fire pit

For Father's Day last year I received a fire pit. If I look out the window of my office, where I do the majority of my writing, I can see it. Of late I've been wondering what it would like to print out everything I've written the last ten years, start a nice fire in the fire pit, and burn all of it. I won't do it, of course, but I wonder if the urge is unusual. 

Somewhere around 9th grade my sister gave me a biography of Sylvia Plath, whose Collected Poems I had recently read. The biography had a large impact on me--it was the first bio of a writer I'd read, and already at that age I was writing a lot and envisioned myself becoming a writer. The book alerted me to the dangers that path might take, and the ecstasies too. One of the images that stuck with me then and that has been with me ever since is Sylvia burning the draft of her second novel, which would have been about Ted, in the immediate aftermath of their marriage falling apart. What did that feel like? How deep was her anger and despair to take such a violent step, one that could not be undone? These are questions we'll never know the answer to. At least there must have been a sense of release in doing so and perhaps a feeling of energy coming from the flames. These days most of us would only need to hit a couple of keys to destroy our work. It doesn't strike me as very cathartic. 

It's not that I've suddenly decided I hate everything I've written. I'm just wondering if a sacrifice is needed. But I've never been one to bargain with The Muse, because like all goddesses in their dealings with mortals, The Muse will always win. So I guess those boxes of papers and my external drive of files is safe for now. The real problem is that even if I burned everything, I'd still wake up the next morning and feel compelled to write. Some things you just can't escape.

messy room (fragment)

A fragment I doodled. Sometimes you have to stop the projects you are working on and just write, regardless of whether it will ever fit anywhere or not. I kinda hope there is more to this one day...

He longed for a messy room, believing it to be a sign of a creative mind, and he’d tried to create one in the downstairs rec room but as soon as there were more than two empty cans or a blanket casually tossed on the floor he’d clean it up. Don’t clean it up, let the mess grow, fester, blossom, he’d tell himself but it was as if an outer force compelled him to tidy up, forcing his hands to pick up the cans and put them in the recycling bin or fold the blanket and place it neatly on the corner of the couch. As much as he wanted to blame an outer force he knew it was something in him that was fundamentally broken and as such had to control his environment. These episodes depressed him greatly. Incapable of creating a messy room, he felt sure his mind was dull and unimaginative. His partner did not talk to him about these episodes. His partner only asked him if he was going to make dinner. If he said yes, his partner would inform him that she sincerely hoped what he made this time was better than last time. I guess maybe you should make it then, he’d say, with no real emotion. He would then retreat to the room he’d failed to make messy and put on an old David Bowie record and wish that he could have alien thoughts and sing in an alien tongue.

The voice in his head was not alien. Maybe it had been, once, long ago, but the familiarity of it and the fact that it had been part of his life for as long as he could remember rendered any sense of strangeness nonexistent. The voice told him what the voice considered to be important things, such as when he should go to bed and whether he should have a salad or spaghetti or both for dinner. The voice reminded him that the wheels could fall of his car and that he was old enough to have a heart attack. He could understand why the voice considered these things important, especially if the voice were truly part of him, which he wasn’t actually sure of. It was a chicken-and-egg question and like many things in his life, it didn’t actually matter. The voice was flat and unemotional most of the time, but every once in a while it teased him with a random line like “the silence of forgotten landscapes” that he was sure must mean something, something profound and important to his sense of spiritual well-being, which could use a buff and shine these days. He’d walk around in a semi-daze, repeating the line, humming it, letting it conjure pictures in his head that were impossibly far from the reality of the objects surrounding him. But he could never make the connection, he could never take the line and do something with it, write a grand novel or paint a grand picture or make a grand movie. Like the attempt at a messy room, this effort was doomed to failure. He didn’t blame anyone for this, though in his more bitter moments he’d make a list of everyone who had ever wronged him and pretend he was assigning blame. This sometimes made him feel better for a moment but he knew it was folly. Things were as things were, and the rec room remained ordered and spotless.

intricacies

What does the wolf see?
The wolf is busy reading Bolano and listening to New Order.

What does the lamp see?
The lamp prefers Bordeaux and finds whiskey disagreeable.

What does the common cold see?
The common cold would remind you that common is not a derogatory term.

What does the bed see?
The bed has the sheets pulled over its eyes and prefers the weight of two over the weight of one.

What does the milk see?
The milk is lonely, everyone it knows has some degree of lactose intolerance.

What does the cat see?
The cat has no need to tell.

What does the air see?
Loneliness and regret, sadness and one-sided conversations.

What does the wolf see?
The wolf is not a wolf. The wolf is over-used. Backwards the wolf is flow.

what's up doc(x)?

As I prepare to actually, seriously submit some of my stories, I'm noticing that there are still publications that insist on .doc submissions instead of .docx. I find this kinda weird--one doesn't have to keep up on the most recent technologies, but Microsoft Word 2003? Is there a reason publishers still use a decade+ old version of Word? It's no big deal from my standpoint, I just find it rather strange. But hey, if that's what they want...

purple

The whole room smells of purple. That's the only way I can describe it. You would have understood what I mean. You would have made a crack about it, something to do with The Color Purple and bad Spielberg films. All Spielberg films are bad, you insisted, but I always made you give the man Indiana Jones. He gave us that, you gave me more.

I sometimes imagine this room, so maybe I'm not walking in it right now. Maybe I'm dreaming the whole thing. These words--dream, reality, room--they are ambiguous. Too big, too loose. That's something you understood too, giving me a hard time for my obsession with words. Words never mean anything, you teasingly said over and over, while I stubbornly insisted that they did. I knew you were riling me up but I never minded. I'm ok being the serious one, the fool. I never laughed much before you, or after you. 

Funny that this room smells purple. Purple has been showing up a lot lately. So has red, but I'm so tired of garish red, red that can't put it in back in its pants or stop slobbering over every idea. Red wants to be beautiful and goes to clumsy extremes to get there. Blue is serene and the color of the water behind the door at the edge of our bed. Yellow is nausea, black is the void, white the stars. Purple is all of these things and none of these things. Purple dress, purple underwear. Purple glitter and paint.

I want to believe you are teasing me again, tempting me to step through the door. Maybe the water won't be blue. Maybe it will be purple. Maybe my eyes can't see color anymore. I tell you I can't do it but you aren't here and I'm just talking to the dust. Ask the dust, sure. I'm not really in this room. This room doesn't exist. Nothing exists. End of story, beginning of words. But it smells so strongly of purple. Purple that dresses these words, teases them to life. Like you used to.

breathing: in, out. in, out.

Understand, it's different than normal thoughts of death. The wondering about where we go after, if anywhere--that's standard operating procedure. The myths and metaphors and all those things we can consider using academic reasoning, nodding our heads calmly, our loved ones waiting in the other room.

I'm talking about the actual stark reality that the way you perceive everything ends and the feeling this realization brings. This bed is no longer a bed, the dresser belongs to another reality, and if you close your eyes they won't open again. When you get so frightened as you climb into bed that by the time you pull the sheets over you, you are stiff as a board. You think: this I is no longer I. If go to sleep I won't wake up. You think: this is silly, I'm going to go to sleep now and when I wake up in the morning my bladder will be full and my left shoulder will ache and I'll get out of bed and go brew a pot of coffee and feed the cats.

But can you be sure?

Death is inevitable, of course, and you know that intellectually and emotionally. But you have so much left to do! So when you do wake up the following morning even the sleepstuff caked over your eyes becomes a miracle, a gift worth studying. I am here once more! You and many others. Yes, some left overnight but you were not one of them, not this time. Your morning piss never felt so good. All the machinery still works, and by the time the first cup of coffee is consumed, it is running just as smooth as it can be. Even the aches and scars are things of joy, proof that you are alive.

But what if? What if you don't wake? Do you see the stars or blackness? Dummy--you won't see anything, your molecules dispersed and disintegrated. The thin thread holding consciousness together dissolved. Not even horror has figured out how to approach this; most works end up with someone experiencing the unknown through their human perception. The human consciousness can't perceive things any other way, which is why every work of art examining the infinite ultimately falls short.

Heaven would be *awful.*

Still, the fear. It returns as the day fades. Dinner is consumed, dishes done, plans laid out for the next day. Plans that assume you will be here the next day. These plans, they are a defense. You can't die if you have plans for the next day! Nope, nope. Take your bath and brush your teeth and replay the day in your head. It was good, wasn't it? Every day you breathe is a good one. You won't stop breathing overnight, really. Oh, those dreams might get dicey and you'll never shake that feeling that everything is falling apart while something beyond your comprehension is bearing down on you...but you'll still breathe, and you'll wake up, and it will all be ok.

Hopefully.

seven things that make my world a better place

Sometimes you just want talk about the things that bring you joy and inspiration. The things that make the world a better place. I find, though, that it’s difficult to convey how much you dig something with words, especially if it really moves you. Yet I want to say something about these things I love and thus this idea was born (also yesterday’s post was all about something that sucks so a little balance will be nice.) The entries will be short; a scholarly treatise this will not be.

Why seven? It’s my favorite number. Couldn’t tell you why. And the why doesn’t matter anyway. Check out the items on the list below (at least those that you are geographically able); maybe you’ll dig ‘em, maybe not. This may or may not become an irregular feature. I may or may not be noncommittal today. What I do know is that I unabashedly love and admire these seven things:

It Follows. The best horror movie of the millennium, rivaled only by Let the Right One In. “We’ll figure it out,” says the little sister to the big sister repeatedly, and in those moments more is said about love and friendship than a billion rom-coms. The performances are exceptional. My first viewing brought tears to my eyes and the film loses none of its power upon repeated viewings. I’ve been known to lament the lack of good, character-driven horror movies in the last twenty years; here is one that stands with the greats. 

Livia Llewellyn’s Engines of Desire. I bought this book when it first came out, loved it, and re-read all of it over the holiday break and loved it even more. Three stories, “Horses,” “At the Edge of Ellensburg,” and “Engines of Desire” pack a gut punch that is as fierce as anything I’ve read in the last ten years; the rest of the stories are great too. She’s got a new collection coming out this year on Word Horde Press and there’s not a book due this year I’m more excited about. I’m also quite enjoying her Patreon-supported erotica project.

Agalloch’s Not Unlike the Waves and Bloodbirds. Ok, technically that’s two things but they are both on the album Ashes Against the Grain so that counts. There is no current band that inspires me as much in the cinematic scope and emotional texture of their music. I rotate through all of their works continually; these two have been calling particularly strong the last few weeks. My writing is primarily inspired by music as opposed to other writing; I strive to write stories that move me like these two songs do. Epic and beautiful, this is music that captures the elemental forces of nature and sweeps you along. “And all of our shadows/are ashes against the grain…”

“Wolf of Hunger, Wolf of Shame” by J.T. Glover. This wonderful tale is a perfectly paced fable about perception and identity (two concepts I’ve been ruminating over a great deal of late.) The syntax, in particular, is a marvel. Though I’m fortunate enough to call the author a friend, said friendship by no means influences my enjoyment of “Wolf of Hunger, Wolf of Shame”: the story stands entirely on its own. Available in Weirdbook #31.

Reuben’s Brews. Seattle is a ridiculous treasure trove for the beer lover; you can’t throw a stone without hitting a dozen craft breweries. Reuben’s stands above the pack. Every beer is lovingly crafted with an exacting eye for the science involved in the brewing process. Reuben’s is the one brewer that I will willingly try beer styles I don’t care for, and more often than not I’ll enjoy those beers. (And if I don’t, it’s simply a palette thing, not because they aren’t excellent beers.) You haven’t experienced craft beer until you’ve had Reuben’s Roggenbier or Imperial IPA or Roasted Rye IPA…or any of their beers.

Mondo Digital. My go-to site for grindhouse and weird cinema. I’ve found a few gems thanks to this site, and I enjoy their reviews, which do a nice job of letting you know just enough about a film to see if you are interested, as well as prepare you for the quality of the actual DVD/Blu-Ray. I also appreciate that, unlike most free sites, they aren’t loaded down with a bunch of ads that render the site unreadable. The white lettering on black background does burn my eyes after a while, but that’s a small price to pay for such a rich resource.

House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films by Kier-la Janisse. There are five film books I love beyond reason and revisit frequently. Three are by (or edited by) Stephen Thrower: Nightmare USA, Beyond Terror and Eyeball. Fourth is Tim Lucas’ weighty marvel Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark. House of Psychotic Women is the newest entry on this list, and an absolute essential one. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll be lazy and link to my Goodreads review. A truly unique voice that brings a sorely-needed perspective to the world of horror and exploitation films.