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"Voted Unlikely to Suceed . . .

. . .coz my class was full of naysayers, cheaters and thieves."



Finally found an agreeable way to host PDFs, so here is the final story I submitted for class. It's based in Detroit, has a little bit of people I know in it. I realized writing about the city, or at least constructing narrative within it, is difficult. It's more suited to impressionist poetry and the like. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it's hundreds of times better than the first draft. To be sure.

I've got draft versions of three other stories that I'll be taking with me on sojourns over the next couple weeks. Try to wrangle them into something unembarrassing. Cormac McCarthy has changed my perceptions on writing. Working to reverse what David Foster Wallace has done. Non-overlapping magisteria perhaps. I learned to revise this semester, at the very least. Learned that there is something that appeals to the thanatos in permanently deleting things I agonized over bringing into creation.

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12/13

My semester is essentially over. This marks the approximate halfway point of the whole Boise, get another degree business. And I now feel innured this institution a bit. I know people here now, and have allowed myself to be absorbed into the culture of the program much more then during the engineering gig. My fiction writing workshop was a bit disappointing . . .just wasn't all that pleased with the things I wrote. And not that encouraged by the classroom environment. The connection between the two is tenuous though. My 20th Century British Fiction course was a bit illuminating, owing to the prowess and demands of the professor. But my classmates were mostly disengaged. . .

It feels absolutely bizarre to be at the halfway point of this place. When I moved out here it felt like an epoch rolling out in front me. Immeasurable to my impatience. Yawning across vital years of my life. But the pressing things been good-god I'm still learning about everything. Swirling up latent entrepreneurialism. Pounding out words in volumes I once aspired to. Gradually revealing some primal discipline. And so I can't possibly imagine where any of this will lead to, like driving at it all with lowered shoulders and hoping you end up somewhere marked success. And I don't recognize anywhere or anything.

That feeling that you're getting old. Like some arrangement of chairs and intentions makes you realize "god damn I'm an adult" and it is not what anyone told you it was. It's daunting but not scary, it does not require perfection, it does not utterly destroy you if you slip. Risk is the most valuable part of life. Hard work is worth it because it makes you good at things, and being good at something is tremendously rewarding. Genuine experience is all that matters. Dahh . . .all the chinese fortune slips I want to write for these kids . . .

Reading Baudrillard between the melange smoke and gangsta rap and flipping ones and zeroes in SimBoise . . .the consumer as progammable and blind. A system of objects erecting itself into crude symbols of the abstract. The real world existing in everything that is not said. "The festival of supply and demand whose effervescence can provide the illusion of culture".

Somehow I feel like going to Olduvai Gorge is a pilgrimage that exceeds the scope and "spiritual" value of visiting the Hajj by orders of magnitude . . .

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Hip-hop. History. Hilarity.

2007 was a great year for hip-hop. Jay-Z has released what will be known as the penultimate classic of pusher-rap, a narrative concept album that reflects the full spectrum of emotion and tragedy. Rhythms that seem diegetic to the world as inscribed. Aesop Rock back to form, impressionist and tweaked, the place he's created now folding the scattered past in with the crumbling future. Pharaohe Monch back from exile, veterate yet hungry. OneBelo with "R.E.B.I.R.T.H., still absorbing this one. Talib Kweli. El-P. etc etc

I'm reading a book called "A Continent for the Taking" about African history. Most of it recent, but also discussing the pre-slave-trade state of things. I don't mean to blame the white man for everything, none of us alive can change the past. But we literally tore Africa apart. The British Empire fought west African empires for nearly a century before they submitted. History only becomes real to me when I know details. And I don't have the time I wish I did to collect them.

My wallet was stolen from under my nose. The gentlemen that swiped it immediately went to McDonald's and spent over $200 on my credit card. And rented a DVD from a Redbox DVD vending machine. Whiskey-tango-foxtrot. Hamburgers? I'm not liable for any of these charges, and this will be nothing more than a hassle. But I couldn't have come up with a better "spending spree" for the morons of 'merikuh to go on.

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Fatherhood. Forlorn. Foam.

My father has a difficult time understanding things that have not come to him as a product of television or the narrow tableau of corporate hierarchy that he has been witness to. Thus, when I told him that I plan to eject myself from the world of engineering (a 'good' career as it makes a reasonable amount of money) and into the impoverished world of the humanities he not only generally disapproved of the idea, it barely even registered in his frontal lobe. And yet now, when I tell him that I am at the half-way point of completing this set of hoops towards another degree he is jazzed and motivational. Tells me "that's great" for perhaps the first time in my life. Maybe he's just getting soft with retirement.

All the people I love or might have loved are spread across the earth. Leeching their essence into the ground so that a billion years from now there will be some trace evidence of their existence. I miss them every day. The amazing girl I left in the hood who is now as tough as anyone I know. The mook out there on the edge; born to roam. My Fellow Traveler poised to slap the scientific establishment upside the head. The raven-haired expat, daring the world to not move when she leans into it. . . .A dozen other people I want to share drinks and photos with even when I'm 40 and no longer worth a damn.

I read a thread on ask.metafilter about a guy that reminds me of me. He is reasonably successful in his career, is intelligent (at least he can compose a paragraph) and once a week he likes to get obliterated at the bar and absolutely lose control. Each time he drinks like this he ends up somewhere strange or he gets in some vague legal trouble or he . . . you know the deal. His girlfriend claims that she will break up with him if he doesn't seek help. Everyone on the thread exhorted him to go to AA and get himself cleaned up. Reading the thread, all I could think about what was getting unbelievably drunk. Like a mythical, existential drunkenness in which the hangover is so extreme that waking up on some stranger's floor is akin to being born anew.

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Aphasia, Apophenia, Alacrity

My secretary seriously referred to me as a "growing boy" in reference to the sprawling Thanksgiving dinner that my brother is preparing. Indicating that I can and should be eating multiple servings like a teenager. This was the first thing that has offended me in a long time . . not this presumption that I'm young and healthy and can eat recklessly. This declaration that I am not an adult. My counter is that I'm more of an adult than many twice my age: I know what I want. I'm willing to make sacrifices. I haven't fallen for the social chicanery of television/children/religion/consumption. I'm not afraid to be injured or inconvenienced. I have overcome some palpable shit in my day. I am well-educated. I'm master of my domain. In what ways, exactly, am I not an adult? Hell, I'm the aforementioned secretary's BOSS. Because I haven't had children yet doesn't make me immature, it makes me rational . . .the best reaction is no reaction I suppose . . .

When in the midst of writing or pacing through the increasingly ritualized process of preparing to write, this odd thing happens. I start to form sentences and connections in my head that I would never make otherwise. There is suddenly something poetic about how I fill my water bottle, some metaphor in the way the wooden stairs creak underneath me, the cold night air a reminder of my soft humanity, every instant dredging up some long-forgotten image or sensation. The scratchy resonance of Burial like edgy dawns I never slept for. The ache in my bones from self-destruction now existential, because pain is the proof. The filth of my chamber evidence of some grander futility. And then this natural transition into writing in this mode. The contrivance and fabrication suddenly more honest because it reflects this system of pattern recognition that is firing on all cylinders. God it's a beautiful feeling.

In 40-some days I will be in Africa. Starting in a city dubbed Nairobbery by tourists. A place famed in the western world for pickpockets, violent carjackings, and the drug trade. Reminds me of home. After that I'm climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with a hand-picked team; starting in equatorial serengeti, tromping through muddy rainforest, hiking parched through alpine desert, and then watching the sunrise at 19,000ft and -20 degrees. Afterwards champagne and local beer in exotic bars and laughing about how nothing and yet everything I've ever done in my life has predicted this. And then a trip out to the birthplace of civilization to see if I can't find some long-dead grandfather's initials carved in an extinct animal's femur. Somehow I think seeing this place will put a great many things in perspective. I'm losing sleep as I think about all the tendrils this trip has telescoping and writhing out from it. I can barely fucking wait, counting individual days like I haven't maybe ever. On top of all that, I miss you.

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Black Friday

Sometimes I'm convinced that the whole planet has gone retarded. Case in point, following Thanksgiving most of the country (except those in retail) have the day off to recuperate from tryptophan overdose, sleep in, spend time with their families, etc etc. For a day just enjoy family and humanity and being. Maybe even go on a little trip with people that you really care about and take some photographs and admire the way the face of the earth changes with the seasons.
But instead we go shopping. American-style Conspicuous consumerism is not a long-standing tradition; it became a part of our culture following WW2 as a way to maintain a sprawling industrial economy that the war effort had required, and was perpetuated by the application of Freudian psychological theory to advertising. So, even amidst record consumer debt
millions that can't really afford it (except via credit cards) will go out and spend billions of dollars on overpriced shit. The bulk of of profits going not to manufacturers but the warehouse/stores that lord over the gimmicky merchandise. I'm not anticapitalist, the market must be free for us to have even a semblance of freedom. I am antistupidity. I'm anti- being herded by corporate-owned media and cattle-prodded with illusory "sales" to think that I absolutely MUST do anything other than eat, drink, breathe, read, sleep, fuck and be intoxicated. Shopping malls and suburban big-box franchises are a trick! You do not need this stuff and the fact that so many people think they do is exactly what They want. This is not conspiracy, this is why advertisement exists.

So seriously. Thanksgiving, fuck shopping. Give thanks. You're still alive. People care about you. Life is tragic and beautiful. There is food to eat. You are capable of forming and managing your own thoughts and motivations. At night there are so many stars that the mind reels. Joe Rogan once said that if we all lived underground and there was only one place you could see stars, EVERYONE would make the pilgrimage. Make love to someone like it is the first and last time. Speak slowly and seriously, when appropriate. Tell bawdy jokes when appropriate. Toast to "all your friends", "to Truth and Beauty", "to the End", "to the laws of physics", "to artistic ecstasy".

Alright. Keep it real

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Everything. Now.

This, a weird week. Barely writing, but revising 30-some pages that will hit this thing soon. Both stressed and confused and certain and at ease. Here finally. As in existing. An acquaintance of mine has proposed something that would radically change my life. He wants to open a swanky training facility, has the money to do it, and wants me to work for him. I could be putting high-powered executives, state senators and athletes through the wringer for a living. Or we could fail miserably. And as enticing as it sounds, I've got other things in my sights. We'll see. Physical exertion has become my church, my hour of transcendence that puts the shadowy rest-of-the-day in the right light.

I've now got a cadre here in Boise. These things take time. Barely remembered names now inviting me for breakfasts and nights out. They know how to party, and they're all good people. I suppose I should have known I would find this. I could always drink and talk and stay out late and get up early and I think I have a way of looking at people that makes them want to know me . . .

I had a dream about the girl last night, wherein there was a stifled reunion with suggestions in the way we rolled our eyes in synch. Kicking our feet in a dusty back parking lot amidst crows and crude assemblages of foreign cars, the sky marbelized above. When I woke up my computer had inexplicably sprung to life with an e-mail from her, and a text message that she too had been dreaming of me.

Our entire experience is fragmented as we attempt to apply consistency to our work and learning and fun and downtime and solitude, because we are one homogeneous person (or are we?). So who are we trying to deceive by making this all flow . . .the brain more like a swirling swarm of starlings than the stilted speaking we all stutter through.

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