"Find yourself" "mired in work"

Finished this tonight. I think I like it and might be putting it in the "for MFA application" pile. If you read it, please let me know what you think.

Also, final rev of One or Two, subtle differences really.

One a month, on pace for a little more than that.

So. Things didn't work out. And I thought it would mess me up. But, I'm happier than I've been in a minute. Blessings in disguise. I'm so much more comfortable with anger than I am with anxiety and uncertainty. Lessons learned: follow your instincts, speak your mind, remember that everything is voluntary.

“Through every moment of pain in this...I will feel blessed.”

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The two proposition, self-cancelling structure

We only let the experts conduct research, design experiments, plumb the depths for new factoids. The remainder are to sit in stiff chairs and take notes, dutifully repeat their interpretations and calculations. In free time, grant the kids rooms to smoke and hypothesize in. Let them there ask their questions and fill their whiteboards and laugh at each other when the whole thing goes surreal. The results of any other approach are a tangle, unreliable, executed with hands trembling in excitement. 've got to demonstrate patience before you can actualize the Flow and let the well-honed subconscious automate the details. And in writing maybe it is the same. Donning a white lab coat now to find out.

I prefer the winter, it seems. 15 hours of daylight is enough to almost drag me out into it. The circumspect sun and the smell of spring things bursting and mountain air inflating corrupted lungs; that is all in my phylogeny. But the cold and the dark: 70,000 years ago this is what we lived in, and this is how we were tested. Bottleneck down to 15 thou-, trim off the weakest limbs, teach the sturdiest boughs how to scrabble through anything.

But then again, its coming the time for ill-advised trips out of the city. Into mountains and deserts and maybe bigger cities with more than one area code. Get to see my boy for the first time in a while, more than that we'll spend some 'quality time' . . .like ID has custody and this visit will be unsupervised.

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Those Who Wait

There's a diatribe about emotional commitment every time my stomach rumbles or my alarm clock raps to me or I've just written a page. And it's not merely distracting oneself to ignore the anxiety of being alive . . .

Discipline is what separates us from beasts. And other things. There is no latent human trait that sparks it, understanding that sweat and effort now brings ecstasy later is too abstract to explain in symbols and color. And the only recourse is to enjoy the stress, find beauty in little sufferings, value personal sacrifices. Understand your weaknesses and demand things from them. Trust this . . I really just want to drink and play video games.

And this colors my dissatisfaction in the grind. There is no way to pour myself into this salt mine. Engineering, in this niche, is interesting but I exert no creativity, I feel no responsibility or accomplishment by pushing myself, there is no pride, and, most, there is no joy in this stress. But I'm good at it. This is my safety net for life. Strange: I could have done this straight out of high school.

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gratitude, apologies, affection: this is none of these

On the 12th I was stood up and leaned out into the arboric night for bacchanal and battery. Shots in warm whiskey glasses and eying scenester girls that I've likely met and forgot in similar scenes. This is remasculation, this is like the time I called her by the wrong name in my head. From there parkoured my way with accomplices across all viable blocks. Jumping benches to the delight of weiner vendors, dancing atop concrete displays of corporate insidiousness. A waitress at an unholy amalgamation of Urban Cowboy and every building I avoid, asked us if vodka is the same as tonic. Our drinks were weak and cheap. A woman's globular breast popped out from her tapestry as she rode the mechanical bull. Most people were there to see that.
And then to the late night dance mess at the hipster bar where sometimes friends of mine play guitars and yell drunk things into microphones. This so familiar from dancing Detroit nights that I feel like a partner. Like there is some nonfinancial investment in all this bass and remix. I have friends there I've never spoke to but who recognize my jig. They point when I hit the floor. Art is the tension between what the artist does and what he or she does not do. Here I sprained my ankle because some voice from the 90s demanded that I jump. And I continued to dance because you were not there, and I was. Survivalism something we consider in mornings-after. We took a taxi for a free garbage bag of pizza and conversations with Jabba the Hut, who now sells cellphones on Broadway. We presume his sex slaves have filed civil suits and now live in small towns. I walked a mile to my hovel with that ankle, swelling up as though snakes had laid eggs in it. It does not bend or support weight now that I've leeched the alcohol.

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return, more or less

Had a great workshop, if for nothing but the ego boost. This was the most positive response I've recieved thus far. And with a piece I wasn't totally comfortable with. In discussions with the prof. afterwards, he indicated I'd have no problem getting into an MFA program:"The scene beginning on page 9 is near-perfect".

Enough of that. Reading Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and finding it inseparable from my dreams, from the videos I watch on the Internet, from the other things I'm reading. I wake up with the sense that I've just survived some tragic, dystopic vignette. I want to sleep twelves hours a day just for my dreams. Just for a sliver of what's going on in there . . .

I think I've exhausted all potentialities, in my head. I'm ready for whatever. Just don't take my basement or my word processor or my weed or my cat or my inspiration. And just don't drag it out: I turn 25 years old next week. The time is now.

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