I could register at 8 am on Wednesday. Eight am rolled around this morning (twice, in fact, because CO is an hour behind TX), and lo-and-behold, no enrollment appointment. I called back, and the student worker this time listened to me speak for about ten seconds before interrupting me and saying she was going to transfer me to someone else's voicemail. I protested and she answered rather testily: "That's all I can do for you, sir."

Needless to say, my voicemail was not happy, and needless to say, no one called me back. A little while later I called back again, and whoever the student worker was this time put me on hold for two seconds, and when he came back on, told me I could register immediately. He'd just opened me up. Hoila. I think the ease with which he was able to fix it, after all of that, was the most infuriating part! Anyway, the important thing is that I did get registered, and my classes look sweet. Here's what my schedule looks like:

Mon: Contemporary Literary Theory
Advanced Topics in English- Digital Media
Tues: Intro to Literature of the United States
Wed: Fiction Workshop

I am also on a waiting list for Intro to Multicultural Literature. Not sure how many credits I'm supposed to be taking, although the important thing is that I'm enrolled and can drop/add as needed. This all could change anyway once I get there and am able to advise. Also, I still need to receive a schedule of the classes I am teaching. I'm excited though. It's like a fairytale. There is not a single class I'm not thrilled about!

Footnotes in the Age of E-Reading

2010-07-05T08:04:00.001-07:00

Like many people, I have long since given in to the attractions of various e-readers. Several birthdays ago my parents bought me a Kindle, and more recently I've started reading on my iPhone as well. They're great in a lot of ways. The Kindle is great for reading long, cumbersome novels like Anna Karenina without have to heft around the actual book, and also for reading outside--no pages to get blown and very little glare on the screen. On the other hand, the iPhone reader, I've found, is excellent for shorter works, stories and poems. It almost makes me look forward to the security line in airports because it gives me just the right amount of time to whip out my phone and read through something. But whether it is the romantic in me or the traditionalist, I still do value the traditional model of reading... You know, books. And I sympathize with those who fear for that mode's future, whether it's from a publisher's perspective, author's, or just the loss of reading texture that many feel the e-reader heralds.

Good news: I have found at least one kind of literature that seems nearly irreconcilable with the e-format, and that is the one which relies heavily on footnotes.

I remember when I first read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallce, all of the sudden I could not resist populating my own writing with footnotes. They were irresistible, providing the perfect opportunity for me to include those clever asides that occurred to me but which didn't actually fit inside the story. As it were, they provided a convenient excuse for me not to have to "kill my darlings" so I've since given them up, but nevertheless, when Wallace uses them they are fun and hilarious, and it's tough to imagine a lot of his work without them.

I read Infinite Jest too as a book and thought the same thing. Although once I started utilizing the iPhone reader and brainstorming things I could buy to read ion it, I made the mistake of purchasing Consider the Lobster as an e-text, and let me tell you about cumbersome.... You have to click on each of the footnotes and it will transport you to the text in question, then once you are finished reading it transports you back. Anyone who has read Wallace knows that sometimes his footnotes go on for multiple pages, and become stories in their own right, and I am not sure why but for some reason reading this way is so much more disorienting than relying on one's eye to shift back and forth. I cannot imagine reading Infinite Jest on an e-reader, and the book I'm reading now, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, would also be nearly impossible, I think.

Groundbreaking as e-texts are, it is comforting to know that there are still effects that can only be accomplished on paper.

Fictionalizing Real People

2010-06-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

Here is an article in the Guardian that deals (somewhat) with the ethics of representing real people in fiction. This is particularly interesting for me right now because I currently am working on several things that are based on real people, one of which involves fictionalized scenes from the life of composer, John Cage. The author of the piece, Meg Rosoff, dismisses the subject with a "do what you want, but do it well" kind of position, but to that I would add that he who writes about real people also needs to be aware of the work's political ramifications. Whatever one chooses to say is fine, but to represent real people without giving any thought to how it makes them look, or what that representation says about them seems to me irresponsible. Praise them, burn them, put words into their mouths or take words out... anything goes, but do be aware of the work's relationship to the lives it represents.

News Update

2010-06-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted any personal updates about what's going on with me writing-wise and otherwise. So here's a brief list of things:

1) I finished the first draft of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo today!!!! It is the novel I've been working on for the past four months or so. In it's current (rough) form, it weighs in at about 95,000 words, making it my first legitimate novel manuscript. Right now I'm going to put it aside for about two months, get it out of my head, then come back to it after that time and read it with fresh eyes for the revision. I'm not sure whether I want to work on it as a part of my graduate coursework or not. Still deciding whether a novel is something that should be workshoped. But anyway, that brings me to item number two...

2) In another month or so I'll be packing up my belongings and moving with Shannon to Colorado, where I will be studying fiction at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I've been meaning to post this last bit of news for quite some time, but the delay between when I found out about my acceptance there and when I finally heard from all of the other schools I applied to was so long it sort of lost its motivation. I'm really excited though. I was also offered a teaching assistantship, and just found out that the course I will be teaching is Intro to Creative Writing, which is a huge relief because before that I assumed it would be Freshman Comp or something like that. So yay!

3) I've got a couple of old stories I'm going to return to, revise, and then begin circulating in fiction competitions, so more news on that will be coming in the next few months. It's crazy how many ideas occur to you when you are bogged down by one single project. Since beginning work on MET I've probably had about ten solid story ideas occur to me, and it's taken real discipline not to put it aside and pursue some of these other ideas. My palate is clean though now, and I can start sifting through that backlog of ideas. One thing I'm planning on doing is returning to my first novel attempt, The Body and the Blood, and revising it back into a novella that I will then go on to self-publish and make available through a website I'm going to start designing soon. So lots and lots of stuff! Stay tuned for more details. I'll try to post stuff like this more regularly and not fall so far behind!

Best Wishes,

Nick

Narrative Pleasure = Right v. Wrong

2010-06-11T11:06:00.000-07:00

In this Slate article Kathyrn Schultz interviews Ira Glass from This American Life about "wrongness", and how it sub-textually drives each of the stories they do on the show. In it, Ira discusses the collision of expectation versus reality as a narrative convention, and even as a creative discipline. At one point, he's talking about a story he did on The Onion's brainstorming sessions, in which it is not uncommon for them to come up with about 600 headlines, only 16 or 17 of which they actually end up using. That means that they are willing to be wrong 583 times in order to be right 17. He goes on:

"It kind of gives you hope. If you do creative work, there's a sense that inspiration is this fairy dust that gets dropped on you, when in fact you can just manufacture inspiration through sheer brute force. You can simply produce enough material that the thing will arrive that seems inspired. "

It's an interesting idea; one that I probably agree with about 90 percent, but then, the whole interview is interesting and, though it deprives you of Ira Glass's signature voice, I highly recommend that you check it out in full.

The New Name

2010-06-08T13:17:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking about renaming this blog "The Island of Misfit Stories," to acknowledge the fact that generally the stories I post here have been rejected by at least six legitimate publishers beforehand. I cannot post anything here that I hope to publish elsewhere because nearly all publishers want first rights to the work. So usually I end up circulating each of these guys for about five months before I give up, curse the literary establishment's lack of vision, then put the stories up here instead. That's how this blog began: as a way for me to imagine that somebody is actually reading my work.

Originally I named it "Error: You Are Being Redirected" on a whim, because when I try to come up with real--that is, appropriate--names for things, they usually end up being terrible, cheesy, and obvious. When titling works-in-progress, provisionally I assign them either stupidly obvious titles, or off-the-wall absurd ones. Although eventually, if the work means anything to me, I will want to give it a name that suits it. The title, after all, is the reader's first impression of a piece.

(*Side Note*: My poetry professor in college, Sandra Meek, used to have a thing against poems announcing themselves as 'Untitled'. It's like meeting someone for the first time and, instead of introducing yourself, grabbing them by the shoulders and shaking them... which maybe is a good thing sometimes. But even then, you wouldn't introduce yourself as 'Untitled' first, would you? Would you?!)

As I was thinking about the idea of naming, I remembered an old religious essay I once read back in my more pious days by George MacDonald, titled The New Name. It was from a collection of Unspoken Sermons, and I remember this one grabbing me because of its unique conception of Heaven, and what it means to abide with one's Creator. MacDonald argued (imagined is perhaps a better word) that the first thing that happens once one enters Heaven is that s/he is given a white stone with a new name on it, one that "no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it" (the sermon is based on a verse from Revelation; 2:17). This is not a name like any we've received before, like Nick or Error: You Are Being Redirected. This name would reflect who we are, interiorly and exteriorly. Presumably it would be more than just a word, in the same way that 'eternity' is more than just a long time, but I think the point, the powerful thing about the sermon, is the idea of having nothing withheld; no secret to keep or mystery to ponder. To me, it sounds like everything I long to experience in writing; that is, an embodiment of what I am and what I fail to understand about myself. My personal Truth, in a word.

I'm not sure what the linguistic implications of this idea are. It does seem to suggest that, at the metaphysical level, there is a 1:1 relationship between an object and its name, whereas at the non-metaphysical level, there is often a dynamic relationship between words and the objects they signify (see Edward Said); often the name a person or thing is given actually influences that person or thing's behavior.

But to return to the point...

A long time ago--back when I was still selling cable door to door--I was talking to this old woman on her doorstep. Having by that point determined that she would not be changing her cable provider that day, somehow we fell to discussing how I was a writer, and I even told her about this blog (please comment if, by some deranged miracle, this is you and you actually checked it out!). Anyway, I told her the blog's name and her response was, "Oh my, that's really clever! Because then your site will pop up whenever somebody searches for the wrong thing!" This had never occurred to me before, and of course, once I thought about it I realized it was a fallacy, unless somebody out there is actually searching for error messages. But the paradox (which, let me emphasize, was by no means intentional) struck me as oddly appropriate. If you are reading this, after all, it is because for some reason, whether you stumbled upon this blog or know me personally, you sought out the unsought. You are reading what nobody else seems to want to read, and believe me, the fact that you're reading it is appreciated.

The moral of this story:

Sometimes words that begin as bullshit can, in the end, prove meaningful. Compelling even. That is a profoundly positive idea for me.

Story: New Look

2010-06-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

He started telling people weeks in advance what he was going to do. To those whom he’d known the longest, he mentioned it with the least affect, knowing, somehow, that they would be the least interested. “Really?” they would say with a false note of enthusiasm. And sensing that he was still waiting: “Why?”

The girls at work were his favorite. “What? Your hair? No way, you can’t!”

He smiled.

“Guys with long hair,” Marissa, the girl in the station adjoining his said, “They’re just… rare, you know?” She seemed to falter here, and he loved her for that. “It works on you,” she said in summation.

It had been two years since his last haircut. He’d started growing it during a period when he and his girlfriend, Nora, were split up, and when they started seeing each other again eleven months later, the mane he wore seemed to symbolize all the ways he had changed during their time apart. The ways he had matured and the habits he’d grown out of. Nora loved his new look—everyone did—and silly or not, somehow it managed to promise them a new beginning, one absent the flaws that had originally driven them apart. It occurred to him only some time later that during the entire time they’d been apart, he had not been with a single other person.

Three more of his coworkers stopped by after lunch to see if the rumor was true. Two tried to talk him out of it, and one just grasped his locks with a forlorn expression on her face before continuing on her path toward the coffee pot, which he could see had been refilled.

“I’m ready for a change,” he explained to the group gathered at the beverage station.

“You’ll keep the length though, right?” asked Shelly. “I mean, you won’t cut it all off.”

He shook his head. “The way I see it, if I’m going to have long hair, I’ll have long hair. If not—” He made a snipping motion with his fore and index fingers. Theresa, the office coordinator, stared unbelievingly at him for a moment before lifting her hand dismissively and walking away.

At 5:24 pm he drove home with the windows down. Sounds from the street filled his car; the decompression of a bus’s breaks, the static beat of a portable radio on the corner. In the morning time, these were things he struggled to overcome. Every sight and sound somehow seemed to conspire against his one wish, which was to get to work so that he could perform his job and be done with it. In the evening it was different. The hurriedness of the city did not feel like part of a sickness, but something for him to sink back in to. He could feel himself relax the more things outside seemed to whir, disseminated by the variety of forces acting upon his senses. The buzz of commerce, pulse of traffic, the homeward trek of all the other nine-to-fivers out there somewhere in the process of “winding down”.

Nora was waiting when he got home. She arrived home from work an hour before he did, though she left an hour earlier in the morning. She was finishing her first glass of wine when he entered.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, and continued to grin. He took off his jacket and laid his handbag (which she referred to as his “murse”) on one of the bar chairs. Under a pot of water he could see that the stove was lit, and on the counter a board of chopped parsley rested beside a box of pasta.

“What is it?” she persisted. He could tell by her demeanor that his silence was making her excited. In truth, he had only told the girls at work to get their reaction. He hadn’t actually been decided until just this moment.

“I’m going to cut my hair.”

“Off?”

“Off.”

He watched her eyes lift and scan the terrain above his forehead, along his shoulders. She would not know it, but it was for her that he was doing this. In the months they had been back together he had begun harboring an illicit sense of vanity, fueled, at least in part, by the attentions of the girls at work. They petted him and made comments, seemed only to be encouraged by his modest appeals. The flirtation had culminated at the company Christmas party while Nora was chatting with his manager, Theresa, and Joanne, his office crush, followed him into the bathroom, claiming to have gotten the girls’ and the guys’ mixed up. Nothing happened. At least, nothing substantial. But it was enough to make him reconsider the kind of relationship he wished to cultivate with the women at work—and with women in general, who were not Nora. The haircut was his solution.

“Are you sure?” she said, still scanning his features, and his expression dropped. “Not that I don’t think you’d still be beautiful,” she said, moving closer. She was holding him now. “It’s just, I don’t remember how you looked without it, is all.”

“I was attractive before I had long hair,” he assured her.

“Oh baby, I know. I remember.” She buried her face in his neck.

“And there have been others who can vouch for it.” This statement caused her to stop, and he waited to see what she would do. She pulled back and looked at him, a slight smirk on her face, which faded as she assessed whether or not to believe him. He wondered if she did believe him. She let go.

“Well, it’s your goddamn head,” she said, evidently not in the mood to humor him. “Do whatever you want to with it.” She moved toward the kitchen and he bowed, defeated, before offering to help with dinner.

***

It was important to him that she believe things about his sexual history that, in fact, were not true. She’d been his first, and barring a few adolescent occasions upon which he’d made it to second, and even third base, there really had been no others. He did not believe in the mysticism associated with one’s first, especially since the novelty was on his end alone. Nora had been with other guys, he knew, and that fact created some issues for him.

There was a part of her that always seemed withheld, mysterious; one which, oddly enough, gave her leverage on a range of issues from sexual positions to grocery supplies. Initially he’d responded with fear. He was jealous, needy, and in general, required a great deal more assurance as a lover than she felt able to offer. But that was before their separation, his maturation, and the confidence he’d gained with his new look.

He began to view the girls around him, particularly those who seemed interested, as a kind of dowry forgone. Deep down he believed somehow that Nora owed him a sexual experience with someone other than herself, for edification, for balance, and if nothing else, so that he might know how unique she was. He didn’t expect to find anything better, per se—the difficulties they experienced together sexually, he understood to be givens—but there was something incomplete, he thought, about an experience that could not be judged relatively.

Despite what sense of entitlement he felt though, he knew that it would never happen, and had decided it was for the best. He loved Nora, and was lucky to have her. He had been given a second chance after things appeared to have been over between them, and that kind of luck could not be measured against something as trite and abstract as sexual curiosity.

The following day at work, the processions of mourners continued to pay their respects. At one point, his coworker, Matthew, leaned over the boarded partition which separated their work stations. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he said. “I always thought it made you look like kind of a pussy.” Matthew had tried growing his hair out the previous summer, but had given up by mid-July. He was easy to forgive.
On her way to lunch Joanne too stopped by to see him, and he felt instantly uneasy. She stood behind his chair rubbing his shoulders and lamenting his decision, insinuating the impact it would have on her daytime fantasies. He did not react, but accepted her behavior for what it was: dated. His mind was made up. What difference did it make now, how close they came to a line that would never be crossed? In 24 hours it wouldn’t matter; would be like a dream one forgets upon waking.

He spent his own lunch at his computer, surfing images of Edward Norton, Collin Ferrell, and Leonardo Dicaprio. Since most employees left the office during break, he did not feel bad using the printer for personal business. He printed five pages, each with three images on it, and stuffed them into a copy of GQ he’d stolen from the lobby. When it was time to leave for the day, he rose holding the mass of inspiration haplessly under his arm, hoping that his coworkers would notice and make one last attempt to dissuade him. But they did not. A rumor had begun circulating that their office was switching campaigns, from cable to office supplies, and the threat of having to learn yet another product line all but trumped his own concerns.
He sighed, and left the building feeling as though a light had gone out. Take a deep breath, he told himself. You’re not a child anymore.

***

When he came into the apartment he could hear Nora in the kitchen around the corner. She heard him too, and began to speak: “Baby, I’m really sorry.” He stepped into the room and saw that she was stooping before the refrigerator, placing something into one of the produce drawers. He wondered if she noticed that he was later than usual, then saw the empty bottle of wine looming on the counter like an hourglass. She was slow standing.

He imagined she wanted to talk about the other night, how she should have been more supportive. He would tell her that it was Ok, that it didn’t matter anymore because he had finally sanctified himself to their relationship. He now wore proudly the skull-cap of male responsibility and was ready to “grow up”, as she’d so often encouraged.

She turned, and her hand moved toward the sink faucet before she lifted her eyes. They were uncomprehending at first. Both of them felt suspended. In that moment everything seemed suddenly new: their apartment, him, her. Objects looked familiar, but absent of association. A near-lifetime of connections unmade in an instant. Anything was possible. They spent some moments in that freshness and he forgot all about what he’d hoped to accomplish. Forgot his intention, and did not know any longer what he expected of her. Finally though, the rapture lifted, his expression dropped, and he watched with horror while, softly, she began to cry.

A Writer's Self-Perception

2010-06-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

The fluctuations in my attitude towards my work have become something of a cliche to me. Some days I finish writing and am convinced that what I've written is genius (or at least that there is the seed of genius in it), while others, I think it is crap. Much of that occurs relative to other people's work, depending on what I am reading and how I perceive my own work in relation to it. I was just talking with a friend last night though, and mentioned how it's the stuff I haven't read that is most intimidating to me.

Nothing is more discouraging than to come across some friend-of-a-friend's profile on facebook, who's work I've never read, and to see tons of publication credentials right above a list of favorite authors I have never even heard of. It's in those moments that I feel I must lack some crucial element of what it means to be a contemporary writer, emphasis on contemporary. I worry then that my tastes are outdated, my sense of what's important is cliche. There is no greater fear for a writer (and perhaps for artists in general) than to think you are creating something new and significant and finding out that it's not, and it's not. I imagine other artists sneering around me and it makes me so sick and fed up that I put my nose down and decide to write exactly what I want to write just to spite them, which ultimately leads me back to one of those extremely positive/genius moods, and thus the cycle continues.

It is comforting to observe that such feelings of disappointment rarely come upon me when I am reading something that I actually enjoy. The better the work is, the more inspired it makes me, and the more it encourages and contributes to my own process. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Writing the kinds of books you yourself would like to read? Most moods of discouragment occur while I'm scratching my head over something I don't like, trying to figure out why, if I don't like it, it still is popular. All kinds of Unknowns start to press in around me, and I find myself repulsed by my own work without really understanding why. Maybe my not liking certain kinds of work means that I am behind the times, and maybe it means I'm ahead of them. As with all superficial considerations, the only thing to do is put your head down, accept that there's no way of knowing, keep writing, and see.

A Hopeful View on E-Publishing?

2010-05-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent article written by Steven Page, cheif executive of Faber and Faber, posted on the Guardian's BookBlog. I think he has a lot of a great ideas about the kinds of attitudes publishers are going to have to have, and what steps they are going to need to take to adapt and profit in the new e-reading environment. Check it.

Rejection Lite

2010-05-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of 50 Iconic Writers Who Were Repeatedly Rejected. Some though, had work rejected on the grounds that it was obscene, which doesn't strike me as real rejection. Don't get me started on real rejection...

Some highlights: Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance was rejected 121 times before being accepted for publication; much of Jorge Luis Borges's work was initially perceived as "unpublishable"; Gertrude Stein submitted poems for 22 years before having one accepted; William Saroyan received 7,000 rejection slips before publishing his first short story; and of course, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter was submitted to 12 publishing houses before it was accepted. The urge to rub their faces in it must be so intense!

Towards a New Novel

2010-05-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

In this article on the Guardian's BookBlog, Andrew Gallix uses Alain Robbe-Grillet's defense of the 'New Novel' back in the 60s as a way of discussing David Shields's more recent (though nearly identical) criticism of contemporary novels as "antediluvian texts".

I remember reading an interview with David Shields in the February 2010 issue of Bookslut, in which he discussed his latest work, Reality Hunger. Reality Hunger is, by his own description, a work of appropriation art which consists of an ass-load of quotations that have been organized into "thematized rubrics, otherwise known as chapters; [each of which has] a movement, an argument." He explains that, "What drove the thing from the beginning was that I needed to explain to myself why I don’t write fiction per se anymore, and why with various few exceptions I can’t and don’t read it."

Shields goes on to disparage 'conventional novels'--that is, novels which emphasize narrative over his own much-beloved 'idea'--and issues a call for writers to think beyond the novel's traditional forms and to, in essence, "not be boring". For him, I suspect, that indictment boils down to being formally innovative, but depending on who one’s asking, ‘boring’ can mean a whole lot of different things.

Mr. Gallix too lauds the French proponents of the noveau roman for championing a novel which integrates into its form evolving ideas about human consciousness. Alain Robbe-Grillet claimed that a novel expresses nothing but itself, and that there must be no distinction between a text's content (here: its ideas) and the text itself.

So far I am in perfect agreement.

For Robbe-Grillet, his project was expressing the distance between man/author and the world around him. It was an existential problem, one he chose to address by designing a new prose style that placed the narrator, not as a god interacting with and defining his surroundings, but as a set of eyes that took them in and figured his own position in relation to those objects around him. The ‘New Novel’ is descriptive, exhaustingly so, although in that description one begins to get a sense of the narrator's place in his environment, and also of his narrative circumstance therein.

As an idea, I find this approach interesting, invigorating... despite the fact that I have never been able to get through a single one of Robbe-Grillet's 'experiments'. His contemporaries must have had similar issues with the texts’ readability, and thereby prompted Robbe-Grillet to publish a series of essays defending his project, which were later on collected into a single volume, titled Towards a New Novel. Shields too, in his interviews and public statements, seems to be similarly chaffed by audiences' inability to grasp 'what he is doing' (although this strikes me as ironic, considering his own claim that he "didn't think at all about the reader when writing this book". Robbe-Grillet too, though he believed a work and its ideas should be bound up into one thing, evidently had no problem speaking about his work in other contexts).

Reality Hunger, despite its audacious form, Shields describes as his most personal book, having taken him several years to write, and expressing thoughts which he'd been "living with" for thirty years, "and quite passionately for at least the past fifteen." That is fine. It sounds to me like writing the book represents a profound and significant act of honesty on his part, which is what, in the end, art is all about. His existential/ideological assumptions necessitated that book's appearance, as well as its specific form. Though why he should decry contemporary literature's lack of innovation, its idea-lessness, simply because it does not suit his own existential assumptions, remains to me unclear. It is great that past writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, and present ones like David Shields, are struggling with the novel's form in light of their own unique position in space. Most honest writers, in their own way, do. But to me, when I hear people tell me that "No one should be writing this way," or that realism is an outdated mode, or that some particular style fails to address man's modern condition, my response is: "Who's modern condition are you talking about?"

Really, these kinds of criticisms sound to me like bitter authors trying to justify their own unique vantage, condemning others' shallowness for not being able to see what they alone are in a position to see. Some people’s issues lead them to question textual form, others’ do not. Some little piggies like roast beef, other little piggies have none. I simply cannot take seriously the idea that readers should be faulted for continuing to find significance of 'traditional' narratives. I, for one, have yet to accept that the stories we tell ourselves are without meaning, that the experiences and characters we encounter in 'traditional’ fictions are insignificant, either to ourselves or to society. It seems to me that the novel's great characteristic is that it can be so many different things, and that to any given person it can be (and is) something entirely different. Why hound a person for writing like Chekhov, if writing like Chekhov is what interests him; if Chekhov's is the most appropriate voice for whatever is inside of him, dying find expression? That is what art is about; not 'moving the novel forward', as if it won't move forward on its own, or as if it were bound to move only in one direction. Art is about honesty, whether you're attempting to connect with others, exploring memories, playing with language, or articulating new ideas and forms, it is silly and base for one artist to tell another how she should occupy herself.

Story: Role Play

2010-05-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

It started off as a sexual thing. She played nurse and he played patient, she played teacher, he played pupil. She played guy, he played girl... But it became more than that. They had an idea to meet in a bar and pretend that they didn’t know one another; would spend hours, several nights a week, working their way around neon-lit rooms until they found one another, for the first time, again.

At first they made it easy for one another: they joked using inside jokes, allowed themselves to be parodies of what they assumed singles were like (just one word about space pants was enough to woo her in those early days). But they got harder on one another, until there were some nights when they didn’t go home together at all. If one of them was off his/her game, they did the only thing a pair of self-respecting players could do: they went home separately. At the end of the night they climbed into bed together without ceremony, and slept facing opposite walls, though those were just the bad nights. For the most part it was like they were kids again. All they needed was a starting point, a scenario, one far-fetched premise and they were off on an adventure that sometimes lasted entire days.

They would spend the weekdays brainstorming fantasies, writing them down in a journal kept specially for that purpose. Then on the weekends she would hide and he would scour the city for her, following the trail of clues she left and looking in the places he knew to look.

He played hero and she played damsel.

He played chef, she food critic.

She played priest, and he church boy. They confessed to one another, honestly, so that afterwards they could not speak for several days. When they did finally, it was not as themselves, but as Mr. and Mrs. Claus, Wild Bill and Calamity, Odysseus and Calypso.

She played a politician one time, and he wrote to her long naive letters about how they could make the world a better place, which she read and—straddling his lap—dropped quietly into the bin.

He played Adam and she played Eve, though he changed his mind halfway through and decided to be the serpent, then the apple...

Sometimes they had disagreements. For instance, he was fond of moss—entire forests of it; the kind that was thick and dry and reminded one of great terrestrial clouds—and he fantasized about playing the moss on the ground while she, a nymph, walked barefoot across it. She didn’t like that idea. Said she couldn’t “see it”.

Likewise, she was interested in the sub-particle lives of cells. Especially the way chloroplasts transformed light into energy. She dreamed of a scenario in which she would play the light, and he would convert her to sustenance. Although this, he assured her, was not at all practicable.

They spent the entire afternoon one Saturday with him lying very still on the living room carpet, while she stood in the window and allowed the sun’s warmth to seep into her sweater and her skin. After a while she grew tired, and melted into the floor with him, and they reasoned then that even moss required sunlight, though their differences continued.

One time he went around town all weekend, alone, in search of a fire so that he could play the smoke-charred survivor stumbling into the street, and there taste that first clean breath of air. Meanwhile, she deposited herself into one of the drainage ducts at the local dam, to satisfy a strange and inexpressible urge she felt to know what a Champaign cork felt like, just once.

Scene by scene, their various acts began to pull them apart. They would go on benders sometimes, and not see each other for days. They played the people on the street, and trailed after them like wraiths, or like those airy facsimiles you see behind objects in pictures when the shudder speed is turned way down. Sometimes they included strangers in their acts—as lovers occasionally, though not always—and after a while they hardly saw each other at all. When they did, it was by accident, and they would try to ignore one another like you ignore the guy creeping around a party with his camera, who tries to catch everyone in their element but whose stealth always fails him a moment too soon, and all he captures are these vague purgatorial gestures, halfway between natural and pretend. Not quite real, yet not quite imagined.

SXSW wrap-up, plus a 'critique' of 'rock' music

2010-03-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

The remnants of this year's SXSW festival still linger here in Austin. The chain-linked enclosures to various outdoor venues appear battered and, in many places, defeated, as if in a final gesture of obnoxious enthusiasm, fans had stormed the shows either en masse, or in Land Rovers. The skeletal remains of stages await transport, standing half-collapsed and bare, and the trash that homeless people were originally paid to pick up, has once again descended in the form of broken beer bottles, abandoned T-shirts, and plentious flyers advertising shows, just in case atendees didn't have every moment of every day planned out already.

Personally, I am relieved. For one thing, I can step out of doors at any given moment without witnessing 6-10 traffic violations. I can drive home from work without having to flip anybody off, and I can sleep at night without the steady pulse of bass drums taking over my dreams, or having to worry about vomit appearing mysteriously on my door step in the morning. Needless to say, the, uh, enthusiasm of this year's event has given me ample cause and opportunity to consider my own lack thereof.

When people asked me this past week whether or not I had any "crazy plans for south-by", I generally would respond that I'm not all that in to music festivals. This statement was as much a surprise to me as to those I was speaking to, because after all, I really do enjoy music. For whatever reason, the fact of its being "live" doesn't really add much to what I already appreciate about the music. The allure of live music, as I see it, is not the music itself, but the excuse it gives us to party. The emphasis is not on the "art", but on our collective, communal appreciation of it. And I think that is a distinguishing characteristic of rock music from other art forms; the fact that it often develops as live performance, or anticipation of it. A rock song is a cultural object throughout nearly every stage of its development, and to me, that fact compromises its status as Art, in the upper-cased sense of the word.

My own understanding of what Art is, is constantly developing and redefining itself, although I would say that one critical aspect of artistic experience is recognition. That is, rather than engaging an audience directly, as in rock performances, the artist first delves into his/her Self, past easy emotions and modes of analysis, and attempts to represent what is there by way of visual, textual, and/or musical media. See the difference? The one involves a multi-step process in the way Artist approaches Public:

Step 1: Artist participates in Introspection
Step 2: Artist engages in Creation
Step 3: Artist makes work accessible to Public
Step 4: Public/Viewer-Listener-Reader either does or does not experience Recognition

The process in rock music, I believe, is much more slurred and, as a result, reaches people on a more topical, general level. Thus, we arrive at the distinction between pop art and what I would term, "serious" Art: The one touches many, lightly, while the other touches few, deeply.

I'm aware of how seriously lame I must sound right now. Just to clarify, I enjoy lots of rock music, and live music also. Art doesn't always have to be "serious" in order to be enjoyable, and even then, there are plenty of kinds of music and musical performances that, even by my standards, qualify as "serious" Art. As an example, I'll describe the one show I went to this past week: It was a "secret show" put on by the folks at the Annie Street Arts Collective (the members of which comprise a number of local bands I enjoy seeing here in Austin), and was held in an abandoned building that used to be the Austin State School. There was no electricity, so the room we were in was lit mostly by candles, and the performance had to take place with little amplification. It took about ten minutes hiking across a wet field to get there, and the bands that played were Sunday Parish, Some Say Leland, and this girl from SC named Alexa Woodward (who, by the way, was awesome). As I said, there was little amplification, so the mood was fairly quiet, with everyone's attention directed solely on the music. Yes, there was beer, which we brought ourselves, and plenty of other substances drifting around, but the experience still seemed fundamentally different than that which I described earlier. The principal adjective I would use to describe it is not "fun", or "awesome", but "inspiring". And that is not even to mention the music itself, which was soulful and poetic and in many cases, did seem to spark in me instances of recognition such as I mentioned before.

So, to sum it all up: See? I'm not that lame...

I've got a fever...

2010-03-13T15:02:00.001-08:00

and the prescription is... more writing?

It may not be obvious, but what I am trying to introduce with that oblique SNL reference is the sensation of writing. Many writers, as you may or may not know, describe the state they are in when they write as a sort of fever; inspiration as this delerium that sweeps over them, obscuring circumstances, surroundings, and pretty much everything but the work itself. My professor in college said that you know you're writing well when you are afraid of what's coming out. Another friend of mine says that he drools. And all of this sounds really good and inspiring and all, though as for myself, I just don't feel it.

I want to. It sounds perfectly ecstatic, what they describe. For as long as I can remember, writing for me has been a mode of understanding. In high school teachers could ask me questions about literature or philosophy until they were blue in the face, and illicit only a dumb stare until I craftily managed to work my way out of the spotlight. But when they assigned 'reader response' activites I could write for hours, lost in my own musings, fascinated by how much deeper my thoughts ran when filtered through a pen. It makes sense that if you turn that process inward, cease with reader response and begin to examine your own self, that the uncertainty you feel may well seem like fear. Picasso argued that it is not the artist's task to find an answer to life's difficulties, but to articulate its problems correctly (at least I think it was Picasso who said that), and problems are scary. The trance state people refer to, I imagine, is the state one encounters when s/he turns off the logic function in the brain, the part that is always trying to put things together, reconcile opposites, and allows life's contradictions simply to be, in all their incongruity. It is not logic or sense (strictly speaking) which imbues a work of art with harmony, but the yearning that exists beneath its contradictions, and which shines through them.

So where am I going wrong? I have tried to write my way into a fever before. I've done a lot of free association journaling in the hope that if I just keep my hand moving, and try not to think about it, something magical and real will eventually come out. What ends up happening though, is that I immediately, and intentionally, go to the darkest part of myself that I know of, and write from my obsessions. It's really not difficult for me to pen my own darkness, in private at least. Rather than a fever though, the sensation feels more like wallowing; the artistic equivalent of building a house with a wrecking ball.

I often find that, looking back, my richest writing occurs when I am most annoyed with a project. When I am agonizing my way through passages and writing about one sentence every five minutes. When I feel uninspired and pretty sure that what I'm writing is complete dreck, that's when the little moments of magic actually happen. There is plenty of magic to be had in both states, I imagine, although I truly would prefer a trance!

What I would like to do--and I've been saying this for a while--is to put off creative projects altogether, and for a few months just emphasize journaling. The journaling can be anything it wants--reflections, stories, descriptions, dreams, etc--but none of it can be planed. I would like to take a good while and focus on narrowing the gap between my hand and my brain, so that maybe, eventually, I'll know what that whole fever thing is about. Right now though, I simply haven't the time.

10 Rules for Writing

2010-03-10T10:47:00.001-08:00

The Guardian BookBlog recently had a number of authors submit their top ten rules for writing and posted them all online. The results range from the practical to the profound, and though I do recommend reading them all, here is a "super-list" that I have compiled showcasing my ten favorites. (Narrowing them down was no easy task, considering the ones I culled for my own files added up to a document three pages long! Many though were re-phrasings of similar rules, so the ones here I think represent the best cross-section.) Enjoy:

The "Super-List"

10. Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide
-Roddy Doyle

9. Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won't need to take notes.
-Al Kennedy

8. Don't try to anticipate an "ideal reader" – there may be one, but he/she is reading someone else.
-Joyce Carol Oates

7. It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
-Jonathan Franzen

6. Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
-Neil Gaimen

5. Jokes are like hands and feet for a painter. They may not be what you want to end up doing but you have to master them in the meanwhile.
-David Hare

4. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
-Jonathan Franzen

3. In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.
-Rose Tremain

2. Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I've got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish – they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.
-Sarah Waters

1. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
-Elmore Leonard

(Gay) Theater?

2010-02-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

A recent article in the New York Times describes what, to my mind, is a long overdue shift in gay theater away from storylines which address only the political concerns of a particular group, toward more universal themes of love, family, and general tragedy—only gay.

Tony Kushner, author of the very politicized “Angels in America”, which dealt largely with the AIDS epidemic, describes the trend thus:

“The gay community today is definitely in a post-Act Up period, and the theater has begun to reflect some of that.”

This shift is part of an ongoing discussion in gay political circles on whether to “continue fighting at the ballot box and in the courts for gay rights immediately or instead to take a longer view that involves building alliances and giving time for more Americans to come around on issues like gay marriage.” In order to achieve true equality and social acceptance, I think it will probably require both approaches. But speaking on behalf of the Arts, I must say I am pleased with this new direction.

I think the struggle that (for lack of a better word) minority art typically faces is its tendency to utilize artistic mediums solely as soapboxes for social change. Whether or not that is a valid approach to artistic engagement is another argument altogether, but personally—and this is me speaking as a white, straight, gentile male—I find that I often feel excluded from such works. I think that’s because more often than not they are preoccupied with representing gay, black, Jewish, etc., experience, and less so with representing the human experience. Obviously there is no single unified human experience, and all of our experiences are colored by our particular vantages on society and the world at large, but to me a great work of art is capable of acknowledging those ‘peculiarities’ while at the same time digging deeper, and tapping into the collective experience that resonates with gays and straights, blacks and whites (and all the other colors out there!), Jews and gentiles, men and women, and so on and so forth.

I think this is a project the new wave of gay theater is trying to address. Oppression and AIDS and prejudice and discrimination are all still very much present, but as sort of a backdrop to the human drama taking place between characters. To me, political preoccupation in art is a trick. And I am glad to see the theatrical community moving past it.

Check out the article in full here. It is very interesting.

Some Notes on Hemingway's Toughness

2010-02-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

Nearly every reference I've heard to Ernest Hemingway in modern literature smacks of parody. Somehow he has become this paradigm for a failed masculinity we just love to hate. When I was in high school, or maybe it was in college, my teachers would talk about his prose style as being like an iceberg: only a very little bit shows on the surface, but beneath the surface, it is vast. And despite what you may think of the metaphor, it is undoubtedly true. The problem is that, today, we have little respect for that kind of posturing. If Hemingway's prose is an iceberg, so too are his characters. The arch of their development is almost entirely sub-textual, and much of their internal dialogue consists of talking themselves out of one feeling or another. "Don't feel this way," they say. "Concentrate on this." "It is your own fault, really." Excuses are the scourge of each and every one of Hemingway's heroes; a mind set not very compatible with our modern one, which wants to blame all our problems on media and advertising.

I wonder what David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway would think of one another?

RIP, RIP

Personally I enjoy the voice much of Hemingway's fiction is told in. There is something dignified about it. Feircely honest. Like he's just daring others to judge him. Though the fiercness of it I think masks another aspect of the human experience. In truth, I identify more with the neurotic/existential paranoia of DFW. There is dignity in both.

One thing though that I am really enjoying about Hemingway right now is how much craft figures in to his writing. Reading a novel by Ernest Hemingway can often feel like a master class, particularly Garden of Eden, and obviously, A Moveable Feast. An idea of his that I am trying to emphasize in my own process is the clear break one makes with a work-in-progress when one is finished writing for the day.

"It was in that room that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.... It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read..."

-A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Muy bien.

Reorientation

2010-02-19T11:24:00.000-08:00

Recent News:

1)Yesterday I received my first rejection notice from the University of Texas at Austin.

2) Today I began work on the new novel I have been planning.

As far as I'm concerned, that is the best way to meet the closing of one door: use its momentum to send you full tilt off in another direction. Not that the relationship between these two events is quite so well-defined. I've been planning this new work for some time--doing my research, naming characters, organizing and reorganizing notecards on the giant tables an my girlfriend's shop. I'm excited. I remember in high school, when I was training to be a wrestling champion, how I would sit in class and in my notebook I would create training regiments, even in the off-season, balancing diet, exercise, and sport specific training. I've begun doing that again, only now its more like:

8:00 am - 8:30 Meditation
8:30 am - 12 New Scenes
12 Lunch
12:30 - 2 pm Exercise (exercise is still a vital part of even my creative process)
2 pm Get ready for work
7 pm "Lunch" Break - Revise Old Scenes

To make a long story short, I am feeling organized, inspired, and ready to get in the zone. One thing that I have found over the past week, as I've been corresponding with an old--shall I say collegue?--from college, is that it really helps my focus to have a forum in which to talk about writing. About new work, about process, about publishing. It helps both to keep me focused and to lift my confidence level. I begin to realize, "Hey, I've been at this a while. I actually sort of know what I'm talking about." And for young writers, just having cause to feel as though you are legitimate can be a huge help and inspiration. So I would also like to step up my posting here, as a way of keeping that momentum going.

One of the best ways, I am learning, to move past rejection is to just keep writing. "It's alright," you can then tell yourself. "It's just 'cause they haven't seen what I'm working on now."

Poem: Muse

2010-01-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

The posture is flattering
reclined there against the cushions; hips
dipped below the level of her torso
ribs thrust slightly forward.

Thinning.

Light glows on her eyelids, is felt
in every contour of her body,
erases its boundaries
while around her
thirty pencils attempt to re-chart them.
Their scratching fills the air.

She is a fossil being unearthed.

A monk in meditation.

At first all she can feel is
the excruciating pain of stillness, numb
except for her toes
which alone are in range of the space heater.
But then—Release.

She is a patron saint of some kind,
doesn’t even care by now
what their renditions of her look like.
There is only consent; an offering
both of her beauty and her imperfection
to that grayness between sight and page.

She smiles, breathes deep, and a moment later
at least three pencils drop with a frustrated clack.
“You moved,” they inform her, and she tries in vain
to find her way back again.

The 'Author Narrative'

2010-01-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

In this post on the Guardian's BookBlog, Jean Edelstein examines Costa's recent trumpeting of its award winner, Raphael Selbourne's history as a scooter salesman. Publishers do seem to love those kinds of details when they're writing copy. They impose a sort of romance-novelish arch on the life behind the work, and thus help make the author more marketable. From humble beginnings to literary super-stardom, as it were (although 'beginnings' here is a bit misleading because publication, validating though it is, rarely exempts writers from the ignoble task of bread-winning).

In her article, Edelstein bemoans (rightly, I think) the marketing of a writer's narrative over the narrative s/he has created; the commercialization of the figure as well as the work. What do you think? Will the two months I spent selling cable ever help me make millions?

The Die, it is Cast...

2009-12-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

It is finished. Done. Finito. Graduate applications for Fall '10 are assembled, paid for, and officially dispatched. Proust to that!

Schools I've applied to this year are, in no particular order, UT Austin, UNC Wilmington, UC Boulder, FSU, NYU, and UI Urbana-Champaign. Don't ask me why I chose these particular programs. Probably some combination of arbitrariness, unoriginality, and my general over-estimation of myself. Grad school is where would-be writers go to wile away the difficult years in which they are unlikely to be published. Kind of like why old people go to Florida, or why kids fresh out of college go to Europe; symptoms of a passivity that's thinly veiled. They allow us to feel like we are doing something, when all we're really doing is waiting.

This is not the first time I have applied to graduate school. After I graduated college I took a year off and went (guess where) before sending out my first round of apps in the Fall. I applied to UT Austin, UNCW, Brooklyn College, and Brown University, and got rejected by all four. I remember feeling pretty down about that. It was probably the realest taste of failure I'd had in a long, long time. That was before I got started submitting work though. Now it's not so much the taste that bothers me, but the ache my jaw gets from constantly chewing it.

Unilateral rejection last year has left me with few expectations this time around. I tried mixing it up a bit by choosing some schools that weren't ripped from a top ten list somewhere, but as you can see, I'm still aiming pretty high. Hopefully I will get in, but there is at least a fair chance that I won't. I feel like at this point I can say honestly though that that won't bother me. It has been humbling, this path I'm on, but I am truly glad that I did not go straight from college to grad school. I'm glad that in the span of a year I 've done everything from bartending to substitute teaching to selling cable door to door. Don't get me wrong, I can't say that I've found anything romantic about these enterprises, but they have succeeded in teaching me at least one important truth: that there are many ways to get where you are going, and when you love what you're doing and believe in yourself, one is as good as any other.

Crossing Over is Online

2009-12-22T19:10:00.000-08:00

Hey folks... A short story I wrote, "Crossing Over", is up right now at Splash of Red, an online rag based in Asbury Park. Check it out, and while you're at it, try poking around a bit in the archives. Good stuff.

Burn Victim Online

2009-12-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

Hey folks. Burn Victim is up now on Underground Voices, so show me some support (and also those kind enough to publish me) and go check it out!

Story: The Captain's Many Faces

2009-11-10T18:20:00.000-08:00

They know him mostly as the ex-vet who can balance a beer on his belly, even as a belch rattles his gut; that old lion, still broad across the shoulders, whose post-treaty gut sags and causes his lycra t-shirt with the ‘C’ Company badge on the chest to fit just a little bit tighter, with slightly different proportion as of late. He wears Levi jeans and a pair of faded tan cowboy boots. In place of the military issue spectacles he wore during his service he now sports a narrow set of frames his ex-wife picked out, having said they made him look debonair. She hadn’t been fond of his lycra t-shirt, nor the rest of those he’d had his service badges pressed in to. He has worn his faded buzz cut proudly since the day he earned it back in June of ‘62.

But though he may be old and faded, he can still whip some ass when he needs to.

He sits by the door at night, nursing a forty-ounce bottle of High Life wrapped in brown paper, even though the bar staff would gladly provide him with the lager of his choice. He doesn’t require anybody’s patronage, least of all these kids’. He checks IDs as he is instructed to mostly, occasionally throwing out some asshole with a marshal twist of the arm and a well-placed shove that sends him ass-first onto the asphalt; a stern reminder not to fuck around when the Captain is on duty. But most of the time he just nurses his drink, responding to the young girls’ flirting with the paternal indulgence that is expected of him, catching them off guard every now and then with a licentious comment and an awkward pause before he smiles and shakes his head kindly. “Only kidding with you darling. Lemme know if any of these pricks give you a hard time.”

From his seat by the door the Captain often wonders at the children’s reckless exploits. Most of the clientele are in their twenties, though some, he knows, are also teens (he is not always as vigilant as he should be). He observes their escapades half with affection and half resentment, the skewed arc of their darts growing more amusing (and precarious) as their capacity for it diminishes, their shifting social scenes, their never-ending pursuit of the opposite sex, and hell, these days the sex doesn’t even have to be opposite! The times, they are a’ changing. He can remember when that was something everybody needed to hear. Some generations though, take it a little too far, he thinks.

None of these kids seem real somehow. He first remembers feeling that way on his return from the war, back in the year of our lord-1974, but the feeling has escalated since his wife’s late departure. She’d been that necessary link that grounded his world-weary seen-it-all-ness, so afterwards he found himself disconnected, utterly. Kids these days are so alien, he thinks, running around with their colorful cocktails, enjoying their freedom with scarcely a clue of its cost, as if it were something that just existed, like the air they breathe, and hadn’t at some point been wrested from faces just as young, just as human, half a world away. Some of those faces from his years in combat stick with him, interchanging themselves with those around him.

A flashlit signal from the bar suddenly catches his attention, and he places his wrapped can on a window ledge close by, watching the beam’s arch to see where it’s signaling. A crowd has gathered beneath the neon Killian’s sign, around one pair of boys who appear to be getting pretty hostile. He lifts himself from his stool and approaches tentatively. They are chest to chest, heads cocked menacingly toward one another while their mouths move silently, words lost upon the screech of the house music.

There’s no rush as he walks over, politely navigating the sea of bodies. He intends to break things up gently, interjecting himself between them and sending each in a different direction, because really nothing has happened yet. But just as he reaches them the first fist flies- a guy in jeans and a ragged blazer grazes the other on the back of the head, just behind his ear. The one who has just been struck looks wide-eyed for a moment, and begins to rush forward, not striking or anything but just barreling toward his opponent. Perhaps he’s just trying to appear proactive, or is so clouded by emotion that dumb aggression is the only thing he can manage.

It doesn’t matter.

With a trained professional’s expertise, the Captain catches the boy, and with a familiar twist of the wrist he lifts his shoulder and immobilizes him. But the other, probably thinking it one of his buddies stepped in to help, swings again, only misses his target this time and catches the Captain just under his eye, crushing the thin spectacles against his face.

For a second he is stunned, and his perception of the environment refigures. In an instant, everything is real. His mind retreats deep into his body now and he is all instinct; a life’s worth of cool, expert reflexes. As the boy lifts an arm toward him—probably in apology—he finds himself chopping it down with a force that sends the kid sideways, following with a right hook the catches him just beneath the jaw and sends him flailing against the bar, where the staff watches wide-eyed, unable to guess at what has happened. The boy on the bar reaches in the direction of a bottle, but before his fingers can close around it the Captain is wielding a garnish tray and bats him across the face with it, sending up a spray of limes olives and cherry juice. The kid collapses on the floor and he moves quickly, grasping him by the collar and belt of his pants and running him toward the exit, at last tossing the boy onto the sidewalk so hard he’s nearly decapitated by a car passing in the street.

As he turns back to the bar, the Captain says nothing. Everyone is watching, and besides the music, it is silent and still. “Anybody else have a problem?” he calls coolly, feet set widely apart. But there is no response. The bartenders too are silent, tin shakers paused and reflecting some brand of neon.

Without much idea of where he is going the Captain leaves, wandering off down the sidewalk and stepping over the boy (who, coincidentally, is still preoccupied with finding his feet). He wanders beneath the drooling orange light of sidewalk lamps and listens to the muted sound of bass drums pumping in different clubs downtown, and for a while it seems he might wander forever, alone. After a while though, it occurs to him that there is actually a place for him to go; that he has a house on a quiet street, with a dog even, that limps, and has lost much of his youthful spirit but is a fitter companion for it. There is a home for him, the Captain realizes, in this world he’s helped to create, and with neither relief nor enthusiasm, he goes there.

Story: Gorgon Waltz

2009-10-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

Left, one two three, step, one two three, turn, one two three…

Hold on a second, says the younger sister, and each squeezes her eyes shut as they come to a stop—just a precaution, in case by some obscure miracle their timing isn’t synced quite correctly.
Ok what is it? asks the older sister, waiting to feel her sister behind her before she opens her eyes.

Half-turn on three, replies the younger sharply. One, two…

Wait! The older sister lifts her hands in the air, even though they are standing back to back. On three? Or one two three go?

One two three go, she answers, and holds her sister’s hand so that she doesn’t turn suddenly. Are you ready?

…

Alright. One, two, three… GO!

Each steps first with her left foot and makes an about-face, their spins timed perfectly so that their backs are always parallel. And facing the opposite direction, the older sister asks, What is it?

See the one right in front of you? the younger says, and the older looks down at a crouched statue: a man, frozen in an attempt to lift both his shield and sword simultaneously. His eyes are most definitely closed.

She looks, and it is as her sister says: his eyes are in fact squeezed tightly shut, which is significant because the question they have both infinitely considered, that which lies at the center of their existence alongside every vestige of hope, is whether it’s their gaze, or the fact of their gaze being received that turns the thing around them into stone. The latter theory might account for why natural objects such as grass, streams, trees, and sunsets seem to be unaffected by their looking at them—objects all more or less inanimate, and thus incapable of looking back. And oh, what a relief the sight of running water is! The burning glow of a sunset, in a world otherwise still and grey. By this latter theory, the two sisters should even technically be able to look upon each other, so long as one’s eyes are closed. Though neither has the metal to try, in case the former theory should prove correct. This statue with eyes closed also is not encouraging.

It doesn’t mean anything, the older assures her. She can feel her sister’s arms trembling. He could have closed his eyes the instant after we saw him: a miracle of timing. There now. Shh.

The sun sinks overhead, and the snow-capped peaks of the Pindus Mountains glow faintly orange in the twilight.

I know, I know, the younger sniffs, slowly pulling herself together. It’s not as if it matters anyway.

It does, the older insists, though again, she will not risk turning around.

There was a time when they were more bold; when the sisters numbered three, and during the day they would wander different parts of the garden, communing only at night when the darkness was thick enough to help keep them safe. When the two of them finally did find their other sister, their only way of knowing her was by her fearsome appearance, and how different she looked from every other statue in the valley. Her torso was drawn up in combat, her teeth bared and sharp, and from her head a din of serpents flailed. And though neither sister could have known of Perseus, or of the mirrored shield he’d been equipped with by Athena to help carry out the task, each guessed immediately the cause of their sister’s sudden stoicism: that she’d somehow caught sight of her own reflection (a fact which also supports the theory that their gaze must be returned in order for something to turn to stone, otherwise wouldn’t it have been Perseus who stood there frozen, mirrored shield and all?)

Though it filled them with grief, for days neither could tear her eyes away from their sister’s stolid effigy. It was the first they’d ever dared look upon her directly and, repulsive as the sight was, each discovered in the act of looking a certain tenderness, which managed to somehow make them feel closer to her than before. It made them wonder exactly which senses intimacy required? Which could be dispensed with?

The problem with either of their hypotheses of course is that they cannot be tested; the transformation to stone occurs faster than perception, and so it is impossible for them to ever know who looked at whom first, or whether their eyes ever did in fact meet. It is difficult even for them to know when someone has been turned to stone. More often than not, their only clue is a statue out of place, or one they do not recognize having suddenly appeared from nowhere.

So they hold one another behind their backs, maintaining constant contact, not longer allowing themselves to wander apart because it is clear to them now that the risk is too great. They each are the other’s sole company in this dreary existence; their one relief from a life of stone and stillness, and the only proof either has that consciousness is in fact fractured, and in fact meaningful. To dance is their lives’ one richness, their rebellion against the grey and the stillness. Back to back among the figures of their discontent they move, their timing trained, their steps practiced, living always in the knowledge that it would take only one false step to add a stone to their garden, and render their loneliness complete.

Left, one two three, step, one two three…

Perhaps to stumble is inevitable. They consider this possibility sometimes like an agnostic considers the afterlife; wondering first if it exists, and then what side of it she would find herself on. Whether it will be heaven or hell.

The moon rises. The stones shift from grey to anemic pale, and the sisters sleep also back to back.

Sister? the younger asks, feeling her warmth in the grass beneath her.

Yes?

She pauses before answering, feeling silly immediately, before she’s even spoken, though at last she comes out with it: What if a tree falls down, in the middle of the woods, and no one is there to hear. Do you think it makes a sound?

I don’t know, the older sighs, and again, several moments pass quietly before she adds in a whisper: I hope so.

An Itemized Update

2009-10-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

It has been graciously brought to my attention by several of my most AVID readers that I haven't posted anything on here in quite some time. Apologies. Part of that can be explained by my absorption in other work, and part by my increasing awareness of copyright issues. As I continue to seek publication, it is important that I am able to grant accepting publications "first rights", and so it behooves me to refrain from posting anything here that I hope to one day publish elsewhere. Perhaps I'll let this be a dumping ground for those stories and poems that have been around the block a few times and now run out of change!

Anyway, without further adieu, here's a brief rundown of the things that have been going on with me literature-wise these past couple months:

-First of all, I have just had another piece of writing accepted for publication (in print this time) in a magazine called "Underground Voices." Burn Victim should be appearing there in December.

-Another piece of mine, Terms of Use, should be available online any day now. Just waiting for the good folks at Vivid Magazine to release their October issue. I will post a link as soon as they do.

-One project, that has sort of been put on the back-burner as of late, is a Zine that Shannon and I were collaborating on called "Smoke and Bowler Hats". It's mostly done now, and we're really just waiting for Shannon to catch enough of a breath from her new job (see below) to finish up the cover and final story. It will feature a number of my own stories along with illustrations and designs by her.

-Said job entails managing a new Austin business called Painting with a Twist, where you can sign up online to learn and create specific paintings all in one night. No experience is required and booze are encouraged. I have tried it myself and can vouch for the fact that it is extremely fun, and that, regardless of your experience level, you will walk away feeling amazed at what you can paint!

That's pretty much all I can think of now, but I do promise to be more attentive in the future. Thanks to those who have brought it up to me. Just to know that people are reading is itself a motivating force.

To those located in Austin...

2009-08-23T13:03:00.001-07:00

Come check out this event on Thursday. Shannon is going to be painting along side a bunch of live muscians, and at the end of the night the painting will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, all proceeds going toward a good cause (i.e. Shannon's rent).

*Addendum- Check the photos.

The 'Art' in 'Artist'

2009-08-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of related articles that I think pair together in investigating the connection between an artist's character and his/her work. One is a pretty entertaining article about authors' drinking habits and what happens when they try to sober up, and the other is (ostensibly) about Budd Shulberg, the iconic screenwriter and director of "On the Waterfront" who died just last week, and who apparently named names for the House's Un-American Activities Committee back in the '60s.

Of course tales of authors' and artists' misconduct are legion, and while in some ways that imbues them with a certain enigmatic interest, it can also make us feel guilty sometimes for enjoying their work, particularly when the misconduct in question is ideological. We feel as if we are somehow being compromised, or that our unconsciousnesses are being influenced by sub-moral messages within the work. In the article on Budd Schulberg, the author (Randy Cohen) makes this good point:

"It’s hard to be a good person; it’s hard to produce great work. Most of us accomplish neither. To demand both might be asking more than human beings are capable of. To deprive oneself of great work created by a less-than-great person seems overly fastidious."

I believe I must agree. Check them out.

Literary Pranks and Padded Rooms: Literature Jests, but is Anybody Listening?

2009-08-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

An article in the Chronicle (Washington's, not Austin's) takes a look back at a literary prank it took the Modernism/Modernity's (now questionable) readership five years to get. The prank in question was an article criticisizing David Foster Wallace, titled An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent. Aside from the heresey of the sentiment (coded within an ironically Foster-esque title) the 'prankish' aspect of the article comes into play as early as the author's byline: Jay Murray Siskind, whom many will recognize as the quirky professor of Pop Culture in Don Delillo's epic White Noise. In the five years it's taken for the prank to be recognized, there have been many accounts of the article having actually been used as a secondary source for undergraduate and graduate research, which poses a number of fairly obvious problems with regards to contemporary scholarship (i.e. literary journals' ability to incorporate varied modes of writing, and whether or not they are being read to begin with) and collegiate students' frighteningly under-developed bullshit-o-meter. Do check out the article in full.

Fahrenheit 451, in the Age of Ebooks, May Have Been a Much Shorter Novel...

2009-07-24T10:43:00.001-07:00

Sometime last week a number of Kindle users were surprised and a little vexed to find that several of their ebooks had been deleted from their devices, among them works by George Orwell (which I'm told is deeply ironic, although since I evidently missed that class in high school, I'm afraid I'm unable to confirm this). Amazon's explanation was that they had evidently been contracting a third party to upload books into ebook form, and this third party had managed to do so with a number of books without first obtaining copyright. Once the error was discovered, Amazon remotely deleted those books from the Kindles that had purchased them, and refunded those customers' money.

Now many people are up in arms though, and for good reason. The slippery issue of ownership had already been a topic of discussion and some debate with regards to the ebook, but now there is also a lot of talk going on about the future of book-baning. Across time and history, of course, the Press has been notoriously difficult to control due to how diverse and spread out it is. Imagine though, how different it might be if all it took to wipe a book off the face of the Earth was a corporate will, and a few complicated raps on the keyboard?

Amazon has already announced that in the future it will not 'recall' already-purchased materials, and so many people believe the current anxiety is both paranoid and ill-founded. Perhaps. Although I admit that I wouldn't mind hearing Amazon address some of these concerns directly. I haven't given up on ebooks yet as a worthwhile medium, but clearly there are still some valid issues that need to be addressed.

More Vampires...

2009-07-19T14:36:00.000-07:00

There was a time, I think, when vampires' immortality was just a fictional convention-- an aspect of the vampire's figure, rather than its literary function. But as TV networks continue to churn out more and more vampire series', and as the commentary on this phenomena spirals ever-outward, I'm beginning to think there's something more to vampires'... persistence. Anne Rice's character, Louis, of the seminal Interview with the Vampire, now strikes me almost as a kind of meta-character-- a vampire-prophet: the way his presence transcends historical and cultural bounds, shifting in quality as the times themselves shift, while at the same time always reflecting some critical aspect of the society he preys upon. When we consider the ebb and flow of vampires in mass media, as well as how their presence there has developed, the similarity of these two visions are all but clear, and we begin to see just how undying they truly are.

This month's issue of Bookslut contains an article by Jessica Ferri re-examining the Twilight phenomena... yet again, but despite the fact that these commentaries are becoming as redundant as the genre itself, I find that I cannot fault her. Vampires are irresistible. They're sexy, mysterious, and at the same time, deeply iconographic-- a veritable wet dream for critics with a pulse (pun?). After all, it's interesting to look at how they've developed over time. How, in their considerable lifespan, vampires have gone from being the quintessential and morally dubious 'Other', to a virtual Everyman kind of figure; their struggle with bloodlust mirroring our own (supposed) struggle to maintain sexual purity. Such reflections are interesting the first, second, and even the third time we make them, but now, I'm afraid, they are done.

Everyone seems to have some disparaging and urgent thing to say about vampire literature, but frankly, its beginning to sound like the anxious chatter of addicts trying to talk their way out of an addiction. Enough already! (Although I'll admit in writing this, I too am perhaps implicit.)

One thing that does make Ferri's article a bit more interesting, however, than the typical pulp literature debasement, is the attention she pays to Twilight's all-too-human heroine, Bella, comparing her at length to the author's preferred Buffy (i.e. The Vampire Slayer):

Bella is your typical teenage girl, and Meyer wants to emphasize her ordinariness by making her one of the most boring, annoying obstinate heroines ever... Doesn't it say something about women's lib if the dice has rolled from Buffy, who slayed vamps without even breaking a nail, to Bella, who does nothing the entire book but whine to be deflowered by one?

Because it is funny and amusing, I do recommend checking out the full article. But mind you: just this last time. If I ever recommend another article concerning Twilight, or any other vampire-commentary, take it as a sign that I've been compromised and you should at that time cease to listen to anything I have to say. About anything.

Bibliophilia: Sounds like a sickness, doesn't it?

2009-07-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

Evidently Borders has started its own online dating service guided by members' literary preferences. I would love to be able to say I'm surprised, but then I remember how many times I have stalked potential crushes' facebook profiles for their 'favorite books', and all of the sudden it all seems inevitable. I found out about the service from an article by David Barnett on the Guardian's BookBlog, and though my opinions are not nearly as cynical as his, I do imagine it would be a strange sensation to meet someone through, say, your shared love of Joyce-- like meeting your girlfriend through your mistress. You can check it for yourself:

'I don't know if Borders will actually be making recommendations for dates in the same way as they recommend books, but it would be priceless if members got regular email updates: "Did you enjoy, Mark, 34, of Swindon? Then you should try Gareth, 36, of Slough." Or: "After dating Sally of Birmingham, 86 per cent of customers go on to date Jayne of Devizes." '

Books and Technology

2009-06-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of articles I found through the Guardian newspaper's 'Books Blog':

The first is an article written by Michael Bywater about Amazon's Kindle (have one, by the way). In it he discusses some of the product's promising and not-so-promising features, from its capacity to make wireless purchases, to typographical issues, and the loss of reading texture the product seems to herald. He also has some interesting thoughts on what this could mean for the publishing industry, how the wireless aspect of the Kindle might be the thing that saves journalism, and how electronic and print media might actually come to support rather than exclude each other. Link to that article here. (p.s. check out some of the comments posted below the article bemoaning the American-esque 'wit' with which the it is written!)

The second article is about a new piece of technology presented at BEA, aptly named the Espresso. Basically this is a huge machine with a high-speed printer attached at one end, a high-speed color printer at the other, and what it does is print and bind books from electronic files in approximately four minutes a piece. At the end, the book slides out of a little chute at the bottom. This machine is part of a new movement called printing on-demand, which has some promising implications for how the publishing industry responds to supply and demand, and also product availability for the consumer. How many times have you been looking for a particular title or author that wasn't necessarily mainstream enough to make it into the local Barnes and Noble? This machine could easily put an end to all that, although I'm not sure what will happen to the venerable old pastime of browsing, which for me is a pretty important part of the book-buying experience. Anyway, the thing costs about $75,000 and most bookstores are too pinched by the recession to invest in that kind of technology at this point, particularly since there are some kinks that still need to be worked out anyway. Try paper jamming? Read more here.

It seems to me that a lot of the technology surfacing in those industries surrounding books has both promise and risk. True, there are a lot of subtle features of reading that are being threatened. A common analogy is the decline in Album art ever since iTunes basically swept away the CD. But I personally think a lot of those issues are ones that can be resolved as future generations of the products develop, and also by how the markets choose structure themselves. I mean, why can't eBooks make themselves available in different types? And why shouldn't Amazon offer discounts for books that have already been purchased in eBook form, and vice versa? Over all, I think the future for these technologies is promising, and could mean a great reduction in the stress placed by literature on the environment.

Some Words of Wisdom from the Master

2009-06-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? Have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen on all sides and filter them from your self.

-Walt Whitman

Story: Runner-up Romance

2009-05-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

You would say that discipline was my defining characteristic, and you would be correct. In high school particularly, I didn’t even date because I was busy training to be a wrestling champion. Back then, wrestling and romance seemed like conflicting principles to me, and I simply did not have enough focus for both. There’s a whole lifetime to get laid, I reasoned, but only four years to be a champ.

My senior year though the best I managed was to be runner-up in the Show, and I wasn’t naïve enough to continue in college (throwing a second place fish into a bigger pond does not improve its chances). Instead, I contented myself with beating up the guys in my dorm—late at night, past curfew, because none of them could bear the thought of girls watching me wax the hallway with their asses. With their reputations thus protected, they actually found the whole thing immensely entertaining, and didn’t mind lavishing me with compliments so that I acquired a certain late-night fame, though I pretended not to care.

But just as often as those impromptu wrestling matches, talk of sex was ritual in those late hours when girls were exiled from our quarters; some sort of consolation, I suspected, to compensate either for the embarrassment of having their asses kicked, or for the strictures imposed by the school’s ‘honor code’ (which, coincidentally, forbade sex in the dormitories). In either case, I would sit very quietly while they exchanged tall tales, face still red and glossy, attempting to stay as long as I could with the exultant feeling of victory, and that quickening in my chest.

Eventually though, I too managed to find a girl who seemed impressed by my wrestling prowess—though she obviously could never be there to witness it first-hand—who on our second date asked me to show her a move on the floor of her bedroom. My eyes, I’m sure, gleamed at this, for we wrestlers are not unaware of our trade’s interdisciplinary virtues, and already I considered how later on I might relate the story, late at night, and so broaden the scope of my fame.

Which move should I show her though? I wondered.

A double grapevine? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, I thought. Second date might be a little early to bust out a chest to chest pinning combination (not to mention one that involves a forcible spreading of legs). And besides, I would have hated to give the wrong impression. At that point, despite the regular late-night matches, I was actually quite out of practice, and so the moves may not have occurred to me as quickly as they would otherwise, but nevertheless, eventually I settled on what I was sure was the perfect one. If a pinning combination was premature, near fall, perhaps, were just the points I needed to score. (‘Near fall’ refers to points scored by exposing an opponent’s back to the mat at an angle of forty-five degrees or fewer. The amount of points awarded depends on the amount of time an opponent is held in a near-pinning position.)

“Alright, get down on your hands and knees,” I said.

Her eyebrows arched suggestively and the corners of her mouth flickered. She obeyed, bending down toward the thinly-carpeted concrete.

“This is called ‘referee’s position’,” I said, lumbering behind her. I placed my chest against her back and reached around with my right hand so that my fingers rested just above her navel, then paused for a moment. Without thinking, I hit the first motion hard, knocking her left arm out and pressing forward while my right extended into her thigh, stretching her instantly to her stomach.

“Hey!” she complained, surprised and obviously irritated.

I smiled sheepishly behind her head and apologized. “Habit,” I explained, and continued the demonstration. I was a little embarrassed by my over-zealousness, of course, but was assured it was still epic-romance-in-the-making. “This is called a spiral ride,” I explained. “See how the pressure flattens you out?”

“Uh… yeah.” Her laugh was half-sarcastic, but I could sense her good humor slowly resurfacing.

“But I don’t score any points by just flattening you out; what I’m counting on is you resisting…” I cued her hips to pressure back against mine. “See? The pressure on your shoulder forces you to a seated position…” But something about the motions caused a sudden flash inside my brain—or the firing of muscle memory perhaps—and no sooner had she reached her butt than I swung my body out from behind her and jerked her back toward the ground, causing her head to smack painfully against the floor.

“Ouch!” she yelled, and I was face to face with her now, instantly aware that it was not the romantic moment I had imagined, though I managed to console myself with the fact that I was at least still scoring near fall.

My "Work-in-Progress"

2009-05-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

Many of you who know me also know that I've been slowly working my way through a novel (or what I hope will turn out to be one) for quite some time. Its working title is The Body and the Blood, though few have any idea what it is about. This is because whenever somebody asks me about it, a flood of its various premises overcomes me and I'm simply unable to determine which are pertinent to a description, and which are not. I've recently completed a first draft and am just beginning the second, so the whole thing is still very raw to me and tough to paraphrase, so in order to satisfy my interrogators (and also to organize my thoughts for the revision) I have come up with this little book jacket-esque description of the work and its themes. I've intentionally left out spoilers and excessive details, both for future readers and for myself--I would hate to take the fun out of writing it by getting stuck in various descriptions--though hopefully I've included at least enough detail to satisfy your curiosity. Enjoy, and you can look forward to the release probably a million years from now:

“For one cannot truly be counted human until [he] has fallen… Born innocence is a beautiful thing, but only innocence reclaimed fulfills God’s plan for us.”

So speaks Edward Hammond, the troubled narrator of The Body and the Blood. A defunct Catholic, much of Edward’s life has been dictated to him by different narratives: from the polemical texts of his faith, to various works of literature... His very name is derived from a character in one of his father’s novels! This first-person narrative, however, represents Edward's attempt to sort through and reclaim the broken fragments of his past. From a childhood in which both parents were in their own way absent, to life as the single father of a seven-year-old son, his account ultimately reveals a tender exploration of human depravity, and of the mysterious forces that bring people together. Interspersed with scenes from Eden and the tale of Original Sin, in these strained pages Edward makes his way ever backwards, with turns both comic and heart-rending, toward a hopeful salvation and release via the confessional power of narrative.

Poem: Official Scent

2009-05-01T16:48:00.001-07:00

According to its bottle
Old Spice is the official scent of confidence,
and it’s true-- it is a fine smell.
Fine enough to skip showers now and then
and wax on another layer instead.
You don’t even have to remove your shirt
just watch in the mirror while an arm disappears
then you’re ready to go.
And what a grace it is
to be spared the body’s flaws;
to abide more fully
in the abstract world
of clothes and artful swagger.
So what if after a few days your armpit
looks like Shelob’s Lair?
It’s a small price to pay
to see yourself without contradiction;
the body’s truths subjectified.
Each week though the day arrives
when not even Old Spice
can mask your Unofficial scent,
and though you divert suspicion
by standing near people
just a little shabbier than yourself
at day’s end you are inevitably left standing naked again,
shadowless before the bathroom mirror,
waiting for the glass to fog
so that you’ll know the shower is warm.

Haiku

2009-04-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

Cars passing in the street
light the curtain, but darken
the wall behind me.

Story: The Fist

2009-04-16T08:45:00.001-07:00

I used to wonder what you clutched inside your fist, that famous appendage of yours, knuckles beaming like halogen bulbs. I remember it was large and tough, as if cut from a mountain side, and many were the foe leveled by its might. Many the loved one too, though most the time you’d only intended to caress.

I remember resting upon it at night; how I preferred that knotty lump to a pillow, though the sleep was often uneasy, as were the dreams. I used to imagine myself caught inside its grasp at night, our breaths like two sets of wings beating against the darkened wall.

But though your fist was magnificent for a time, soon it began to crumble. The skin on your knuckles split and every so often there was this faint trembling, like the shifting of plates inside the earth.

As word of your fury spread, the fights became fewer, and you made a weekly habit of cleaning the dust from between your fingers with cue tips and a bottle of Pledge. Our most intimate moment, I remember, was one morning in bed when you let me hold it in my lap and wipe the dust myself, though I admit I may have gone too far in kissing your fingertips. I still am not sorry.

The one part we could not maintain though was your nails, which, closed so tightly, could not be trimmed and cut into your palms, though I slept on it as always. And finally, I remember the day they bore so deep one must have tapped a nerve, and the shock caused your fist suddenly to fly open, whatever was kept there instantly dissolving the moment it met the sunlight, and then how I swiftly took hold.

Censorship and Discrimination on Amazon

2009-04-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

So apparently Amazon has this new policy toward "adult" material which excludes certain books from their online searches and rankings. To me, that much is annoying in and of itself, but embedded in this policy also appears to be a certain hetero-normative bias which classifies many books with GBLT concerns, from classic literature to anthropological study, as "adult" while books containing explicit heterosexual material are left untouched. If you are as upset about this as I am, check out this petition (which has more information on exactly what kinds of books are being censored) and if you feel so moved, sign it.

Poem: Recycled Shrine

2009-04-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

There is a shrine in my house that was built
for the Virgin Mary, to house
the immaculate mother’s effigy and to honor
all in God which is feminine. But near completion
the builder’s own mother died
and it became a shrine to her instead.
When my roommates and I moved in
we did not know what to do with such a space
and hung a yellowed portrait of John Wayne
stoic and squinting in his many guises,
and now I wonder just who will have to die
to find a place there instead.

Success!

2009-04-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

This is just a note to those of you following this blog that I have just had my first piece accepted for publication. Yay! A short story I wrote, "Terms of Use", will be published in the inaugural issue of an online journal called Vivid this October. It is obviously a young magazine and hopefully but a stepping stone on my path to bigger and better things, but in my present emaciated state any success falls like a drop of water on a desert wanderer's tongue. Wherever you are, be abliged to drop what you are doing for a moment and throw back a glass of your finest to me!

Writing Down the Bones

2009-04-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to BookPeople to check out a reading by Natalie Goldberg. I'd read a book that she wrote a long time ago, I remember, and really liked it. Its title was "Writing Down the Bones", and it's one of those books on writing that do not emphasize craft so much as learning to invest yourself completely in your writing, with the goal that, upon finishing, you will feel "used up" in some deeply clensing way. It is about learning to write through your fears, past your prejudices, from the deepest and most fundamental part of yourself. Another good book I've found in this vein, which I HIGHLY recommend, is called "Writing from the Body" by John Lee.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this one thought of hers that I found interesting: She was talking about addictions and the power that one gains by writing about them. She said that if she had her way, every addicts' group would require its members to recall, in writing, their favorite experiences with their substance of choice. It may seem like an odd way of facing addiction, but Ms. Goldberg claims that this practice actually helps turn the addiction into a passion, which is really quite a different thing. An addiction diminishes you, but a passion breaks you open. What occurs, I think, is a peculiar sort of reversal that alters the writer's relationship to the substance by his utilizing it as 'subject'; that is, something that HE is appreciating rather than the other way around.

I really like this idea, and believe the process may extend beyond substances to the rest of the things we carry with us from day to day, locked deep inside our bodies: those memories, insecurities, and fears which diminish us and prevent us from living our lives boldly. If you're interested, pick up one of these books I've mentioned. You won't regret it.

*Note: I actually prefer John Lee's book to Goldberg's.

Review: The Hazards of Love

2009-03-25T15:52:00.001-07:00

This release has sort of slid beneath my radar the past couple of weeks. I can remember looking forward to it for quite some time and enjoying it when the first track was released on NPR a while back (“The Rake’s Song”), and yet it’s only been in the past couple of days that I’ve finally realized the album’s been out since March 17. Oh me… Didn’t take long for it to make an impression though. Pushing their reputation as “literary” musicians yet another step further, The Decembrists’ new release The Hazards of Love boasts an album-length narrative about a young changeling named William and his soul mate, Margaret; the love of whom helps to transform him in the album’s inaugural songs from fawn to man. As their story progresses, it is accompanied by a variety of different voices and perspectives, including William’s mother, a jealous and evil queen (who is sung by My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden), and her dark and deeply demented henchman, the Rake.

It is true that storytelling is nothing new for songwriting, and that is why past references to The Decembrists as a ‘literary’ band, I feel, have been a bit misguided, and at the very best unhelpful, but the way the band has structured their newest release around a single narrative has given me cause to reconsider. It’s not so much that there’s anything original about the story itself- in fact, the plot progresses much like your typical generic fairytale- but the way it is structured is of particular interest to those who, like me, listen to most of their music between trips to the library. As the story unfolds, the album is scattered with shifts in voice and perspective, with recurring bits of dialogue and melodies that, in their refrain, give the impression of one character calling to another across the album. And then there are the multiple reprisals of the album’s title track, “The Hazards of Love”, which each attend to a different character’s unique difficulties in Love. Even from an exclusively literary standpoint, I feel there something deeply gratifying about this album, and that’s not even to mention the music, which entails some of the band’s crunchiest riffs and darkest melodies- effects that are considerably augmented by Shara Worden’s menacing yet beautiful vocals.

Though the storyline is nothing new, the songs’ composition and orchestration often invest it with a nearly forgotten pathos, and create for the listener startling moments of amorous, I-don’t-care-if-it’s-cliché-style beauty. If you’re like me and have neglected to pick up the album until now, I suggest that you wait no longer, and when you do, be sure to have a printed copy of the lyrics nearby.

Here’s the first site I found to have the entire album’s lyrics posted.

Enjoy!

Poem: Artificial Sweeteners

2009-03-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

People always warn me
about putting Splenda in my coffee,
mostly in hangover diners
with blinds drawn against the sun.
They’ll cock their shades usually
revealing a haggard set of eyes
that look as though they are still swimming
and say something like: “Shit’s bad for you man.”
And Splenda’s not the only one.
Deodorant too, I’m told, is a new-age no no
because it causes cancer. “Oh
go on and laugh now, but later you’ll cry.”
I sniff myself for malignant spores and respond:
“I thought that’s why Death was invented;
so that I wouldn’t have to make a fuss
about getting there. And anyway
do you really think life so fragile it would resist
our few granular attempts to make it sweeter?
Those to make it stink not quite so bad?
We're made of sturdier stuff than that, I think."
But a sudden lurch prevents his response-
the breakfast tacos are not sitting well-
and for just a moment I wonder
if I've maybe been proven wrong.

The Grad School Blues

2009-03-11T16:52:00.001-07:00

I’ve just recently found out that my applications to the creative writing programs at Brown University and UT Austin have been rejected. Disappointing news, no less so because it means I may be leaving Austin if either of the other two schools- Brooklyn College or UNC Wilmington- decides to accept me. It strikes me now as incredibly arrogant even to have applied to the nation’s absolute best writing programs, simply because I was a notable student at a private college few people outside Georgia have even heard of. And then I’m going to take their rejection personally? I guess, like many people, I have grown used to the idea of myself as exceptional; young talent with no limitations to speak of.

But such, I am convinced, is the path life inevitably takes: our smaller stories opening into larger ones, our relative sense of ourselves dismantling as the field of reference opens always wider and wider. I’m sure this procedure takes different courses with different people, but I suspect we all at some point must at least exchange our childish prides for adult ones; trade our obsession with being the Best, for being simply the best that we can be. For even if I were never challenged, even if I graduated high school the best wrestler in the state, left college the most promising writer of my generation and so was never forced to waver in my self-estimation, would I not be subjecting myself to a willful ignorance? Would I not, in effect, be allowing that smaller world to close around me, to constrict my movements, permitting what is but a small part of my Self to stand in place of the whole?

And anyway, it is probably wrong to think of writing, as I do, as solely a question of talent. Am I really so arrogant as to believe that some individual truths are more valuable than others? That after bludgeoning the barriers that keep one from expressing his/her deepest Self, only a few have something original, complex, and challenging to say? No, it’s not a question of talent, I don’t think, but of practice. Any individual that is willing to persevere—that is willing to challenge himself in the destruction of his inhibitions, the confrontation of his demons, the dissemination of his intellectual prejudices—I believe is capable of masterworks. Craft is a matter of practice. Style, a matter of wide reading and experimentation. So what is it to me if these schools caught me a little earlier on in the process? Talent, I’m now convinced, is an illusion upheld by our childish, egotistical selves, and so my recent disappointments are indications only that I’ve got some growing up to do.

Don't Bring Me Down

2009-03-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

Ok. So for those of you who don't know, in the beginning of February I was in this photo shoot organized by some friends of mine. The head orchestrators were Christina Shaffell and Rachel Feilds, who, between the two of them, hatched the idea of a promotional shoot for a fictional band. As it was presented to me originally, the idea was a wild one, possessing a wide range of inspirations from 18th-century haute couture, to '60s Jazz, to French poetry... and to be frank, at that point much was left to my imagination. But over the course of a few months these girls combined their considerable talents with those of some other cool kids, and eventually succeeded in making this fantastic art shoot happen.

Here's a brief rundown of the various contributions that were made, and also the people who made them: Christina Shaffell took some gorgeous pictures, Rachel Fields designed and put together some kick-ass threads, my cuz Cory Kimbro and her friend Willie Dickey handled the hair, Rose Archuleta painted faces, Erin Berkenkamp took care of the production stills and set design, while the artiste Travis Tarbox painted a lovely sea-scape backdrop. In addition to all that, Tim Thielen and Jacob Villanueva joined forces to produce a couple of films documenting the whole thing. Furthermore, those lending their beautiful bodies as models were (ah hem) myself, Willie Dickey, Travis Tarbox, Aaron Calhoun, and the lovely Alaina Chambers.

But that's not the end of it. On February 27, the girls managed to organize a huge opening event at the US Art Authority, in which both the pictures and video were displayed to the sound of live music by the Finn Brothers and the Crooks.

If you're curious, check out the shoot website to see the pictures and videos, and also pay homage to Christina at her blog. As soon as the pics are available in a form I can steal for my own commercial purposes I'll post a few here, but until then, check out the site. It is ALL really cool.

The Slippery Art of Adaptation

2009-03-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

Salman Rushdie on 'Slumdog Millainaire':

"Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."

This is just an excerpt from a rather long article in which Rushdie not only bashes the Slumdog phenomenon, but takes the opportunity to comment at length on the slippery subject of adapting language-based art forms to film, and also the way in which movies like Slumdog undermine the genre of magical realism with plots that, even considering their claim to 'the magical', nevertheless remain utterly implausible. Here's the whole article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/salman-rushdie-novels-film-adaptations

And on a related note, it seems that Stephen King is also on record trashing Stephanie Meyer's vege-vampire romance, 'Twilight'; comparing her books to those of JK Rowling, the primary difference being that "JK Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."

Apparently, Meyer's fans were quick to rally behind her work, claiming King to be "just a bloody guy who is jealous of Edward's good looks." Of that much, I would say there is little doubt. Full article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/05/stephenking-fiction

Poem: High School Contraception

2009-03-02T20:17:00.000-08:00

They say she lacks school spirit
because she will not trade her low cut blouses
for ones with their Trojan mascot on them.
It’s not a matter of spirit, she insists, or decency,
but of principle: that stubborn 3 percent error
couched in each of the word Trojans’ connotations:
soldiers crouching till nightfall,
the translucent stain of spilled semen;
the promise that no protection is complete
and that the vehicle bearing us toward the future
though it may miss a few stops
will undoubtedly get there in the end,
though in the meantime it reminds us
with bright yellow letters
that every end is also a beginning
and that 3 percent is just large enough a margin
to spend one’s life crawling through.
It assures us for liability’s sake
that a child is not a catastrophe
and nor is a civilization burning,
for progress is as unfailing as demise, and yes
demise is unfailing. And what are our lives anyway
if not a Hydra of paths we haven’t chosen
but which spring up, two for every one we ignore?
But none of that matters to her
because it’s a t-shirt she won’t wear.
Ready to change the subject, she shrugs dismissively
and says she takes the pill
because 2 percent is better than 3,
and that might well have been the margin
that left Troy standing.

Poem: Eulogy for the Vampire Story

2009-02-28T17:11:00.001-08:00

I want to write a vampire story
but what is left to say?
What could one more iteration of a premise
even as poignant as eternal thirst
contribute to the ambient hum of b-movie plots
and abstinence parables behind it?
Its ubiquity is a true shame, the vampire story,
for who has not known
the tragedy of unyielding desire?
Who among us
doesn’t crave an alter-ego through which to explore
those dark thirsts that drive us through object after object
in pursuit of something ineffable, which recedes
even as the horizon recedes?
Surely here’s a subject
Aristotle himself could unzip his pants to.
But our thirst, it seems,
has moved beyond vampirism; our fangs
retracted from a victim long since drained-
cast aside with all the other clichés
we’ve grown tired of hearing: love’s first kiss,
stories with sunsets, knights and happily-ever-afters.
And as I sit my weary heart down before this blank screen
I pause to wonder: just when did life get
so goddamn sweet?

2009-02-28T17:07:00.001-08:00

Story: The Gnomes of Eden

2009-02-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

I was gazing out the window when Jeff’s elbow suddenly dug into my ribs. “How bout that gnome, man?” His face was turned towards me, but his eyes fixed on a still figure crouched in a garden across the way.

“That is surely a gnome,” I answered and turned back towards evening. Outside, the steady hum of crickets was just beginning to call, but my attention to it was abstract; preoccupied by a startling sense that beneath my clothes I could feel my own nakedness- outside of them even- like I was back in the garden, on the verge of original sin, only the fall this time was backwards; a reverse stumble over the branching segments of human perception: its categories, its knowledge, its naming. Every opposition, sun and moon, hot and cool, seemed to occur now simultaneously, like an unfolded coin.

The sky alone was different- strangely soothing in its inconsistency. Like a murmuring stream the colors of evening drifted into one another: tidal shades of crimson rolling against the clouds, and swirls of amethyst deepening, then lightening. Reclining in my seat I watched it all absently, finding relief in the sky’s slow alternating rhythms; the steady breath of change… But then there were gnomes.

“I think I’m going to go get it,” Jeff said, suddenly recalling my thoughts.

“What?”

“The gnome, man. I’m going to go get that gnome. Don’t you want it with us?”

I shook my head and blinked, as if a pebble had just struck me on the forehead. “Get the gnome? Have you lost it?” I asked. But the syllables rang without conviction. The truth is I could not say whether it would be good or bad to have the gnome, and thus confused, I quickly became indifferent. “Just don’t let anybody see you.”

And so he crept carefully across the lawn towards the front garden. It was that moment of clarity which always occurs just before sunset, when things are most vivid. The grass bristled underfoot as he lifted the plaster figure from beneath a twisted tree, and there was a ridiculous strain on his face as he heaved it into the backseat and reclaimed his seat behind the steering wheel.

“Smooth,” I said, and he grinned as we slowly fled the scene, riding for a while in silence. I tried to think of something to say, something to distract me from the backwards tumble, but found myself unable to speak. There was a conversation in my head, but my imagination seemed to fill in both sides, so a confused silence settled between us.

At last one spoke:

“Can I have something to eat?”

“Fine with me,” I said.

There was a pause.

“What?” Jeff’s eyes left the road for a moment to scan my face.

“I said, ‘Food is fine with me’.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Jeff replied, annoyed, “but weren’t you the one who just asked for it?”

“No.”

And the next scene unfolded as if through a lens: A shot of Jeff and I in the front seat as the car comes slowly to a halt. Wide eyes turn and meet one another, exchanging glances before each gaze falls on a spot in the back seat where a plaster figure sits, hungry for French fries.

The scene snapped back suddenly into real-time as peels of laughter erupted from deep in our stomachs. Making a U-turn, Jeff sped off to Wendy’s, where still giggling, he ordered three bacon cheeseburgers and a large French fry. As he passed back the gnome’s portion the girl at the window didn’t seem to mind what must have been a rather strange spectacle. We drove off munching happily on our food.

Jeff and I had a difficult time eating though, finding ourselves constantly interrupted by spastic fits of laughter that caused us to cough and nearly choke now and then. But eventually we settled and continued to drive, the ability to differentiate slowly descending now like the distant glow of familiar lights.

Speech finally issued from the back seat after a little while, penetrating the comfortable reverie we’d allowed ourselves to slip into:

“Can I go back now?”

Our features froze with alarm as our sense of the situation suddenly dismantled. Something was wrong with the question, with the speaker we realized, and in another moment of cinematic unfolding we looked into the back seat and were horrified to find, not a plaster garden gnome, but a very live little girl!

“Holy shit!” I couldn’t tell whether it was something we’d actually said or just a flash of psychic cohesion- a thought, a vision of terror we found ourselves suddenly both inhabiting.
Jeff drove faster now, speeding through the winding, sub-divided network of pale houses until, guided by the little girl, we finally made it back to the familiar lawn with the bristling grass (now obscured by darkness).

An interior light shone in the windows, but nobody was in sight as Jeff got out of the car and knelt before the little girl. I sat wringing my hands in the front seat as he grasped her shoulder at arm’s length and produced from his pocket a crumpled wad of bills. “Look at me,” he said harshly, desperation distorting his voice. I could see beads of sweat gathering on his forehead, and upon the girl’s face was a terrifying expression of vacancy. “Here’s all the money I have in my pocket.” He placed the wad of cash in her hand, and still grasping her shoulder, held up a single finger in front of her face. “Now listen to me… You must never talk to strangers.” And his grip on her shoulder tightened. “Alright? Promise me… you must never talk to them.”

And pocketing the money, she nodded her head, returning without a word to her still position beneath the twisted tree. Interior lights continued to glow as Jeff and I drove away silently, eyes fixed ahead of us, neither looking back.

Poem: On Growing Up

2009-02-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

I sometimes misread the poems you send me,
carried away occasionally upon a new
and unexpected voyage of meaning,
and arrive at next line breathless, exhilarated
until I recognize my mistake and nod once more
at the sound progression of your logic
sighing into the steam of my coffee.

It reminds me of when we were kids,
when huddled beneath a blanket you pointed
toward the stars. “That’s Cassiopeia!”
you whispered, pressing close
and tracing its shape with your finger
until looking past I watched one shining point
open into many- infinite figures
in the night’s geometry- and smiled.

You smiled too, thinking I’d seen
what you’d set out to show me, and together
we laughed until our eyes
were moist as the grass beneath us, content
in our understanding of one another.

Story: Chandni Chowk

2009-02-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

*Here is an excerpt from a longer story I wrote upon returning from India called "A Journal of Things Held":

A haze of kerosene and petrol hung between vehicles at the traffic light, wavering in the air and bending the figures moving between cars selling every variety of book, magazine, flower, and sliced coconut; while others offered only good karma and the joy of giving.

A child staggered up beside me and the rickshaw driver cast him a sidelong glance, paying no further attention. There was an open wound on his shoulder- a laceration like a knife- and the hand he held out to me was also disfigured, mangled as if it had been broken over and over. He spoke something slow and in Hindi, ending with Please, and I reached into my pocket to find only a fifty rupee note, placing it delicately into his hand. I would have given more if I could spare it, but even so, I noticed the driver scoff and shake his head in the mirror. The boy held the money in his hand and made a small bow, thanking me in strung sentences that seemed to be neither Hindi nor quite English. And as the light turned green we continued our journey to India’s largest fort, built by the Mughul emperors and palace to centuries of Indian rulers.

We drove in silence for several moments, and the driver cast me several glances in the rearview mirror before he finally spoke. “The boy,” he began, having nearly to shout to be heard over the engine. “He do to himself.”

“What?” I shouted back.

“Himself…” He made slashing motions with his hands and rubbed his palm for money.

I nodded and didn’t say anything, wondering at the sensation I felt: that I’d been deceived. The boy had manipulated me. Shown me something that had not been done to him, but by him, and unknowingly I had been patron to this apparent tradition of self-mutilation. But after thinking about it for a while I am not so sure. Not at all, in fact.

Poem: Night Path

2009-02-28T16:29:00.000-08:00

Rubbing our heels
we hardly notice
its will:
blades of grass bending
before each step,
the wet
shape of your foot
glowing white
in the dark.
For a moment
I wonder
if you can see me
through the ruined window
when licking your lips
the glass fogs
a moment
as we pass.

Poem: Contact

2009-02-28T13:41:00.001-08:00

I remember the moment the world stopped,
enunciated by a final tick and the first
long gasp of silence

How we lay together
as our planet paused thoughtfully
marveling at its quiet; not so much as a cricket’s song
to share our whispering.

For years the world stayed this way
and we grew pale from holding one another;
unable to come any closer but content
even as the world outside began to wither.

The air grew cold, and the ground
hard, and the leaves fell early in winter.
Even when spring came, still they remained
listless and piled upon the ground.

Out front, our sycamores held mangled limbs
toward a sunrise that would never break, and I remember too
how your breath would sometimes whistle
like a winter breeze through their stiff branches.

Poem: Cobwebs

2009-02-28T11:11:00.000-08:00

I breathe into my hands and turn the keys to get the Chevy warming,
waiting for Dad’s thick denim profile to emerge from the house.
When it does he’s grasping a mug, and bending his mouth
to where the coffee has burned him, crossing the empty space of the garage,
his hard features framed by a cobweb in the corner:
its freshly spun threads shining in the cool morning light.
I watch as he approaches and at the last moment swats it down with his hat,
afterwards climbing half-heartedly behind the steering wheel.
I shift his bagged lunch to keep him from sitting on it and catch myself
staring abstractly at the mangled web, waiting for the reverse gear to sound.

But we are still.

I turn to find that his eyes too are trained on the ruined structure,
or looking past it, foggy and indistinct like pools of milk.
“Godammit,” he says at last in a voice raspy with sleep.
“Build it there and of course it’ll be wrecked by morning.”
And I say nothing; just sit silently for a moment and wait
for the laborious pound of the reverse gear to sound.
When finally it does, he clutches the back of my seat and scans the driveway
behind us, and on his cheek I can see this faint glistening- a single shining stream-
then watch him turn into his dirty sleeve as we shift into drive,
waiting for the glare to erase him as we accelerate beneath the risen light.

Introduction

2008-11-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

ambiguity = the displacement of meaning among multiple subjects; an escaping tide.