got a column at xenith.net called "blow through the coals." will now write stuff for there.
this blog shall remain, however. either for me to look at on google analytics in five years to see if visitor trends changed since I stopped writing it, or as a permanent record of somewhat veiled references of things that happened to me since december of last year, or as a convenient resource for when I'm writing a cover letter and can't remember a story I wrote.
it's been fun.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
chapter one: adoption
phase one is writing a poem.
no.
phase one is staying up from now until six in the morning, buying that poetry book, reading that one poem on the walk back to my dorm, then writing a poem. hope my printer still works.
no.
phase one is thinking about the poem I'm going to write in response to the poem I haven't read yet, but should have read, i.e. at a time other than six thirty in the morning, walking back from the bookstore.
no.
phase one is thinking about all the stuff I was doing instead of buying and reading that book, or what I was not doing, i.e. reading/buying/writing that book.
I need a book of poetry to read and write a poem about. I need to write about a poem I read about and read what I wrote about. I need to write what I read about and put it in a book of poems. I need to buy it and write a poem about it, but only after I've read everything, which I really should've done earlier.
I'm bad at these things, yes.
no.
phase one is staying up from now until six in the morning, buying that poetry book, reading that one poem on the walk back to my dorm, then writing a poem. hope my printer still works.
no.
phase one is thinking about the poem I'm going to write in response to the poem I haven't read yet, but should have read, i.e. at a time other than six thirty in the morning, walking back from the bookstore.
no.
phase one is thinking about all the stuff I was doing instead of buying and reading that book, or what I was not doing, i.e. reading/buying/writing that book.
I need a book of poetry to read and write a poem about. I need to write about a poem I read about and read what I wrote about. I need to write what I read about and put it in a book of poems. I need to buy it and write a poem about it, but only after I've read everything, which I really should've done earlier.
I'm bad at these things, yes.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
chapter four: annulment of marriage
slowly weaning myself off stories like a stimulant of your choice. what I need is a collection. I need to write seven or eight stories and put them in a book and lay the last four years to rest and keep moving. I don't want to keep moving until I've buried all that shit, it doesn't make sense to just plow on, ideas don't suffocate the same way kittens do in christmas boxes. that morbidity was almost intentional. sigh.
what I'd like to do is write a love story at the end of all this. fire off fifty thousand words by the end of the year. that'll be spring. summer will be the love story, and it'll take all summer. it'll be good timing, since I can match writing with my pace at work. easy. just like that.
immediate steps are self-evident. I have to collapse this ponzi scheme I've built before it steals from me that bit of wisdom. I'll want everything I can get my head around and probably some bullshit token to remind me of the only place that kind of turnaround can come from. I've got a good start to it, though, stayed up all last night writing about W.E.B. DuBois, and now I'm at a library, printing out my paper and staying awake. awake.
know the cheesiest line I ever read? some lemony snicket book. I was thirteen or twelve. it was the first one, there was a part near the end where a boy's reading law to save his sister from marrying the Count, and the boy was having a hard time staying awake, cause law books are very dense. it said, "He found himself reading the same line over and over. He found himself reading the same line over and over. He found himself reading the same line over and over." I felt violated.
what I'd like to do is write a love story at the end of all this. fire off fifty thousand words by the end of the year. that'll be spring. summer will be the love story, and it'll take all summer. it'll be good timing, since I can match writing with my pace at work. easy. just like that.
immediate steps are self-evident. I have to collapse this ponzi scheme I've built before it steals from me that bit of wisdom. I'll want everything I can get my head around and probably some bullshit token to remind me of the only place that kind of turnaround can come from. I've got a good start to it, though, stayed up all last night writing about W.E.B. DuBois, and now I'm at a library, printing out my paper and staying awake. awake.
know the cheesiest line I ever read? some lemony snicket book. I was thirteen or twelve. it was the first one, there was a part near the end where a boy's reading law to save his sister from marrying the Count, and the boy was having a hard time staying awake, cause law books are very dense. it said, "He found himself reading the same line over and over. He found himself reading the same line over and over. He found himself reading the same line over and over." I felt violated.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
chapter three: direct derivation
it's a system, that's all. all it is is a car made out of paper and golf pencils that you have to figure out how to drive within three hours. if you don't, you're not really fucked, you'll just have to do better on the next one, when they move up to big rigs, then onward to bullet trains and yachts and kitty hawks and eventually interstellar transit wormholes. inevitable, really, the expansion of technology.
know what I've never understood? intelligence scores in role playing games. if you make an extremely intelligent character, and he really was smart, it wasn't just a statistic that affected a bunch of other statistics, etc., wouldn't he question the logic of the role playing game? ask himself, "what the fuck am I doing here? why are these people trying to kill me?" (as often this is the case.) would he take a clue from bad dialogue and obvious seams in the geography? there are a few random characters in grand theft auto 4 who only exist to walk around with grocery bags in their hands. there are much more obvious holes in that particular representation of reality, such as the minimal effort it takes to make a car explode, and the fact that, while it's implausible for a car to explode if you aim for the gas tank, it happens if you shoot a grand theft auto car anywhere- even the door- or the fact that if you fall thousands of feet, get caught in helicopter blades while jumping out from thousands of feet in the air, or get caught in helicopter blades while the helicopter simultaneously explodes thousands of feet in the air while you are jumping out, if you have a hundred bucks for medical fees, you'll survive and - wouldn't an intelligent person realize these things and ask a few obvious questions?
why call it intelligence, then? it's clearly a misuse of the word. the intelligence is on the other side of the television, every time. role playing games exist because sometime in the recent past our species reckoned, god knows how or why, that it needed to live vicariously through the more interesting lives of video game characters. one could argue that intelligence scores in role playing games are embellishments of the "role-playing" part: you can make your guy either smart or dumb, a decision based upon social anxieties which will be researched in anything but the hard drives of xboxes.
you could argue that it's a justification of anything bad the character will do in the game. "it's grand theft auto, sometimes you run over pedestrians." but that's an argument against yourself. then you assume that the game exists because you want it to, or need it to, as an expression of what you can't do. "since I can't be in grand theft auto, this other person has to be, and he runs over pedestrians sometimes, what do you know." they are mutually exclusive, yes.
know what I've never understood? intelligence scores in role playing games. if you make an extremely intelligent character, and he really was smart, it wasn't just a statistic that affected a bunch of other statistics, etc., wouldn't he question the logic of the role playing game? ask himself, "what the fuck am I doing here? why are these people trying to kill me?" (as often this is the case.) would he take a clue from bad dialogue and obvious seams in the geography? there are a few random characters in grand theft auto 4 who only exist to walk around with grocery bags in their hands. there are much more obvious holes in that particular representation of reality, such as the minimal effort it takes to make a car explode, and the fact that, while it's implausible for a car to explode if you aim for the gas tank, it happens if you shoot a grand theft auto car anywhere- even the door- or the fact that if you fall thousands of feet, get caught in helicopter blades while jumping out from thousands of feet in the air, or get caught in helicopter blades while the helicopter simultaneously explodes thousands of feet in the air while you are jumping out, if you have a hundred bucks for medical fees, you'll survive and - wouldn't an intelligent person realize these things and ask a few obvious questions?
why call it intelligence, then? it's clearly a misuse of the word. the intelligence is on the other side of the television, every time. role playing games exist because sometime in the recent past our species reckoned, god knows how or why, that it needed to live vicariously through the more interesting lives of video game characters. one could argue that intelligence scores in role playing games are embellishments of the "role-playing" part: you can make your guy either smart or dumb, a decision based upon social anxieties which will be researched in anything but the hard drives of xboxes.
you could argue that it's a justification of anything bad the character will do in the game. "it's grand theft auto, sometimes you run over pedestrians." but that's an argument against yourself. then you assume that the game exists because you want it to, or need it to, as an expression of what you can't do. "since I can't be in grand theft auto, this other person has to be, and he runs over pedestrians sometimes, what do you know." they are mutually exclusive, yes.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
chapter two: warrior poets
There will be warrior poets in the foxholes of low paying jobs. They will scratch out words with golf pencils on receipts from the golf pencil store. They will write about how there are no movies anymore, only things warrior poets do, and write poems about. They will mention that there aren't newspapers, either, only bloggers who are warrior poets, taking notes in the trenches of the working poor. They will say how there aren't novels, only chapbooks divided into the five hundred words that the best of warrior poets can stand to write down before falling asleep on the couch at the end of a harrowing day on the frontlines of money. They will also mention that they have run out of songs, because the only people alive that still make them are warrior poets, dug in deep outside the no-man's-land of homelessness. They will tell you to be happy you exist, because some people, like warrior poets, are not that lucky. These words will be viewed by many from a great distance. Then they will feel like warrior poets do, like they have conquered something, but that something still remains to be conquered. They will either fight wars so that people don't have to tell stories, or they will tell stories so that people don't have to fight wars. In either case they will be the warrior poets somebody else doesn't have to be.
Friday, March 6, 2009
chapter one: duct tape rhombus
oh, for goodness sakes, why not just finish the goddamned kafka paper? everything else is predicated on that. obviously. finish that, then go study for art history. instead of reading stuff you've already written and pretending a conglomerate of that would suffice for any problem, anything, just self-plagiarize until all your problems are solved! it is easy!
finish that kafka paper, even though you are skeptical of the idea of the performative self, it's too fucking easy to describe that kind of relationship, the walt whitman thing, my innermost soul must not be abased by the rest of me, and vice versa for the rest of me, that wasn't a clever bit of dramatic criticism, that was fucking song of myself, what kind of asshole tries to retitle that?
write it, just two pages, it'll take half an hour, how hard could it be to integrate a second source? why are you even worrying about it? just finish it, go on, write a little more than two pages, your professor will be impressed at your will to overachieve- over! achieve!- but only if you are succinct. indeed, your succinctness must be to such a degree that your professor doesn't notice the overlapping onto the third page. they will just turn the page without thinking "I have turned one more page than expected," that's how succinct it'll be, so goddamned succinct and precise and clean that they are physically bothered by its perfection.
better yet, go outside, right now, bring your copy of The Metamorphosis and outline the most succinct, clearly argued, concise, to the point, scholarly, edible, evocative-of-a-certain-color-or-shade-of-yellow kafka paper ever written in the ninety something years since they've been writing kafka papers. so evocative of the color yellow that, in ninety more years, when the pages your paper is written on begin to yellow with age, future generations of kafka scholars will look on it and say, "What the fuck? It's not just me after all!" and then there will be much rejoicing.
no, you can't hand this in instead. go write it now, it's almost five in the morning.
finish that kafka paper, even though you are skeptical of the idea of the performative self, it's too fucking easy to describe that kind of relationship, the walt whitman thing, my innermost soul must not be abased by the rest of me, and vice versa for the rest of me, that wasn't a clever bit of dramatic criticism, that was fucking song of myself, what kind of asshole tries to retitle that?
write it, just two pages, it'll take half an hour, how hard could it be to integrate a second source? why are you even worrying about it? just finish it, go on, write a little more than two pages, your professor will be impressed at your will to overachieve- over! achieve!- but only if you are succinct. indeed, your succinctness must be to such a degree that your professor doesn't notice the overlapping onto the third page. they will just turn the page without thinking "I have turned one more page than expected," that's how succinct it'll be, so goddamned succinct and precise and clean that they are physically bothered by its perfection.
better yet, go outside, right now, bring your copy of The Metamorphosis and outline the most succinct, clearly argued, concise, to the point, scholarly, edible, evocative-of-a-certain-color-or-shade-of-yellow kafka paper ever written in the ninety something years since they've been writing kafka papers. so evocative of the color yellow that, in ninety more years, when the pages your paper is written on begin to yellow with age, future generations of kafka scholars will look on it and say, "What the fuck? It's not just me after all!" and then there will be much rejoicing.
no, you can't hand this in instead. go write it now, it's almost five in the morning.
Monday, February 23, 2009
chapter three: they preferred to remain anonymous
statement of purpose:
although friending people on facebook is arbitrary, the individual facebook page is personal and immediately relevant to its owner. the arbitrarity of interactions on the internet overcomes and eventually squashes any personal relevance which an individual's facebook page might contain. (eventually, you realize that nobody cares that you liked the beatles as a child. they never read the about me paragraph you've stitched together like frankenstein's monster. they just want to write on your wall and look at your pictures and get your phone number to have but never call.) this is the direct antithesis of healthy friendships in the world of mass and volume, which rely on the intimate, interpersonal exchanges which facebook can neither facilitate nor simulate.
hypothesis:
facebook has diluted the meaning of the word "friendship" to such an extent that I can friend everybody with a last name beginning with the letter "A."
procedure:
I began by searching for (in quotes) " A," notice the space before the "A." this would separate everybody with first names that began with "A" from the people I wanted to friend. I made exceptions for people with names like "D'Angelo," or "Van Adler." I friended them too, because they would probably appear on a list of people with last names beginning with the letter "A," which is exactly what I wanted.
I added a lot of Arnold's, Arsenault's and Abbot's. I added a few people with the name "Aa Aa," alhtough I figured this wasn't their real names, but that they preferred to remain anonymous. I friended them because I didn't want to start making exceptions to the rule.
One lady I friended asked me, "hey what's up? :)," to which I replied, "Hi! Not much." then she wrote, "do i know you by any chance?", to which I replied, "I'm afraid not, I'm just friending everybody with a last name beginning with the letter 'A.'" she promptly unfriended me.
four days into the experiment, I got a message while friending people, which informed me that if I kept on like this, my account would be banned. all other friends I'd add would have to verify that we are friends. this was either a challenge to or the end of my career in the field of social commentary.
conclusion:
this is only a little bit poetic.
although friending people on facebook is arbitrary, the individual facebook page is personal and immediately relevant to its owner. the arbitrarity of interactions on the internet overcomes and eventually squashes any personal relevance which an individual's facebook page might contain. (eventually, you realize that nobody cares that you liked the beatles as a child. they never read the about me paragraph you've stitched together like frankenstein's monster. they just want to write on your wall and look at your pictures and get your phone number to have but never call.) this is the direct antithesis of healthy friendships in the world of mass and volume, which rely on the intimate, interpersonal exchanges which facebook can neither facilitate nor simulate.
hypothesis:
facebook has diluted the meaning of the word "friendship" to such an extent that I can friend everybody with a last name beginning with the letter "A."
procedure:
I began by searching for (in quotes) " A," notice the space before the "A." this would separate everybody with first names that began with "A" from the people I wanted to friend. I made exceptions for people with names like "D'Angelo," or "Van Adler." I friended them too, because they would probably appear on a list of people with last names beginning with the letter "A," which is exactly what I wanted.
I added a lot of Arnold's, Arsenault's and Abbot's. I added a few people with the name "Aa Aa," alhtough I figured this wasn't their real names, but that they preferred to remain anonymous. I friended them because I didn't want to start making exceptions to the rule.
One lady I friended asked me, "hey what's up? :)," to which I replied, "Hi! Not much." then she wrote, "do i know you by any chance?", to which I replied, "I'm afraid not, I'm just friending everybody with a last name beginning with the letter 'A.'" she promptly unfriended me.
four days into the experiment, I got a message while friending people, which informed me that if I kept on like this, my account would be banned. all other friends I'd add would have to verify that we are friends. this was either a challenge to or the end of my career in the field of social commentary.
conclusion:
this is only a little bit poetic.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
chapter two: the accidental crushing of important things
thinking of starting a brand new story, completely from scratch, positively original, about a guy who's afraid of going to sleep in his own bed. this is not based exclusively from personal experience, no, as I know of other people who've gone without sleeping in their own beds for much longer stretches of time. maybe he'd be in prison. maybe he'd sleep on the floor for the first couple months, then get beaten up or get so obese off prison fare that he'd have to grudgingly accept the bed as a stubborn fact of his existence, as relentless as the shooting pain in his back, which it would cure in an ironic and climactic and revelatory manner after about five thousand words.
my own sore back is not the single source of this idea, no.
I am looking for a couple of things: a nice, concise prose, maybe as a way to adapt in advance to law school, which I fear will turn into another couple of years spent accidentally crushing important things. another good title for a story: "the accidental crushing of important things."
today I wrote a poem about the midget who could not break those cuffs. a good friend asked me, "How fucked are we?" and I replied, "There are so many layers to that question." it would've taken me a year to list all the reasons. that is one finite answer to that infinite question. and that reflexivity is yet another beating heart of postmodernism, oh so banally waiting for a stake to be driven through it.
my own sore back is not the single source of this idea, no.
I am looking for a couple of things: a nice, concise prose, maybe as a way to adapt in advance to law school, which I fear will turn into another couple of years spent accidentally crushing important things. another good title for a story: "the accidental crushing of important things."
today I wrote a poem about the midget who could not break those cuffs. a good friend asked me, "How fucked are we?" and I replied, "There are so many layers to that question." it would've taken me a year to list all the reasons. that is one finite answer to that infinite question. and that reflexivity is yet another beating heart of postmodernism, oh so banally waiting for a stake to be driven through it.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
chapter one: the gut of a ship
fell asleep this afternoon on the twelfth floor of my library, while reading Eugene Onegin, the Nabokov translation. my intention was to finish one translation, then move on to another translation, and so on, until I achieved a mastery of the form through osmosis. this purpose was complicated by my falling asleep on my Nabokov translation.
I dreamed I was sitting in the hull of an old-fashioned whaling ship, which had been refurbished into a church. (that is much better than a church made into a boat.) my Logic professor began to give a lecture on Jonah and the Whale. I couldn't pay attention, because I was busy swinging on the ropes that hung from the ceiling. everybody was disappointed that I was being so immature at such a critical moment in the lecture.
the symbolism of that, I'll leave to you to fully decode. do I expect lectures to do the work of sermons? why do you need ceiling-mounted ropes in the hull of a ship? was this the moment of clarity about which I was so desperate to explain in an overlong, overwrought freshman novel?
I got bored thinking about that, and went back to reading. it's only ever really good when it's your last remaining option.
I dreamed I was sitting in the hull of an old-fashioned whaling ship, which had been refurbished into a church. (that is much better than a church made into a boat.) my Logic professor began to give a lecture on Jonah and the Whale. I couldn't pay attention, because I was busy swinging on the ropes that hung from the ceiling. everybody was disappointed that I was being so immature at such a critical moment in the lecture.
the symbolism of that, I'll leave to you to fully decode. do I expect lectures to do the work of sermons? why do you need ceiling-mounted ropes in the hull of a ship? was this the moment of clarity about which I was so desperate to explain in an overlong, overwrought freshman novel?
I got bored thinking about that, and went back to reading. it's only ever really good when it's your last remaining option.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
chapter four: everything's shaking around a bit
there was a big snowstorm followed by a horrible ice storm and my classes got canceled yesterday and today until eleven o'clock. I don't know if they were serving breakfast in the dining commons, but I would've liked to go, if they were. the ice storm made it impossible to find out.
I started this thing a couple days ago where I would only eat one chewy bar per day. I wanted to find out how little I could get by on. unfortunately, I didn't stick to that plan and ate other things, so unless I develop some will power before my chewy bar stores deplete, the experiment will never be completed.
I read some book called "On Truth," which is either a landmark, knockout punch to postmodernism, or it's a really good dictionary entry. (Why not both? That's probably all it takes to knock out a postmodernist. A dictionary.)
I started this thing a couple days ago where I would only eat one chewy bar per day. I wanted to find out how little I could get by on. unfortunately, I didn't stick to that plan and ate other things, so unless I develop some will power before my chewy bar stores deplete, the experiment will never be completed.
I read some book called "On Truth," which is either a landmark, knockout punch to postmodernism, or it's a really good dictionary entry. (Why not both? That's probably all it takes to knock out a postmodernist. A dictionary.)
Thursday, January 22, 2009
chapter three: in search of a good backspace key
sometimes I have vain thoughts, like if I have my dad's bone structure or my mother's, or if my hands are being slowly warped by all the writing I do, and instead of long, graceful pianist's fingers they'll look more and more hobbit-like as I get older. I worry if I'm going bald, if I'm going grey, which one is worse, which one I'd take if I was forced to choose, what my children will think about me, what I will think about my children, what my parents will think of my children, whether they will make good grandparents, whether they will like being grandparents, or just the word "grandparent," whether they will adapt easily to that role or if it'll prickle around the shoulders and throat like a bad jacket until they finally accept that I've got kids. I think about what it feels like to be outlived. I wonder if it's like playing catch.
I wonder if I'll get a job. I wonder if I can get a job teaching somewhere I'd want to go back to. I wonder about my rationale for teaching: I would like to do something good. I would like to solve problems: long-term problems, which can only be solved through years of breaking your ass. I'm not vain enough to think I can solve anything for all time. I think about that ridiculous, asinine platitude at the end of that story about the old guy throwing starfish on the beach.
(short version: young kid throwing starfish back in the ocean at low tide. beach is covered in them, no way he'll get all of them. old guy asks him: "why are you doing that? there are so many to help, you can't hope to make a difference." kid says: "make a difference to that one.")
I think about making myself vomit, and I don't have the heart for it, or my heart would come out too, and that would be too messy.
but teaching, there's a real solution. to my problems. I make no illusions about that. teaching would be two things:
1) steady job
1.1) very important. must have a day job. can't not have a day job, or you would starve. we're not in the baudelaire days. it's no longer practical to buy books after you buy food. it's only slightly poetic, and other people have done that before, and better.
1.2) nor are we in the f. scott fitzgerald days, when you could support a healthy lifestyle of international travel and elegant ballrooms and champagne wishes and caviar dreams off the forty thousand dollars (inflation-adjusted) that you make off one story.
1.2a) we're not even in the ray bradbury days, when if you had talent (as stephen king defines it) and worked until your ass fell off, you had a hope of at least supporting yourself. those days are gone.
1.2b) you know that guy from the office? jim? from the office? he wanted to be a TV writer. he had better odds making a living as an actor. just to give you an idea of how far from plausible it is.
1.3) there is no such thing as teacher's block. ( as evidence of this, I've had some fantastic gym teachers in my day.)
1.4) the health insurance. nice perk, if you plan on having kids, slipping on ice or getting cancer.
1.4a) oh, cancer jokes. christ. I almost forgot. there aren't any in this blog. this one comes courtesy of jeff. there's a five year old boy playing in a sandbox with police cars. they're driving around little sandcastles he's built, fighting crime and putting the bad guys away for good, where they won't hurt any more sand-people for the rest of their days. then he hears something in the street: sirens, really loud, and he looks and sees two police cars gunning it, they look like blurs of sharp, violent reds and blues. he puts down his police cars, runs out of the sandbox, into his house where his mom is and says, "mom! I know what I want to be when I grow up! I want to be a policeman!" his mom says, "oh, son. you're not going to grow up. you have cancer."
2) idealism
2.1) all you need to graduate high school is high-functioning illiteracy. nothing more. this is a problem. people don't like to read. as proof of this, odds are against me making a living off the stuff I write, because there isn't enough demand for things to read.
2.1a) teaching would address this problem at its roots. history, english, science, anything but math, basically, any of these subjects, you can make it impossible for a kid to get through your course (not pass, that would be going too far, no, I shouldn't compromise that, but it's that kind of world.) without reading. a lot.
2.2) maybe that's a better way to do it that writing. all a writer can do to make people more literate is write good stuff that makes people want to read. not only their stuff, but other people's as well. a teacher can make a kid want to read the same amount of stuff, but there's no ego involved. and if half the reason is idealism, shouldn't there be no place for ego in it?
2.2a) after all, who can say "I've done more for literacy than any given English, science or history teacher," other than an asshole the size of Mars.
2.3) who hasn't cringed when a college student- college! student!- haltingly reads something they wrote- they! wrote!- to the rest of the class? who can help but cringe?
2.3a) I have physical reactions to bad writing. I can't hide it. I try to apologize for that as much as I can, but if something on the metaphysical wavelength causes me to spasm down here on earth, there's only so much making up I can do before I cross the threshold of bullshit. if I'm addressing the problem of bad writing being out there, swimming about in the ocean of forced metaphors and gut-wrenching similes and assonance and "little did he know" and paragraphs that start with "suddenly," couldn't I begin to feel a bit better about all those times I couldn't resist a small cringe at William Hazlitt or Dan Brown or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Tolstoy or Turgenev, Ayn Rand, Emily Dickinson, that woman who wrote that vampire book, Palahniuk, Chbosky, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs guy, occasionally Kierkegaard?
these reasons could be applied in reverse to writing, yes. I'm not ignoring that, kind of.
I wonder if I'll get a job. I wonder if I can get a job teaching somewhere I'd want to go back to. I wonder about my rationale for teaching: I would like to do something good. I would like to solve problems: long-term problems, which can only be solved through years of breaking your ass. I'm not vain enough to think I can solve anything for all time. I think about that ridiculous, asinine platitude at the end of that story about the old guy throwing starfish on the beach.
(short version: young kid throwing starfish back in the ocean at low tide. beach is covered in them, no way he'll get all of them. old guy asks him: "why are you doing that? there are so many to help, you can't hope to make a difference." kid says: "make a difference to that one.")
I think about making myself vomit, and I don't have the heart for it, or my heart would come out too, and that would be too messy.
but teaching, there's a real solution. to my problems. I make no illusions about that. teaching would be two things:
1) steady job
1.1) very important. must have a day job. can't not have a day job, or you would starve. we're not in the baudelaire days. it's no longer practical to buy books after you buy food. it's only slightly poetic, and other people have done that before, and better.
1.2) nor are we in the f. scott fitzgerald days, when you could support a healthy lifestyle of international travel and elegant ballrooms and champagne wishes and caviar dreams off the forty thousand dollars (inflation-adjusted) that you make off one story.
1.2a) we're not even in the ray bradbury days, when if you had talent (as stephen king defines it) and worked until your ass fell off, you had a hope of at least supporting yourself. those days are gone.
1.2b) you know that guy from the office? jim? from the office? he wanted to be a TV writer. he had better odds making a living as an actor. just to give you an idea of how far from plausible it is.
1.3) there is no such thing as teacher's block. ( as evidence of this, I've had some fantastic gym teachers in my day.)
1.4) the health insurance. nice perk, if you plan on having kids, slipping on ice or getting cancer.
1.4a) oh, cancer jokes. christ. I almost forgot. there aren't any in this blog. this one comes courtesy of jeff. there's a five year old boy playing in a sandbox with police cars. they're driving around little sandcastles he's built, fighting crime and putting the bad guys away for good, where they won't hurt any more sand-people for the rest of their days. then he hears something in the street: sirens, really loud, and he looks and sees two police cars gunning it, they look like blurs of sharp, violent reds and blues. he puts down his police cars, runs out of the sandbox, into his house where his mom is and says, "mom! I know what I want to be when I grow up! I want to be a policeman!" his mom says, "oh, son. you're not going to grow up. you have cancer."
2) idealism
2.1) all you need to graduate high school is high-functioning illiteracy. nothing more. this is a problem. people don't like to read. as proof of this, odds are against me making a living off the stuff I write, because there isn't enough demand for things to read.
2.1a) teaching would address this problem at its roots. history, english, science, anything but math, basically, any of these subjects, you can make it impossible for a kid to get through your course (not pass, that would be going too far, no, I shouldn't compromise that, but it's that kind of world.) without reading. a lot.
2.2) maybe that's a better way to do it that writing. all a writer can do to make people more literate is write good stuff that makes people want to read. not only their stuff, but other people's as well. a teacher can make a kid want to read the same amount of stuff, but there's no ego involved. and if half the reason is idealism, shouldn't there be no place for ego in it?
2.2a) after all, who can say "I've done more for literacy than any given English, science or history teacher," other than an asshole the size of Mars.
2.3) who hasn't cringed when a college student- college! student!- haltingly reads something they wrote- they! wrote!- to the rest of the class? who can help but cringe?
2.3a) I have physical reactions to bad writing. I can't hide it. I try to apologize for that as much as I can, but if something on the metaphysical wavelength causes me to spasm down here on earth, there's only so much making up I can do before I cross the threshold of bullshit. if I'm addressing the problem of bad writing being out there, swimming about in the ocean of forced metaphors and gut-wrenching similes and assonance and "little did he know" and paragraphs that start with "suddenly," couldn't I begin to feel a bit better about all those times I couldn't resist a small cringe at William Hazlitt or Dan Brown or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Tolstoy or Turgenev, Ayn Rand, Emily Dickinson, that woman who wrote that vampire book, Palahniuk, Chbosky, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs guy, occasionally Kierkegaard?
these reasons could be applied in reverse to writing, yes. I'm not ignoring that, kind of.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
chapter one: thinnness
sam: Hello again!
sam: My, we seem to bump into each other quite often.
sam: quite!
sam: it's an astonishing coincidence.
sam: I believe it is.
sam: we haven't spoken in some time, yes?
sam: yes, yes. my apologies.
sam: well, there are so many preoccupations.
sam: certainly.
sam: it's only natural that we'd stop talking to each other.
sam: yes, tragic.
sam: but no less inevitable.
sam: indeed. how sad. do you have a headache?
sam: why, yes, I do. how did you guess?
sam: you don't get one like that every time you feel out of place?
sam: out of place?
sam: yes, like when you leave a room and go back in to find something's moved.
sam: but you didn't touch it?
sam: yes! exactly. you don't feel that, just day to day?
sam: well, I do now, maybe because you mentioned it.
sam: ah, the Heisenberg Uncertainty jive now?
sam: that by naming the elephant in the room, it's no longer that name.
sam: yes, yes.
sam: what was before a kind of thinness is now just a headache.
sam: but a remarkable heavy one, though.
sam: yes, I am a bit annoyed.
sam: annoyed?
sam: yes, bothered.
sam: but annoyed, too?
sam: I can be both at the same time.
sam: well, which one more?
sam: well, you'd have to look into the source of both the annoyance and the bother.
sam: what annoys you?
sam: my headache. it bugs me. it's uncomfortable. I would rather not have it in my head. I didn't invite it.
sam: and what's bothering you?
sam: such a more intense word.
sam: bother?
sam: against annoys. bother is much more deeply troubling, don't you think?
sam: yes, yes. well?
sam: oh, yes. well, it would have to be the source of the headache.
sam: that odd, thin feeling?
sam: no, that heavy headache.
sam: I thought that was only an annoyance?
sam: no, the source of it, I mean.
sam: ah. you mean the feeling that annoyed you before has now evolved into a source of great discomfort. a bother.
sam: no, not at all.
sam: oh?
sam: no, it's the source of the headache that bothers me.
sam: I'm not sure I understand.
sam: it would take some time to explain.
sam: as with all things.
sam: yes, how silly of me.
sam: already forgotten!
sam: it's the difference between hating the sinner and hating the sin.
sam: ah.
sam: you don't understand?
sam: you're bothered not by the headache, but the fact that you have a headache.
sam: yes.
sam: because something must have given you a headache.
sam: yes.
sam: it's a symptom of a larger problem, you fear?
sam: I believe so.
sam: well, what's that problem?
sam: everything is thin.
sam: ah.
sam: I believe we've just exited the realm of our respective comprehension, old friend.
sam: as do I, as do I.
sam: My, we seem to bump into each other quite often.
sam: quite!
sam: it's an astonishing coincidence.
sam: I believe it is.
sam: we haven't spoken in some time, yes?
sam: yes, yes. my apologies.
sam: well, there are so many preoccupations.
sam: certainly.
sam: it's only natural that we'd stop talking to each other.
sam: yes, tragic.
sam: but no less inevitable.
sam: indeed. how sad. do you have a headache?
sam: why, yes, I do. how did you guess?
sam: you don't get one like that every time you feel out of place?
sam: out of place?
sam: yes, like when you leave a room and go back in to find something's moved.
sam: but you didn't touch it?
sam: yes! exactly. you don't feel that, just day to day?
sam: well, I do now, maybe because you mentioned it.
sam: ah, the Heisenberg Uncertainty jive now?
sam: that by naming the elephant in the room, it's no longer that name.
sam: yes, yes.
sam: what was before a kind of thinness is now just a headache.
sam: but a remarkable heavy one, though.
sam: yes, I am a bit annoyed.
sam: annoyed?
sam: yes, bothered.
sam: but annoyed, too?
sam: I can be both at the same time.
sam: well, which one more?
sam: well, you'd have to look into the source of both the annoyance and the bother.
sam: what annoys you?
sam: my headache. it bugs me. it's uncomfortable. I would rather not have it in my head. I didn't invite it.
sam: and what's bothering you?
sam: such a more intense word.
sam: bother?
sam: against annoys. bother is much more deeply troubling, don't you think?
sam: yes, yes. well?
sam: oh, yes. well, it would have to be the source of the headache.
sam: that odd, thin feeling?
sam: no, that heavy headache.
sam: I thought that was only an annoyance?
sam: no, the source of it, I mean.
sam: ah. you mean the feeling that annoyed you before has now evolved into a source of great discomfort. a bother.
sam: no, not at all.
sam: oh?
sam: no, it's the source of the headache that bothers me.
sam: I'm not sure I understand.
sam: it would take some time to explain.
sam: as with all things.
sam: yes, how silly of me.
sam: already forgotten!
sam: it's the difference between hating the sinner and hating the sin.
sam: ah.
sam: you don't understand?
sam: you're bothered not by the headache, but the fact that you have a headache.
sam: yes.
sam: because something must have given you a headache.
sam: yes.
sam: it's a symptom of a larger problem, you fear?
sam: I believe so.
sam: well, what's that problem?
sam: everything is thin.
sam: ah.
sam: I believe we've just exited the realm of our respective comprehension, old friend.
sam: as do I, as do I.
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