"Drink up. This night thy soul may be required of thee"

(quote: The Judge, video: Black Moth Super Rainbow)

I'm submitting a proposal to the Modern Language Association for their annual conference in Philadelphia. The topic is the "Evolutionary Origins of Narrative". This subject represents the confluence of much of the extracurricular study I have done over the last two years, and upon suggestion by a professor multiple thesii immediately jumped to mind. Basically, evolutionary psychologists, philosophers of art, and kids with nothing better to do, are trying to understand what function art serves from an evolutionary perspective. If it is in fact a functional adaptation, in what way does it aid reproduction? There are generally about 5 theories that I am familiar with. Steven Pinker suggests that art has no evolutionary function, that it is a mere byproduct of complex brains. Others suggest that art is simply the effort of individuals to become appealing in the eyes of the opposite sex. Others proclaim that art is a survival strategy that benefits either social cohesion or mental organization. A fifth theory suggests that art began as a means by which to share attention. None of these is quite complex and holistic enough for me. None of them answer the fundamental four questions required to identify an adaptive mechanism (or in Pinker's case, show how art does not meet some of these requirements). The four questions for adaptation, as formulated by Niko Tinbergen are: 'What benefit does the adaptation provide for reproduction?', 'What is the mechanism by which this adaptation occurs?', 'What is the origin of the adaptation in human evolutionary history?', 'When does the adaptation develop in the individual human?'.
Any theory for the evolutionary origins of narrative or art will be forced to handle these four questions. My proposal is to synthesize a new theory focusing on narrative specifically. Essentially, a sort-of anthropology or genealogy of the "Narrative Mechanism" in human behavior. In evolutionary psychology, every definable behavioral phenomenon comes from a 'mechanism', a system of actions, feedback, requirements, problematization strategies, perspective, and subconscious analysis. My paper would, more or less, begin to define the Narrative behavioral Mechanism. Essentially, I believe that narrative as a meme in cultural evolution have worked so well because they are aligned with the way that we sort information already. All of our myths are in narrative form, and the most efficient way to convey some idea is generally to have an accompanying narrative (anecdotes work better than statistics, even when they are misleading). It is a result of our biological understanding of time: we think everything begins, develops, climaxes, and dies. The world around us does this through the seasons, our bodies do this, most phenomenon that we observe seem to behave along the archetypal pattern of narrative. This way of thinking met up with the burgeoning survival value of symbolic language. As we became more complex philosophically, eventually narrative was used as a means of approaching existential anguish (an affliction that may be the true separation of man from beasts). And now in the bourgeois world we occupy, where survival is a given, the role of narrative has been displaced. The art and it's artist have been alienated from their homeland, the Pleistocene. Anyway, much more on this later . . ..

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I've developed a new hobby. I put a draft of something I've been working on in my jacket and walk the mile downtown and deposit myself on the worst lit chair in all of 10th Street Tavern, and I drink whiskey and make red marks on the paper until something adequate becomes something good. Then after a couple hours, in the dark, I walk back home. I take the most circuitious route possible, with something disjointed and beautiful on the headphones. Look for fences to climb, buildings to surmount, etc. The other night I . . .well, I'll keep that moment to myself. It was wonderful to just be cold in the dark alone. Seeing the life that we avoid with our houses and streetlights and televisions and cars.

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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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