"Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency … to get the book written."

(quote: Faulkner, video: Chimpanzee Problem Solving")



The woman that lives next door to me sometimes goes out on her back porch and screams. She screams at god, her children who do nothing for her, some entity that strikes me as The Man but she probably understands as misfortune. Today I was in the backyard enjoying the sunset, sitting on a cooler, having a smoke and a beer, reading. I heard her sliding door creak open, watched through the slats of our privacy fence as she sat down on her step. Heard her beer crack open. And for a moment we just drank together. I read a page of my book. And then she starts to cry. A stifled cry like a war widow. And then the vibrato of sob pooled, where the cry starts to make a whining sound. And then she says something. Then says it louder. Then yells "Why doesn't it work?". The question Camus would have asked had he been an Engineer. And then she scolded her grown gone children, they never help. And then she demanded of god to know why he did this to her. And then she cried, the way we don't think people cry; with that 'huh-uh .. uh-oh" getting loud in the black trees and pink darkening sky. Her shouts lasted longer than my tolerance. I went back inside. Finished my beer. Cracked the window open so I could just hear her. That inconsolable grief. I don't know what a person is to do with that.

Reclusive as the days get longer. Habits developed in winter now wincing at the sun, now demanding some middling interval. Punctuation that let's me breathe. Dwindling social interaction somehow makes every one of them more valuable. But it's only half on purpose, the other part the circumstances of grinding. I've got these two classes that demand a novel of reading and two days of writing per week. And my every opinion in them is contrarian, apparently.

I've been rejected by the University of Pittsburgh. I think that if I get rejected ubiquitous, I'm going to take the survival money I've socked away for grad school and move back east. Not Michigan, but closer; somewhere I don't know anyone. Get a job there working part-time (as much to meet new people as anything. Something physically demanding.) and write. Take two years working on the thing that I plan on doing as my thesis. The Ex Nihilo Creative Writing Program. Sign up now.

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"the best, even when I'm cynical"

(quote: Wale, video: Katie Couric interviews Lil Wayne)

According to Malcolm Gladwell, the heaviest factor determining tremendous success (this is Nabokov-greatness, Ali-greatness, Beatles-greatness) is sweat. 10,000 hours this loose threshold by which one can become actualized in their field. And not 10,000 hours spread across one's life, or engaged in something unstimulating, but dedicated, self-motivated industry in whatever it is one is pursuing. This can be influenced by parents, culture, etc, but the pen-to-pad work needs to be done in earnest. So, 10,000 hours breaks down to three hours a day over a decade. Six hours a day for five years. It is not really even that much time. I have already worked more time than this frying chicken, cutting grass, driving around in vans, writing reports and studies, attending meetings. And I have nearly that much time in academia. But I have to admit . . .I haven't spent that much time committing text. But in six months?

(btw: I've been waitlisted for the Ohio State University Creative Writing Program. If a couple people refuse offers, I may get one. So I guess that counts as what, a tie?)

I'm currently working on a story idea that I would like to eventually (finally?) put into graphic form. The gist is that there is a band of interdimensional time-traveling drug dealers that get caught up in retrieving the organs of historical figures as a favor for an immortality cult. Doesn't really sound like the kind of thing I would normally do, but I'm really excited about some of the subtext at work in it. And I'm starting to define an interesting time-travel narrative mechanism that I've never seen before. Anyway, if anyone knows anyone who can illustrate fairly well and would like to work on a project of unknown duration, and little anticipated rewards beyond working on something interesting . . . lemme know. I want to write some comics (which, oddly enough, is like coming full circle for me. I wrote comic books in third grade).

I had to give up on utopia. There was a time when I thought there was some ideal circumstance for humanity. Some arrangement of resources and talents in which everyone could be happy and at peace. I never really described it to myself, or tried to think my way through all of the logistics and politics. There is just this idyllic scene that I think gets conditioned into us. It's almost like a religious belief, but I don't think it comes from the church. It comes from television and stories, the desire for one's children to be happy and the idealization that is generated by parenting in that direction. The very attempt at a cohesive political process suggests that it could arrive at some perfect orchestra of legislation and strictures, that we could somehow design an ever-growing system that seamlessly reproduces the means of its continual reproduction.
But there is no utopia. And this is not the bleak statement it sounds like. It does not mean that a person can't be happy, that we can't hope for things better than whatever situation we are in. It means that there is no perfection to drive towards. There is no Atlantis or Pala or Land of Milk and Honey. And I don't know that we really want it. Because the one thing that defines us more than anything is how we, individually, handle conflict. And as much as I am given to complain about my job, about neoconservatives, about the various ancillary rackets of academia, about the law, about the religious influence on our common culture . . .I desire a fight. I thrive on the fact that there is something that nearly everyone believes in and that I don't. I am a proud contrarian, and if that utopia is built I'm planting charges at the joints in the plexiglass dome over our global greenhouse. We are not made for peace, and while I would like an undisturbed meal as much as the next prole, any time I'm handed what I need I understand that in the long run I am indebted. All of this is relevant to the current discussions about our economic situation. The only real answer is to divest yourself. You didn't design this bullshit, you are not responsible. And the only way you will ever know peace is to take responsibility for your decisions. And the only way you can take responsibility, is if you are in control.

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"there is no greater love than the love i've found amongst this strange, strange world.'

(quote: mookfish, video: Moab, UT, 2008. Look for the synchronized shiver)

My good friend is off again. This time for the Honduras. And then on to Turkey to teach English. And though I know he has left before, there is some slightly subtle difference now. Like that was training; neccessary, beautiful, enlightening, but still preparation for what he's into now. He's a teacher, and I don't mean that he has gone through the academic channels and become certified and followed rules (though he has done that as well), but he is a shaman, a sensei, a wiseman to be consulted on big decisions and with big questions. So the regular teaching thing doesn't quite work. He has to travel, meet students in classrooms or beaches or campgrounds or bars. And there isn't always a lesson plan, or some specific gem of wisdom to be passed on. Sometimes he just asks the right question, sheds the right light, helps you to step back and frame your quandary/question/naivete in the large and in the small. Sometimes he does these things without even saying a word. I don't know how he would react to this, because he is as humble as they come, but he has taught me about as much as any one person has. Some of the things only now am I understanding. So, it's so great to see him go. And struggle with the anxiety and excitement, knowing that he has carved out some destiny for himself. Good luck, brother. You ever need anything, look me up.

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"We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence."

(quote: Darwin, video: Wale-The Artistic Integrity

For my American Realism course I have to write a research paper from no less than 8 sources. The only limitation is that it has to deal with American literature written between the Civil War and World War I. After the paltry class discussion when the professor asked those gathered to define evolution, I decided that I need to examine Darwin's influence on the written word as art form. While he was only partially a philosopher, he presented an idea which fundamentally alters the picture of the world. For those who do not accept his theory, there is still this pausing gap, this rigidly logical refutation of their "meaning" that they must come to terms with. After Darwin, god became obsolete as a philosophical device. And 75 years later, Existentialism questioned whether, in a world without god, does life have any meaning? My research centers around finding 'transitional fossils' that indicate a progression out of Romanticism, via Darwin's findings. Was Realism a rejection of Romanticism at least partially because Darwin changed how we see nature and our place in it? Are the hard truths revealed by Darwin reflected in the grittier aesthetic of Realism? Does the art of the time hint at our collective philosophical evolution, does it indicate the Existential anxiety of casting out mythology and order?

I can't listen to American news anymore. Even NPR has been seized with the Fear. You cannot turn on a television (I'm guessing) or visit a newspaper's website or listen to the radio without dire news about the economy. Thousands being laid-off, millions more underemployed, our collective investments dwindling in value. It is all either a temporary downturn, or the undulating spasms of a false ideology as it crumbles. And the working class can do nothing in reaction but save a little more, leave out a few luxuries, show up to work, try to sleep at night. And I have no lack of sympathy for those who have lost their jobs, or who are going through tough times. But a lot of us made bad decisions, or are stuck in undesirable circumstances, or both. And the lesson to be learned from this, especially for younger people who haven't yet bought a house they can't afford or squirted out one too many lil'uns, is that the whole dream we've been sold is a joke. Buy a house, slave away at a corporate job, distance yourself from reality with television and sports, capitulate to the reproductive urge. All these things and more have been marketed to us as the ideal, as the swift path to happiness. But it isn't. And every second you spend willing yourself to someone else's system, is another inch you drift from the person you are. Not to say that you should never get a job and work for the Man. But never let it fool you that this 9-5 is your life. And never rely on another's enterprise to make you happy. Whatever you do for yourself, can never be taken away.

I've been writing quite a bit so far this year. Though less and less of it is presentable. I'm so much pickier and careful and thoughtful and (un)conscious. And so now I write the first five pages of a story at least three times before I settle into a groove. Write out not an outline but an ever-evolving aesthetic manifesto each time I want a thing to become a story. When I was maybe 20-years old, sleepless, I developed a crude analogy for what a story needs to be. The Bonfire Theory of Narrative Craft. Basically, it is this: A story, at the broadest conceptual level, must have three elements. The first is the flames. Flames are what are seen from a distance, what dazzles, what draws someone in or scares away an animal. This is the story's "gimmick", what you describe a story as being about in one or two sentences (Choke is about a sex-addict who pretends to choke for money and affection). The second aspect is the "fuel". How the fire is assembled, the structure of the wood aligned such that it burns at the desired intensity. This is the story's plot, the causality, what actually happens, how all of the events are tied together. The final element is the coals. The long-burning furnace of the fire, the part you bake hot-dogs on. The part you could take with you in a clay vessel on your pilgrimage and use to start a fire elsewhere. This is the theme of the story. What the story has to say, why the story is important to tell. What from the story can a person take away and add to their own experience? Anyway. Good stories are built like bonfires. And depending on how you want it to burn, you have to carefully consider all three of these aspects.


I'm occasionally opining for the Boise Arbiter now. Check it out.

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"Signs and wonders all along the road"

(quote: Mighty Mos, video: Bertrand Russell)


My brother leaves Boise in three days. He's packed up his belongings, prepped his dog, cleaned his house and found some young rabble to inhabit it, cast a line for job prospects, and is now counting the hours before he roars off into the mountains to be with the woman he loves. I came here because he was here, or at least that's why I tried to. He's my patron saint, the patience and even hand that laid the groundwork for me to be however rebellious and uncouth I have been. The wise and kind older brother that we should all have, and I cannot say I would have tolerated me as well as he has. He has never failed with an encouraging word, an incisive observation, a veteran bit of experience. And our relationship has grown more complicated in the City of Trees. We shared a dwelling for over two years, and relearned each other's idiosyncracies, talked until late at night in that complex of sentence-finishing and head-nodding that only siblings and spouses can conjure. We went to Africa together, to Amsterdam, to San Francisco. He watched me cry a hundred times for someone a million miles away and said exactly what I needed to hear always. He tried to understand my writing, and even when he didn't ruminated about how important it was that I kept going. And though we carry out our lives differently, and I was often selfish and closed off, I respect him as much as any man I know. He's struggling, like all of us, but he has never been afraid to do the hard thing when it was right. He's the man my father could have been, and one whose respect I will work my entire life to maintain. Thanks, bro. It's been good. I love you kid, and what's mine is yours. For life.

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Plans gradually into fruition. Like there is no action but waiting. And all these kilobytes committed to text have simply served to keep me distracted, to keep the nausea down about what may or may not happen six months hence. Anxiety evolves, and the things that made me tremble even two years ago now get swallowed like daily medicine. Money, loneliness, validation, insomnia, stagnation. . .gulp. The next half-decade sits in smoky still-images in my brain: surrounded by spectres, high as a kite, ox-like and obstinate, laughing in the dim morning in my cold bed. I tried my hand at this conventional thing: worked in my office, and put on brown leather shoes, and made the phone calls I had to, and contributed to my retirement fund, and clinked drinks with mid-life crisis casualties. And I didn't fail out, I wasn't asked to leave, and I have burned no bridges, try as I might. The televised 'merikuhn dream just isn't my gig. Even now I can feel the mercury setting in my bones, like concrete turning me into a statue here; groaning and medicating with the other statues in our still, still garden. But I've found a way out, and not a frantic leap from windows, but an almost sanctioned way to stave off my demons and wake up enthusiastic. Almost counting days now . . .

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The other night a friend of my brother's, this guy I've known for about a decade now but have never really connected with, asked me about the whole grad school thing. When I told him I was going so that I could write a novel, he asked: "what do you write? I mean, murder-mysteries, or science fiction, or something?" And I didn't know how to respond. What do I write? So I laid out the plans for my novel, the gist, the theme, the setting, one or two of the characters. The thing is, talking to people that don't read much, I have a hard time explaining what my overall project is. I feel like the follower of some unkempt religion, like some excuse needs to be made. But in the glow of my computer, it all makes absolute sense. Finish two more short-stories that are stewing in my skull and turn everything legible into a self-published collection. Draft the text of my graphic novel about time-traveling drug-dealers and immortality cults. Pound out my novel about loneliness and amnesia and Detroit and identity. Congeal my Antarctic dreams into some kind of bleak narrative. The thing is, I have never felt this in charge of my creative impulse. I know exactly what I'm doing, even if part of the plan requires me to give up all conscious control.

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"Going south, and we are older"

(quote: Beirut, video: clip from Encounters at the End of the World)

I watched Obama's Inauguration Speech, chomping bagels in the conference room, between bands at a house party hours later, and nodded and went goose-bumpy and gave the tiniest fist-pump at moments. I remembered where I was, or what state at least, for previous moments. Recalled the old burning nausea of watching Bush win the second time. Gave up hope in fragments and hang-overs and youtube clips. And Obama made me feel like the problems of humanity might not be insurmountable. That a man with these words, and this backbone, and this brain, might be able to truly 'change' something for the better. The nation truly made a good decision, collectively, for once. We gave credit where it is due, recognized our needs, let the best of our emotions color our choice. And Obama focuses on all things that need focus if we're to really secure our species' survival. But, I realized when he was talking about all the hard-work being done by the unnamed morass, the meaningless struggle of the military, the corporatocracy plundering our 1s and 0s, the desires to live safely and peacefully and retire with dignity, that he never let the American Dream dissolve. He never admitted that our prosperity is won on the backs of those that can't protect themselves. Or that the financial system is not a corrupt business model, but rather an oppressive and failed ideology. That our cultural has evolved into one that equates happiness with mean pleasures and empty, vicarious experiences. The trouble is, that while I think Obama can make inroads on jobs, and healthcare, and our international reputation, this place will still be something that alienates me. I will still shudder at the myth of the American Dream, not because I don't think strong-willed people can do great things, but because it encourages us to settle. It teaches us to be satisfied with mediocrity. Yet, I want everyone's situation to be easier. I want the Israeli's to stop trying to wipe out Palestinians. I want people to have access to doctor's. I want kids in the 'hood to get good educations. It's just that Obama's vision is not my utopia. And the change that would please me cannot be shaped by politics.

I'm becoming obsessed with Antarctica. I spend afternoons reading articles on Big Dead Place, nights watching obscure documentaries on the Ice, pirated versions of The Thing with French subtitles. The appeal is something still metastasizing in my spinal column. In one dream I saw the place in negative, like it was inseparably opposite from my life now. A death-rattle cold taking place of this climate control. Vast expanses of ice and rock substitute buildings and roads and rolling hills. Bureaucracy silly becomes absurd, and everyone drinks to it and curses it, instead of imbibing and regurgitating. Countless decisions simplified by survival instead of the paralyzing anxiety of infinite choices to no consequence. Loneliness like an illness wrought deep in your gut, rather then the demands of trying to be everyone at once. Backbreaking work to pay your privilege to exist in your setting, not your student loans and car insurance.

I'm a gypsy. I just move slow. Plod along like a tortoise till my shell grows moss from each land I rest in. See sunsets become rises from just a few feet to my left. And since I came back from Detroit, the thought of leaving this place keeps me up at night. Anticipation, anxiety, good old Catholic shame and fear. But all of that under a timid bliss. Thinking: Next year this time, I could be anywhere.

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"The worker. . .only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. "

(quote: Marx, video: Instruction Manual for Life)

On New Year's Eve the police force of the United States showed their true colors. In Oakland, Houston, N'awlins police used excessive force on minorities that were ostensibly guilty of nothing. Two of them are dead. One has been shot in the liver. Oakland rioted. Police cars were burned, windows were smashed, the local police force was overwhelmed. And the blogosphere chided the rioters for destroying property. See, when it's in another country people say "why doesn't 'merikuh react that way!?", but when they see fire in the streets, and people bleeding from massive headwounds they call it senseless violence. And sure, the violence itself may be regrettable. We shouldn't destroy things like children when we get frustrated. But the police are leaving the city of Oakland no choice. The bullies that chose to join the police force, in particular those that fire on noncriminals and the pigs that protect them, have abdicated their claim to righteousness. The police force exists to protect and serve their community. Police themselves are not above the law. But this sanctioned and tax-funded gang behaves as though they are subject to some separate set of laws. Cops that kill people undeserving are not hauled off to jail, they are asked to resign pending investigation. The bureaucracy protects them. If Oscar Grant, or You, had killed someone in the course of work, you would not be given the luxury of resigning. You would rot in jail. You would scrape together whatever meagre savings you could to hire the greasiest lawyer in the phonebook and you would pray. A police officer is not subject to that set of circumstances in our great nation. And if that is the case, if they claim to be beyond the reach of our common agreement of laws, our response to them must also be outside of the law. The authoritarians set up this cycle of action and response, they have required from us violent retribution. The riots serve to prove the maxim that "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." (thx JFK). I wish it could be some other way.


I have been having dreams about Antarctica. A frozen landscape that does not blink or punctuate its days. Dreams of ice and mud and wind and alien creatures, alien feelings. It is close to another planet as one could hope to find on Earth and still breathe oxygen. The people drawn to it are of a scattered tribe that seek hardship, purity, proof of their existence, expansion of their narrow and tawdry experience. I've found a way to go there. After I complete my MFA (btw, all apps in. Waiting on responses. Smoking, drinking too much, crossing fingers, making claims, feeling superhumanly confident one moment and childishly uncertain the next), I plan to submit a grant proposal to the Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. This will require of me a longish work that is set in the Antarctic and deals with the landscape and the lives of those who live there. The largest boon is that I get to live rent free on the most insane patch of the world I could imagine for several months, and get some choice in what my activities would be while there. Luckily, I have a story idea already . . over the next couple years I can let it gestate and be ready to crank out a massive anti-historiographic metafiction about loneliness, near-death experiences, fossils, and the end-times. All of this, for me, is a perfect opportunity and suggests a possible lifestyle. This grant is only one of many, many funding opportunities for writers. Ideally, I would bounce from one to the next. thank you taxpayers.


I just finished tweaking a short-story. I find that my stories fall into approximately 4 categories: painful and clear, irreal, pseudo-biographical, and hyper/ludicrous. This story falls into the last. I wrote the first draft, all of it, from a hotel room in Santa Ana, CA last year and only this week got around to editing it for mass consumption. If you get around to reading it, let me know what you think. Also, this story, like all of my work that I like is linked to here and in the sidebar under "short stories".

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"I don't want to go home, where I'm just an ordinary human being"

(quote: RA the Rugged Man, video: Bishop Lamont "Every Day")


A great city is a work of art. An intricate symbol for what it means to be alive loosely fastened to place and time, wrought in concrete and iron and flesh and music. Clinging to the particulate in the smoke of its cigarettes, the reek of its exhaust, the priceless steam leeching from the streets. The feedback of instruments and the sound glasses make clinking together. Great cities loom with their idea, wrenched from the biographies of their most wild-eyed children. They dare those inside of them, and the dared leave them different in the way that we are ever changing to become ourselves. They carry their justification in every line and heart palpitation and criminal act and throwing up of hands. Great cities are not of their country, but of themselves and even when they lay eviscerate and mottled in the hung-over sun each can be differentiated from the next simply by the way their people sigh. Detroit I love you, and I hate you, and you always show me new faces. Always tip my hand, tell me what to write, frame even your banality in the skeleton of what you were, the skin of what you'll be. I no longer make value judgments about your future . . .I simply watch.

I went back to where I'm from for the holidays. This great industrial empire. It is weeping, and it is tired, and it is angry. But it still laughs when I get it drunk. Of the smattering of homecomings, this was singularly the most ecstatic and most difficult. Home crushed me and inflated me, changed my shape for the next six months while I resettle to old forms. My father and I screamed at each other in our haunting suburban basement. And then I told him things I should have said at 17 when it was much easier to simply sneak out and back in. And for perhaps the first time in my life I did not lie to him. I spent many hours downtown with another family and vaguely felt as though I were living on the reputation of a person that I murdered by leaving him out in the cold. Kindled a glowing friendship with someone I was only a smiling acquaintance with. Drank until breakfast cafes opened and we all walked down the middle of the street in the snowy grey. Squeezed onto a couch with warm, skinny legs six inches away and watched the sun come up on the alley and the church just outside the window; all the house asleep save me. For a few minutes I watched someone sleep and it was as if no time has ever passed or ever can . . .like I've always been on that couch and always will be. Attended a party in an apartment that I vomited in exactly three years before when someone else entirely lived there. Shared the city with someone I've come to know by the internet almost exclusively. Had a final night in an old hang-out, one of those departures that rings in your ears and the moment you're alone you simply put your forehead to steering wheel and try to make every detail part of the permanent record. There is a reason why laughing and crying sound the same. I've left so many times, and in so many ways . . .there seems to be no room in my heart for actually being anywhere.

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