I've been given an assignment. The goal is to write a poem. The theme is "disasters". I suppose this could entail many things. Actual historical disasters like the Titanic and personal tragedies are up for grabs, but so are less dramatic things, like fashion disasters. Or the Monster Omelet sandwich. I can write about bad decisions I've made, injuries that have befallen me or my loved ones, car crashes, break-ups, missed opportunities, terrorist attacks, deaths. The world is my oyster.
As I write to this subject, the first lines that appear are:
I was shooting with my father, we were wearing
Heavy winter coats and I could see his breath
Climbing up the gray fire of the sky
It was just target shooting, there’s not much else
Inside this memory but gray fire, permafrost
And a target I never hit.
These words appear in my mind effortlessly, and stop abruptly. Poems are such teases. Now comes the hard part of continuing the initial image and developing the narrative of the poem. Before, I would have strained to try and figure out what "happens" next. This time, however, the approach I'm going to take is a more linguistic one: What are the connotations of these words that I've chosen? What am I trying to say here that's outside of the poem's setting? Obviously it has daddy issues,possible impotence implications, but other than that, why did these words appear first under a topic heading of "disasters"?
From here the poem needs to take some surrealist leaps in imagery, breaking free of the setting ("gray fire"). Nobody cares what happens after this. The father and son see a deer, the father shoots the deer, whatever. Instead of following the characters, let's follow the author for a little bit. I'm kidding about the impotence by the way.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
8-24-10
Today I was pleased to find it ten degrees cooler than it normally is when I wake up. The good times roll! For whatever reason, this summer has been particularly difficult; I've always been more of a cold weather person, but my aversion to heat has never made me ill before this summer. Unfortunately, the nice weather seems to be a one day thing. I'll be relieved once the heat breaks and autumn proper begins.
I wrote a little bit of some poems today. Submission season is approaching and I'd like to send some stuff out this year. The University of Tampa, in particular, is holding a contest. A couple days of revisions and coffee shops are in order, I think. The "poems" today - and I use the term loosely - were mostly nostalgic warblings about people I haven't seen in years, and how these people are now forever locked in my memory as they were then. There is Meacham parties, discussion about Caravaggio, smoke breaks on the patio. There's bicycles and collared shirts whipping in the wind. Those were the best days of my life.
I wrote a little bit of some poems today. Submission season is approaching and I'd like to send some stuff out this year. The University of Tampa, in particular, is holding a contest. A couple days of revisions and coffee shops are in order, I think. The "poems" today - and I use the term loosely - were mostly nostalgic warblings about people I haven't seen in years, and how these people are now forever locked in my memory as they were then. There is Meacham parties, discussion about Caravaggio, smoke breaks on the patio. There's bicycles and collared shirts whipping in the wind. Those were the best days of my life.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
8-11-10
I have two new roommates now, bless their hearts. Ethan and Lorin are shacking up in my "office" now, living in sin together and having tickle fights. It's been nice coming home to people again. After such a long period of living by myself, I sort of acclimated to the solitude, and in the process forgetting to feel alone. However, it will take some time for me to get used to them enough to where I can write comfortably. Their quiet voices and occasional music are nagging distractions.
I took the last week off with intentions to travel and write. Fate intervened in the form of my beat-up and broken down Toyota. I planned on trading it in, buckling down, and biting the bullet on a new car, but I couldn't find my car title. So in the end, I ended up staying in Chattanooga doing nothing for a week, which was in and of itself relaxing and more of a vacation than I could've hoped for. It was fortuitous, as it enabled me to help Lorin and Ethan move, and allowed me to catch up on some much needed reading.
As for the writing process, I did a third wave of revisions on the early chapters and worked a bit on some chapters involving the "second" protagonist. Not as much as I hoped. Whenever I set aside extra time for writing it rarely leads to increased productivity. Lately I have been feeling the pressure to get to finishing a draft of the entire thing - I would like to have people read this before they die or grow senile, after all.
I think I'm coming down with something. It's either from Lorin's moldy couch or some bug one of them has. I'm going to try and kill it with Sudafed and exercise.
I took the last week off with intentions to travel and write. Fate intervened in the form of my beat-up and broken down Toyota. I planned on trading it in, buckling down, and biting the bullet on a new car, but I couldn't find my car title. So in the end, I ended up staying in Chattanooga doing nothing for a week, which was in and of itself relaxing and more of a vacation than I could've hoped for. It was fortuitous, as it enabled me to help Lorin and Ethan move, and allowed me to catch up on some much needed reading.
As for the writing process, I did a third wave of revisions on the early chapters and worked a bit on some chapters involving the "second" protagonist. Not as much as I hoped. Whenever I set aside extra time for writing it rarely leads to increased productivity. Lately I have been feeling the pressure to get to finishing a draft of the entire thing - I would like to have people read this before they die or grow senile, after all.
I think I'm coming down with something. It's either from Lorin's moldy couch or some bug one of them has. I'm going to try and kill it with Sudafed and exercise.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
July 22 2010
I was able to write only briefly today, in a chapter I'm thinking of calling "Witness to the Moonlight Mass of the Tardigrades". The tardigrade is often called a "water bear" and is a microscopic animal that lives on mosses and on the underside of some leaves. Seeing as how at some point the protagonist must talk to the ghosts of dead plants, I figured he might as well be able to see tardigrades also. Whatever, right! I'm going out of my head here. Writing this fantastic, supernatural stuff is so much easier than the counterbalancing domestic passages. I could write for pages and pages about this mythical microscopic subculture but trying to write a conversation between a dude and his boss is just torturous. I should also mention that in this same chapter the murdered neighbor appears and beats the **** out of the protagonist. Yeah, it'll all make sense eventually.
When I saw Michael Chabon speak at AWP this year one thing that sticks out from his talk was the notion that in writing, ideas are easy to come by. The job of the writer is to funnel those ideas that sound so fantastic in your mind into something palatable for someone other than yourself. ADD is killer to novel writing. I keep getting so many ideas for new projects, even though I'm nowhere near to being done with what I'm working on now. All I can do is just write them down and come back to them later and hope they're still good ideas.
Other than tardigrades ("slow walker" in German) I also did some light reading on chemotaxis - the direction of cell movement using various proteins. Researchers grow human neural progenitor cells ("stem cells") and throw proteins at it, hoping to direct these cells to bone or brain damage, in hopes that diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's can be cured. A lab headed by Dr. Steve Stice (one of the scientists who cloned "Dolly") was researching this in Athens, GA the last few years to negative results.
This is what I do all day.
When I saw Michael Chabon speak at AWP this year one thing that sticks out from his talk was the notion that in writing, ideas are easy to come by. The job of the writer is to funnel those ideas that sound so fantastic in your mind into something palatable for someone other than yourself. ADD is killer to novel writing. I keep getting so many ideas for new projects, even though I'm nowhere near to being done with what I'm working on now. All I can do is just write them down and come back to them later and hope they're still good ideas.
Other than tardigrades ("slow walker" in German) I also did some light reading on chemotaxis - the direction of cell movement using various proteins. Researchers grow human neural progenitor cells ("stem cells") and throw proteins at it, hoping to direct these cells to bone or brain damage, in hopes that diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's can be cured. A lab headed by Dr. Steve Stice (one of the scientists who cloned "Dolly") was researching this in Athens, GA the last few years to negative results.
This is what I do all day.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
July 21 2010
I've been going through the journal bit by bit each day, slowly transferring it from its current Microsoft Word state into something called a "Scribus" - a free online publishing program I downloaded. It appears to be used mostly for posters and magazines, but I'm sure the difference in quality is negligible. Neither me nor my boss expect this to come out looking like a Modern Library Classic or a Vintage International or anything. Scribus is a Linux-based program - what that means exactly, I couldn't tell you - that involves me creating "squares" and then deciding if it's supposed to be a "text square" or an "image square".
The journal itself is surprisingly detailed, and the prose is flowing. Such wonderful names also! I must steal them for my own. It describes RCJ's journey from Chicago to North Dakota aboard the Great Northern railway. Here's a sample:
By Sunday night I was back in St. Paul and left there at 10:45 p.m. on the Great Northern . The train whisked me through Minnesota during the night, but when we struck the border of North Dakota I was wide awake.
What struck me was the peculiar aspect of the state at that time of the year. Everything was of the same dull, brownish hue. Not a speck of green to relieve the monotony, not a tree or shrub in sight. Besides I noticed that, in spite of the advanced season, nearly all the grain was still standing in shocks, that very little threshing had been done. It was noticeably colder than St. Louis had been. I found that most of the pools and creeks we passed had a thin coating of ice.
The train from Williston to Snowden Mont. was a wretchedly slow affair. But it was heaven compared to the train from Snowden to Watford , N. Dak. This latter train consisted of a series of freight cars, with an antediluvian passenger coach in its rear. I subsequently learned that this train ran only every two days; that on other days they had freight trains only.
As I approached my destination I began to feel wretchedly blue. Everything was so strange and a peculiar sense of loneliness stole over me that was very apprehensive. Judge my joy, therefore, when I saw that good old “Daddy” Roettger was at the station to meet me. “Daddy” had been in charge of this place since Rev. Frey left it in the middle of Sept., and he had been due to take charge of a school in Gardena, N. Dak. on Nov. 1st. Loyal as he always was, he had waited for me, however, and he helped me load up my trunk and took me over to Schafer, the county seat of McKenzie Co., although it was not situated on any railroad. The home which I was to occupy during my stay here, was not in Schafer at that time, although the people intended to move it soon. It was two miles in the country in the bleakest and loneliest spot imaginable, so it seemed to me.
The pictures provided are mostly desolate expanses of prairie and clouds, but there are a few diamonds.
All the work on the diary has left me precious little free time here at work to write Novel 1. I put in a vacation request for August 2-6. Think I'll disappear.
The journal itself is surprisingly detailed, and the prose is flowing. Such wonderful names also! I must steal them for my own. It describes RCJ's journey from Chicago to North Dakota aboard the Great Northern railway. Here's a sample:
By Sunday night I was back in St. Paul and left there at 10:45 p.m. on the Great Northern . The train whisked me through Minnesota during the night, but when we struck the border of North Dakota I was wide awake.
What struck me was the peculiar aspect of the state at that time of the year. Everything was of the same dull, brownish hue. Not a speck of green to relieve the monotony, not a tree or shrub in sight. Besides I noticed that, in spite of the advanced season, nearly all the grain was still standing in shocks, that very little threshing had been done. It was noticeably colder than St. Louis had been. I found that most of the pools and creeks we passed had a thin coating of ice.
The train from Williston to Snowden Mont. was a wretchedly slow affair. But it was heaven compared to the train from Snowden to Watford , N. Dak. This latter train consisted of a series of freight cars, with an antediluvian passenger coach in its rear. I subsequently learned that this train ran only every two days; that on other days they had freight trains only.
As I approached my destination I began to feel wretchedly blue. Everything was so strange and a peculiar sense of loneliness stole over me that was very apprehensive. Judge my joy, therefore, when I saw that good old “Daddy” Roettger was at the station to meet me. “Daddy” had been in charge of this place since Rev. Frey left it in the middle of Sept., and he had been due to take charge of a school in Gardena, N. Dak. on Nov. 1st. Loyal as he always was, he had waited for me, however, and he helped me load up my trunk and took me over to Schafer, the county seat of McKenzie Co., although it was not situated on any railroad. The home which I was to occupy during my stay here, was not in Schafer at that time, although the people intended to move it soon. It was two miles in the country in the bleakest and loneliest spot imaginable, so it seemed to me.
The pictures provided are mostly desolate expanses of prairie and clouds, but there are a few diamonds.
All the work on the diary has left me precious little free time here at work to write Novel 1. I put in a vacation request for August 2-6. Think I'll disappear.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
July 17 2010
Film Review: Inception
Christopher Nolan's film Inception is without a doubt the major film event of the summer (Move over Toy Story 3). To describe it briefly without getting into the nuances I would call it a telepathic heist movie. Think Oceans 11 meets Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and you get the idea.
In it, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a "extractor" of dreams. He infiltrates other peoples dreams and steals their ideas for clients. Ken Watanabe plays one of these said clients, who enlists Cobb for an "Inception" - a type of mental subterfuge wherein an idea is planted by someone else inside anothers mind without their knowing. Cobb forms a team to do this, and of course things may or may not go as planned, all while Cobb himself must deal with his oft-haunting and confusing backstory.
A grand idea to be sure, and it is a film to be watched and applauded if only for the originality it brings. Surprisingly, and perhaps to its benefit, the film eschews making any grand philosophical statements about the act of dreaming or the nature of dreams. Rather, the film treats the subject matter in a very scientific, logical manner. The world in which these characters inhabit is one where this is an exact science. The members of Cobb's team each have specific talents to fulfill their specific roles ("Extractor", "Architect", "Mark" etc). There's a little scientific doo-dad that puts the people to sleep. Everyone wears suits and ties. If you're expecting magical realism, go elsewhere. It's important that the film treats dreams like this in order to keep the tension elevated.
So for the most part the premise is an original one. It is in the execution of the premise where influences are worn on the sleeve: zero gravity fight scenes that echo The Matrix, and time/spatial distortions that are reminiscient of The Cell. And yeah, The Matrix again. This is a better film than Matrix, and I am not a fan of that film (don't get me started on the sequels); However, it is hard to not draw a parallel here.
The actors perform admirably with what is a ludicrous, though completely appropriate and well-written, script. Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, and our second favorite alumnus from 3rd Rock from the Sun (French Stewart is God), Joseph Gordon-Levitt fare the best. DiCaprio's delivery of some of the more fantastical lines was grimacing at points, and at points jarred the suspension of disbelief. Finally, as much as I love Marion Cotillard, it would be nice to understand what she is saying half the time.
Like most of Nolan's non-Batman films,(which are overrated by the way; I mean, could anybody stomach The Dark Knight if not for Ledger? Dude carries the entire film) the movie starts off rather confusing and everything coalesces into making perfect (almost) sense at the end. The climax is thrilling, the resolution is satisfying, the music is booming and the ending is something to leave you wanting to watch the movie again. The Prestige is my favorite of Nolan's films and this one is right up there. Catch it in the theatres, IMAX if you can; you'll want to hear this movie loud.
Some additional thoughts with Spoilers:
In a scene in the movie, DiCaprio and Page are in DiCaprio's mind, and they are in an elevator, each floor representing a different memory with his deceased wife. Page remarks, "These aren't dreams are they? They're memories." DiCaprio's character in effect created a way to circumvent death by having a place in his mind wherein he could still be with one he loved. This sort of goes back to what I was talking about in the first blog entry, and a lot of what I've been writing about. Just as a character in my novel might figure out a loophole to cheat death, a writer can create a novel or a story, or anything really, in order to play "what if" and write a different ending to a past event in their life. In a sense, vicariously living through the character. That's one of the greatest and most cathartic aspects of writing, but of course it steers one dangerously close to melodrama, as Inception so often does.
Christopher Nolan's film Inception is without a doubt the major film event of the summer (Move over Toy Story 3). To describe it briefly without getting into the nuances I would call it a telepathic heist movie. Think Oceans 11 meets Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and you get the idea.
In it, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a "extractor" of dreams. He infiltrates other peoples dreams and steals their ideas for clients. Ken Watanabe plays one of these said clients, who enlists Cobb for an "Inception" - a type of mental subterfuge wherein an idea is planted by someone else inside anothers mind without their knowing. Cobb forms a team to do this, and of course things may or may not go as planned, all while Cobb himself must deal with his oft-haunting and confusing backstory.
A grand idea to be sure, and it is a film to be watched and applauded if only for the originality it brings. Surprisingly, and perhaps to its benefit, the film eschews making any grand philosophical statements about the act of dreaming or the nature of dreams. Rather, the film treats the subject matter in a very scientific, logical manner. The world in which these characters inhabit is one where this is an exact science. The members of Cobb's team each have specific talents to fulfill their specific roles ("Extractor", "Architect", "Mark" etc). There's a little scientific doo-dad that puts the people to sleep. Everyone wears suits and ties. If you're expecting magical realism, go elsewhere. It's important that the film treats dreams like this in order to keep the tension elevated.
So for the most part the premise is an original one. It is in the execution of the premise where influences are worn on the sleeve: zero gravity fight scenes that echo The Matrix, and time/spatial distortions that are reminiscient of The Cell. And yeah, The Matrix again. This is a better film than Matrix, and I am not a fan of that film (don't get me started on the sequels); However, it is hard to not draw a parallel here.
The actors perform admirably with what is a ludicrous, though completely appropriate and well-written, script. Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, and our second favorite alumnus from 3rd Rock from the Sun (French Stewart is God), Joseph Gordon-Levitt fare the best. DiCaprio's delivery of some of the more fantastical lines was grimacing at points, and at points jarred the suspension of disbelief. Finally, as much as I love Marion Cotillard, it would be nice to understand what she is saying half the time.
Like most of Nolan's non-Batman films,(which are overrated by the way; I mean, could anybody stomach The Dark Knight if not for Ledger? Dude carries the entire film) the movie starts off rather confusing and everything coalesces into making perfect (almost) sense at the end. The climax is thrilling, the resolution is satisfying, the music is booming and the ending is something to leave you wanting to watch the movie again. The Prestige is my favorite of Nolan's films and this one is right up there. Catch it in the theatres, IMAX if you can; you'll want to hear this movie loud.
Some additional thoughts with Spoilers:
In a scene in the movie, DiCaprio and Page are in DiCaprio's mind, and they are in an elevator, each floor representing a different memory with his deceased wife. Page remarks, "These aren't dreams are they? They're memories." DiCaprio's character in effect created a way to circumvent death by having a place in his mind wherein he could still be with one he loved. This sort of goes back to what I was talking about in the first blog entry, and a lot of what I've been writing about. Just as a character in my novel might figure out a loophole to cheat death, a writer can create a novel or a story, or anything really, in order to play "what if" and write a different ending to a past event in their life. In a sense, vicariously living through the character. That's one of the greatest and most cathartic aspects of writing, but of course it steers one dangerously close to melodrama, as Inception so often does.
Friday, July 16, 2010
July 16 2010
It seems I can add "infidelity" to the growing list of themes in Novel 1. Maybe a better way to put it would be an all engrossing sense of self-worth that prohibits one from the most basic empathy, let alone the trust and comfort of a monogamous relationship.
What is it about the rich that makes that stereotype so often true? You know, the one about how "I've never met a rich man who didn't step on a poor man to get there"? In my line of work I've seen enough people who have lived for generations off of their pedigree, their father's money, connections made through secret societies. People who were born into lives of luxury and as a result have never had the need to count on someone or rely on anything other than their papa. If they've never needed anyone else how can we expect them to love someone else?
The novel's protagonist, having grown up without a father figure his entire life, is to be presented with two possible substitutes. As it so often happens these two have developed rather naturally into opposites of each other. One has always strived for spiritual happiness, and as a result is scorned for being a lout, while the other has wealth and success but is a cheater and morally bankrupt. It wasn't until after these characters had evolved that I realized they crawled out of the primordial soup that is my own subconcious. It's as though I cleaved myself in half. Lawyer v. Writer, extrovert v. introvert, rich v. poor... there I am on the page, in every supposedly original creation.
I say all this about the rich, about lawyers, about my boss specifically and yet I'm still here doing this job to the best of my abilities and accepting my bi-monthly paycheck. The pressure to leave intensifies. I've got to get out of here before the stench of this place takes hold of me.
What is it about the rich that makes that stereotype so often true? You know, the one about how "I've never met a rich man who didn't step on a poor man to get there"? In my line of work I've seen enough people who have lived for generations off of their pedigree, their father's money, connections made through secret societies. People who were born into lives of luxury and as a result have never had the need to count on someone or rely on anything other than their papa. If they've never needed anyone else how can we expect them to love someone else?
The novel's protagonist, having grown up without a father figure his entire life, is to be presented with two possible substitutes. As it so often happens these two have developed rather naturally into opposites of each other. One has always strived for spiritual happiness, and as a result is scorned for being a lout, while the other has wealth and success but is a cheater and morally bankrupt. It wasn't until after these characters had evolved that I realized they crawled out of the primordial soup that is my own subconcious. It's as though I cleaved myself in half. Lawyer v. Writer, extrovert v. introvert, rich v. poor... there I am on the page, in every supposedly original creation.
I say all this about the rich, about lawyers, about my boss specifically and yet I'm still here doing this job to the best of my abilities and accepting my bi-monthly paycheck. The pressure to leave intensifies. I've got to get out of here before the stench of this place takes hold of me.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
July 14 2010
As I was writing a particularly boring passage of Novel 1 today, I thought, "Wait a second. Isn't that a problem? If I think this part is boring shouldn't I just cut it?" I don't really know the answer to that. I feel like it's too important to cut entirely. It's also dialogue-heavy, and I'm quickly finding out that having my characters talk like "real people" is not the way to go here. The scene involves the protagonist confronting his boss about some corruption and crookery within the workplace. The purpose of the scene is to mostly establish the protagonist's character (his world, his motives, his Dungeons and Dragons alignment, what have you) and also to be used later as contrast for when the character and his situation changes. I'm trying to do a slow build-up without the scene coming across like The Firm.
I seem to be in the spirit of rule-breaking lately. First there's poems about parties, and then there's: "quote," he exclaimed! First thing I learned about fiction writing is to rely on "said" to carry you through those dialogue tags, but I'm more and more finding this to be one of those rules creative writing classes make up to keep dumb kids from going overboard. These rules include:
"No genre fiction"
"No rhyming poetry"
"No form poetry"
"No suicide" etc.
The purpose for these rules in creative writing classes is to provide order for bad writers, to get them to think outside of cliche. However, if you're a slave to rules like this, it can also make your work boring and a chore. I hate to bring it up again, but I did just read The Great Gatsby again, and Fitzgerald even uses "she yawned." So fuck it, if it's good enough for Fitzgerald it's good enough for me.
I seem to be in the spirit of rule-breaking lately. First there's poems about parties, and then there's: "quote," he exclaimed! First thing I learned about fiction writing is to rely on "said" to carry you through those dialogue tags, but I'm more and more finding this to be one of those rules creative writing classes make up to keep dumb kids from going overboard. These rules include:
"No genre fiction"
"No rhyming poetry"
"No form poetry"
"No suicide" etc.
The purpose for these rules in creative writing classes is to provide order for bad writers, to get them to think outside of cliche. However, if you're a slave to rules like this, it can also make your work boring and a chore. I hate to bring it up again, but I did just read The Great Gatsby again, and Fitzgerald even uses "she yawned." So fuck it, if it's good enough for Fitzgerald it's good enough for me.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
July 13 2010
After the past two weekends I can feel myself entering into a holding pattern of introvertedness. I find myself asking questions like "How long can I go without drinking another beer?" and there being no limit to that answer. Although the past two weekends have overflowed with laughter and mirth, there is also a sense that everything is very different now: there is no 4th of July farm party, and Danielle has in fact, left. It feels as good a time as any for a break from the burdens of being a social butterfly.
I was inspired this weekend to write a late chapter scene in the novel. Moving day, and the act of moving itself, is heavy with emotion, and the perfect setting for characters to get wild. It's not so much the act of leaving that gives moving its' weight, but the tragedy of unrealized hopes, words one never said, feelings not conveyed, actions not acted upon. The idea that somehow you failed where you are now, your life for the past few years hasn't been the end-all, and now you have to rebuild.
I think about wanting to be an introvert, but then I think about the prospect of moving or a dear friend of mine moving. If I don't go after every opportunity to be with people, will I regret it in the future if one of us eventually leaves?
I did see something absolutely horrifying this weekend. On Saturday, coming back from helping Danielle move, I slowed to a stop at the intersection of St. Elmo and Broad Street. Two cars ahead of me at the red light was a white pick-up truck with a German Shepherd leashed in the bed. The German Shepherd wasn't quite tied down properly; he was putting his paws up on the side of the truck, looking at the people in the car next to him. As the light turned green, the dog somehow came out of the truck, and was dragged by its neck for 20-30 feet before the truck was able to pull over. The car in front of me and myself pulled over to see if we could help. Thankfully, the dog ended up with only a broken leg. Still, I haven't been able to stop thinking about that German Shepherd, just hanging from the back end of that truck, its legs struggling to keep up and away from the tires, and how maybe this isn't symbolic of my own life at the moment.
I was inspired this weekend to write a late chapter scene in the novel. Moving day, and the act of moving itself, is heavy with emotion, and the perfect setting for characters to get wild. It's not so much the act of leaving that gives moving its' weight, but the tragedy of unrealized hopes, words one never said, feelings not conveyed, actions not acted upon. The idea that somehow you failed where you are now, your life for the past few years hasn't been the end-all, and now you have to rebuild.
I think about wanting to be an introvert, but then I think about the prospect of moving or a dear friend of mine moving. If I don't go after every opportunity to be with people, will I regret it in the future if one of us eventually leaves?
I did see something absolutely horrifying this weekend. On Saturday, coming back from helping Danielle move, I slowed to a stop at the intersection of St. Elmo and Broad Street. Two cars ahead of me at the red light was a white pick-up truck with a German Shepherd leashed in the bed. The German Shepherd wasn't quite tied down properly; he was putting his paws up on the side of the truck, looking at the people in the car next to him. As the light turned green, the dog somehow came out of the truck, and was dragged by its neck for 20-30 feet before the truck was able to pull over. The car in front of me and myself pulled over to see if we could help. Thankfully, the dog ended up with only a broken leg. Still, I haven't been able to stop thinking about that German Shepherd, just hanging from the back end of that truck, its legs struggling to keep up and away from the tires, and how maybe this isn't symbolic of my own life at the moment.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Poem
Boys’ Life
We were killing time at the dollar bin,
Fingers rifling through cd cases, clacking
Together like popping knuckle joints in this time
Between visits from college. “Have you ever heard
Of this band?” asks my friend, bespectacled,
And he hands me a cd from the used bin. The cover
Is mostly solid black, save for the widescreen photo
Of a poorly lit city skyline at sunset that stretches
Across the bottom. Its buildings are mostly shadow;
Local stores, windmills, and grain silos pool together
While the sky itself is a vibrant pastel red and yellow.
A slight shift of shade denotes mountains
In the distance, so of course this is Midwestern,
And of course, I haven’t heard of them, regrettably.
But have you heard of _____? I counter,
Who are at least twice as obscure and with members
Who went on to bigger and brighter basement bands.
We discuss the merits of their record and their influence
Ad nauseum, until we’ve listed and namedropped
Countless artists and spoken phrases like “integrity”
And “forefathers of modern alternative music”
With authority we have yet to earn. It’s enough
To yearn for just a photo of the band as the cover,
Like on those old records my father owned, that old music
I grew up on and abandoned and that
I’ll eventually return to once I’ve lived a little more.
My friend decides to buy the record after lengthy debate.
We exit the thrift store at a quarter after six, and post up
Against the trunk of my 89 Mercury Cougar to talk
A little more before we have to split up, and we talk
About girls and music and forming our own band
About who will play what, and who’s got cigarettes.
We talk until the store closes and then we talk shit
about the people filing out the narrow sliding doors
into the dimly lit car lot. There is no limit
to the amount of talking we can do, no answers
to the questions that we ask.
We were killing time at the dollar bin,
Fingers rifling through cd cases, clacking
Together like popping knuckle joints in this time
Between visits from college. “Have you ever heard
Of this band?” asks my friend, bespectacled,
And he hands me a cd from the used bin. The cover
Is mostly solid black, save for the widescreen photo
Of a poorly lit city skyline at sunset that stretches
Across the bottom. Its buildings are mostly shadow;
Local stores, windmills, and grain silos pool together
While the sky itself is a vibrant pastel red and yellow.
A slight shift of shade denotes mountains
In the distance, so of course this is Midwestern,
And of course, I haven’t heard of them, regrettably.
But have you heard of _____? I counter,
Who are at least twice as obscure and with members
Who went on to bigger and brighter basement bands.
We discuss the merits of their record and their influence
Ad nauseum, until we’ve listed and namedropped
Countless artists and spoken phrases like “integrity”
And “forefathers of modern alternative music”
With authority we have yet to earn. It’s enough
To yearn for just a photo of the band as the cover,
Like on those old records my father owned, that old music
I grew up on and abandoned and that
I’ll eventually return to once I’ve lived a little more.
My friend decides to buy the record after lengthy debate.
We exit the thrift store at a quarter after six, and post up
Against the trunk of my 89 Mercury Cougar to talk
A little more before we have to split up, and we talk
About girls and music and forming our own band
About who will play what, and who’s got cigarettes.
We talk until the store closes and then we talk shit
about the people filing out the narrow sliding doors
into the dimly lit car lot. There is no limit
to the amount of talking we can do, no answers
to the questions that we ask.
Friday, July 9, 2010
7-9-2010
I wrote a poem this morning called "Boys' Life". I'll put it up later. It's on my home computer. It's sort of a hodgepodge of feelings and nostalgic ramblings about the good ol' days. I finally decided to try and apply some thematic similarity to my work in hopes of coming up with a book-length manuscript. That theme has evolved into something I'd like to call "party poems". Note the difference between this and "poems about parties".
I was thinking about it, and trying to write poems that address some social injustice or philosophical debate. Everything I wrote in this way, where I was writing for a certain cause, seemed false. Philip Levine writes poems about the working class, Robert Hass does these great meditations about life and experience, Gary Snyder is naturalistic. Their poems mirror their life. I feel like at the undergrad and grad level writing programs there's an abundance of fakery. You wrote a good poem about World War II, which is great, but I mean you weren't in World War II! Or you write this poem about fish swimming at the bottom of the sea, but again, you've never been diving! You've never even been to the ocean! You're too pale!
So for better or worse I thought about what I have been doing and that's 1) working, 2) reading, and 3) going out. Obviously the first two make for captivating writing (not). So really, I have no other option but to write about the struggles of being a young adult in the 21st Century. Of course, in every creative writing class the teacher usually puts a ban on "writing about that party you went to where you got wasted and you met a girl and the cops showed up and you hung out with a homeless man and you had an epiphany", so in that sense, I'm breaking a cardinal rule. On the other hand, I also feel like this generation is one that hasn't been represented in poetry, other than in perhaps spoken word, or SLAM, or L A N G U A G E poetry, or some other nonsense.
My mission is to address the teenage/young adult experience with the same sort of gravitas applied to it as Levine lays upon a factory worker. Look at the subject analytically. Make the poem expand beyond just a personal experience.
Regarding my actual life, the strange dreams are continuing. Last night I dreamt that some friends and I were driving home late from a party one night. We were in a strange town, so we took two cars. I was in the second car, following the first car. I was tired in my dream and falling asleep in my dream, which I didn't think was possible. In my dream's dream I specifically remember being on the porch of someone's house with Lorin and Danielle, (which actually happened).
I was awoken from the dream dream by a loud explosion. Our two cars were on a narrow road cordoned off on both sides by what appeared to be Sandinista revolutionaries. They fired a rocket at the first car, which exploded into flames. Then they came up to our car and demanded all our money. I went in my wallet and fished out Jennifer Thaggard's debit card. (In real life, a friend of mine, Jennifer Thaggard, gave me an old debit card of hers. It's expiration date was still valid, but the account had been closed. It had an American flag design.)The revolutionaries were beating one of my comrades with clubs; I distinctly remember spurts of blood flying off the body. I gave the leader revolutionary Jennifer's card and said "This is all I have."
The leader looked at the card and said, "Okay, let him go." Then I woke up. No, actually, it was another dream where I dreamed I had woken from the previous dream, a third dream-level, where I was in my bed looking in my wallet to make sure I still had the debit card. I fumbled in my wallet, and finally found it, but instead of the American flag design it glowed an eerie blue color, like a lit swimming pool.
I was thinking about it, and trying to write poems that address some social injustice or philosophical debate. Everything I wrote in this way, where I was writing for a certain cause, seemed false. Philip Levine writes poems about the working class, Robert Hass does these great meditations about life and experience, Gary Snyder is naturalistic. Their poems mirror their life. I feel like at the undergrad and grad level writing programs there's an abundance of fakery. You wrote a good poem about World War II, which is great, but I mean you weren't in World War II! Or you write this poem about fish swimming at the bottom of the sea, but again, you've never been diving! You've never even been to the ocean! You're too pale!
So for better or worse I thought about what I have been doing and that's 1) working, 2) reading, and 3) going out. Obviously the first two make for captivating writing (not). So really, I have no other option but to write about the struggles of being a young adult in the 21st Century. Of course, in every creative writing class the teacher usually puts a ban on "writing about that party you went to where you got wasted and you met a girl and the cops showed up and you hung out with a homeless man and you had an epiphany", so in that sense, I'm breaking a cardinal rule. On the other hand, I also feel like this generation is one that hasn't been represented in poetry, other than in perhaps spoken word, or SLAM, or L A N G U A G E poetry, or some other nonsense.
My mission is to address the teenage/young adult experience with the same sort of gravitas applied to it as Levine lays upon a factory worker. Look at the subject analytically. Make the poem expand beyond just a personal experience.
Regarding my actual life, the strange dreams are continuing. Last night I dreamt that some friends and I were driving home late from a party one night. We were in a strange town, so we took two cars. I was in the second car, following the first car. I was tired in my dream and falling asleep in my dream, which I didn't think was possible. In my dream's dream I specifically remember being on the porch of someone's house with Lorin and Danielle, (which actually happened).
I was awoken from the dream dream by a loud explosion. Our two cars were on a narrow road cordoned off on both sides by what appeared to be Sandinista revolutionaries. They fired a rocket at the first car, which exploded into flames. Then they came up to our car and demanded all our money. I went in my wallet and fished out Jennifer Thaggard's debit card. (In real life, a friend of mine, Jennifer Thaggard, gave me an old debit card of hers. It's expiration date was still valid, but the account had been closed. It had an American flag design.)The revolutionaries were beating one of my comrades with clubs; I distinctly remember spurts of blood flying off the body. I gave the leader revolutionary Jennifer's card and said "This is all I have."
The leader looked at the card and said, "Okay, let him go." Then I woke up. No, actually, it was another dream where I dreamed I had woken from the previous dream, a third dream-level, where I was in my bed looking in my wallet to make sure I still had the debit card. I fumbled in my wallet, and finally found it, but instead of the American flag design it glowed an eerie blue color, like a lit swimming pool.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
July 8 2010
I've enjoyed these quiet days at work. My productivity skyrockets when the boss isn't here. I finished my work today before lunch, so the afternoon has been spent working on the novel, taking walks, and shutting the blinds and my office door to do push-ups and sit-ups in privacy. Everyone is going batty. My secretary is going to paint the bathroom, and I caught our intern on the Facebooker.
I'm not sure what our next door neighbors do. Their blinds are always closed, and their door is always locked. They have a bell and a "No Solicitation" sign. I think they're either E-bay sellers or Soviet Codebreakers. Every so often they come outside for walkies with their doggies. They seem kind: a balding man of around sixty, and his wife of the same age although looking much better to show for it. The dog's name is Lucy and she gets frightened easily, so she barks at everyone. I can hear her now.
I've rewritten my first chapter again, trying to make the action more immediate. I've ended up adding a new character and pretty much totally reconstructing the pace of the novel. I decided that starting off in such a state of "normalcy" for my characters wasn't really interesting. It would be much better if the characters were already "uncomfortable" at the beginning, and that sense of initial normalcy in the relationship between the two leads can still be maintained.
I've written enough poetry to feel like I can read over my old work and recognize that it might not be good, but it's "finished", if that makes sense. However, I can't stop reading what I've done so far in my novel and changing it over and over again. It's such a different mentality. There's so many different voices in fiction and it's hard to keep them uniform when you want them uniform and even harder to make them unique when they need to be unique. I read "The Great Gatsby" again, and it's so perfectly simple and awe-inspiring that it's inspirational and discouraging at the same time.
I went through my notebook and found a poem I'd written the day after Marie Carpenter passed away. I thought about reading it at her funeral, but decided against it. It probably would have felt out of place. I put it on the blog. I had a dream last night where I couldn't determine which of my friends were dead and which were alive.
I feel like the longer I stay in Chattanooga, the stupider life gets, like a tv show that's run out of ideas.
I'm not sure what our next door neighbors do. Their blinds are always closed, and their door is always locked. They have a bell and a "No Solicitation" sign. I think they're either E-bay sellers or Soviet Codebreakers. Every so often they come outside for walkies with their doggies. They seem kind: a balding man of around sixty, and his wife of the same age although looking much better to show for it. The dog's name is Lucy and she gets frightened easily, so she barks at everyone. I can hear her now.
I've rewritten my first chapter again, trying to make the action more immediate. I've ended up adding a new character and pretty much totally reconstructing the pace of the novel. I decided that starting off in such a state of "normalcy" for my characters wasn't really interesting. It would be much better if the characters were already "uncomfortable" at the beginning, and that sense of initial normalcy in the relationship between the two leads can still be maintained.
I've written enough poetry to feel like I can read over my old work and recognize that it might not be good, but it's "finished", if that makes sense. However, I can't stop reading what I've done so far in my novel and changing it over and over again. It's such a different mentality. There's so many different voices in fiction and it's hard to keep them uniform when you want them uniform and even harder to make them unique when they need to be unique. I read "The Great Gatsby" again, and it's so perfectly simple and awe-inspiring that it's inspirational and discouraging at the same time.
I went through my notebook and found a poem I'd written the day after Marie Carpenter passed away. I thought about reading it at her funeral, but decided against it. It probably would have felt out of place. I put it on the blog. I had a dream last night where I couldn't determine which of my friends were dead and which were alive.
I feel like the longer I stay in Chattanooga, the stupider life gets, like a tv show that's run out of ideas.
Poem
Falling Water
It is messy on the trail: the tree slops off its base
like a broken jaw as if it were cut down
in frustration, by inexperience. The humidity
in the air gives the wood an eerie glow.
Redwood splintered into teeth.
It’s not raining yet, but everything
About this place heralds its coming;
The dampness in the air, chewed up paper
In the mouth, soft dirt that bogs between toes.
Further on, the trail leads to an overlook that opens
To the tail end of the Applachians and the cradled valley.
The tranquility of the forest crescendos
Into birdsong, a cacophony of different chirps
And caws that echoes off the cliff face.
The nearby stream sings of the white laurels,
And lilac that linger behind me as my legs dangle
Off the cliffside like a child’s. And I sit
And I write of the rain that does not come,
And I transcribe the indeterminable birdsong,
Waiting for the woods to give something back.
“Let me stop you there,” she says, quietly,
From somewhere far away and delicate,
And then it started raining, mercifully.
It is messy on the trail: the tree slops off its base
like a broken jaw as if it were cut down
in frustration, by inexperience. The humidity
in the air gives the wood an eerie glow.
Redwood splintered into teeth.
It’s not raining yet, but everything
About this place heralds its coming;
The dampness in the air, chewed up paper
In the mouth, soft dirt that bogs between toes.
Further on, the trail leads to an overlook that opens
To the tail end of the Applachians and the cradled valley.
The tranquility of the forest crescendos
Into birdsong, a cacophony of different chirps
And caws that echoes off the cliff face.
The nearby stream sings of the white laurels,
And lilac that linger behind me as my legs dangle
Off the cliffside like a child’s. And I sit
And I write of the rain that does not come,
And I transcribe the indeterminable birdsong,
Waiting for the woods to give something back.
“Let me stop you there,” she says, quietly,
From somewhere far away and delicate,
And then it started raining, mercifully.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Let's Try this Again
Life is strange. Sometimes it feels like a day at a water park. The sun is shining and everyone is full of joy as the dewy air around us is crackling with the cheers of children. It's exhilirating. Other times, I can't help but notice the effluent around me, the pollution in the water, and I'm disgusted that everyone else either doesn't notice or is fine and dandy playing in the filthy poo-water. Somewhere along the lines of that second sentence this stopped being a metaphor and became an actual memory of mine, I think.
Isn't it marvelous how the memory works, or doesn't work? I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
Lorin told me a story the other day about how My Neighbor Totoro was based on a violent crime that happened in Japan. It's no secret that Totoro is himself fashioned after a Japanese forest spirit. Thirty years ago, two little girls were apparently kidnapped, abused, and raped before being murdered in a brutal fashion. While this was going on, their minds inhabited this dream world with Totoro. The mind manifested an escape for them. Or maybe Totoro himself actually came to those girls and made them dream of this escape-world?
Anyway, it's all bogus, because My Neighbor Totoro is actually about a play experience that Miyazaki and his brother had when they were kids. Still, I thought about it for a while, and how that sort of plays into my novel. Every writer is in a sense re-telling a certain story of their life with a different ending, I think.
If one person underwent a tragic event, could that person undo his memory and re-write it completely? Or would he just copy over it, like a VHS tape? If that person was the only one who truly knew what happened, and he re-wrote his memory, would his fake memory actually be the "truth"? No, probably not. Don't make fun of me. Someday I'll re-read this blog and laugh.
Isn't it marvelous how the memory works, or doesn't work? I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
Lorin told me a story the other day about how My Neighbor Totoro was based on a violent crime that happened in Japan. It's no secret that Totoro is himself fashioned after a Japanese forest spirit. Thirty years ago, two little girls were apparently kidnapped, abused, and raped before being murdered in a brutal fashion. While this was going on, their minds inhabited this dream world with Totoro. The mind manifested an escape for them. Or maybe Totoro himself actually came to those girls and made them dream of this escape-world?
Anyway, it's all bogus, because My Neighbor Totoro is actually about a play experience that Miyazaki and his brother had when they were kids. Still, I thought about it for a while, and how that sort of plays into my novel. Every writer is in a sense re-telling a certain story of their life with a different ending, I think.
If one person underwent a tragic event, could that person undo his memory and re-write it completely? Or would he just copy over it, like a VHS tape? If that person was the only one who truly knew what happened, and he re-wrote his memory, would his fake memory actually be the "truth"? No, probably not. Don't make fun of me. Someday I'll re-read this blog and laugh.
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