Risk

Nothing is set in stone, nor moving unilaterally toward whatever mangled interrelationship I might be capable of. But I feel both comfortable and challenged . . .there was this sensation for just a moment last night . . .

My boss and close friend out here in the mountains has gradually come to the revelation that this thing we call American society is on the brink; and without a radical revision to the way we conduct virtually every aspect of our lives we will soon either adapt or die in a new world we've been ill-prepared for. And to watch him come to this conclusion, one that has lived in my ribcage for years now, is to watch the assumptions of a lifetime dissolve. What about my mortgage and my new house? What about this job that I have slaved away at for decades? What about these objects that I own, that enhance my life? What about democracy? What about the faith in mankind that I've held close to my heart since childhood? It is not that these things are completely cast to the ether, but the understanding that they are little more than illusory has sunk in.


I've held massive contradictions in my life, and still do. I don't mean overt hypocrisies or mis-matches between word and deed. But I've followed uncooperative trajectories, divergent career paths that make my spine creak; currently striving to be both warrior and poet; been the most reliable and capable and yet simultaneously the most drug-addled and rebellious; been the rowdiest introvert and the most reserved party-host; been richer than anyone I know while sleeping on the floor and letting wolf spiders crawl over me; been absolutely broke drinking champagne as though the entire city were my kingdom; retrieved my car from impound in the nick of time to ace university exams . . . the rewards of all of this that I now have an epic to look back upon, and the evidence required to believe that anything is possible.

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"Ask passion for mercy and ...[it'll]...throw you a rope"

I finally feel like the things I came out here to do are happening. I haven't found some throbbing soul beneath the fresh drywall and flourescent crucifix of Boise, but I have an invincible summer within me, you might say. I have time here. Virtually everything I've ever been good at is now at its apex. Constantly self-imposed challenges as though someone were watching over my shoulder. I whined a bit about my lack of comradarie, and found out it was only because I wasn't trying.

I've talked about this before, but I really think that there is one important binary opposition in life. Virtually every other duality that occurs in the daily procession of our life stems from this: FEAR or LOVE . See (acknowledging that I'm not perfect, and moving on) the scurrying mammal in us is conditioned to be afraid. To run from looming shadows as they eclipse us, to retreat to our holes and wait for the panic in the street that must be brimming with danger to die down and go home. We've all assembled our lives, because our history is based on this impulse, to assimilate. To monger in groups is to shed the probability that anguish or pain will touch us. So we buy into things; bunk movies, exploitive fashions, shit politics, ridiculous automobiles, recklessly hacking the real estate system as a lifestyle. Whatever token of participation we can purchase and then immediately retreat to put as much of it between us and everyone else as possible.

But love. An amorous appreciation that we are all really doing this, or really could. That we're all after the same thing and there's simply varying degrees of confusion. And then your folly seems so reasonable, and the collective dream so simple. So hard to believe that we've miturated upon it by systemically deeming whole swaths of people as less valuable than us. Or that we're willing to mechanize our greed into tactical airstrikes to insure that all the above stays put; or better yet continues to swell cancerous.

And the finer detail is that, personally, the attitude of love adds color and optimism and pleasure to virtually everything. As though approaching every choice with the question of which option is from love, and which from fear, automates the most difficult decisions.

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"You may be interested in MFA programs, ours included"

My workshop today went very well. If you have ever had workshop for any creative field, you will know that the process focuses on what aspects need work and thus most comments are focused on 'negatives'. That said, this workshop was interesting because no one unanimously agreed on something that didn't work. Some major gripes by one student were pointed out as strong (if unconventional) writing by another.

The professor, de facto the most important opinion in the class, had a lot of positive comments. After class we talked and he essentially told me that this is what I should be doing if I have the desire and that he would have likely accepted me into their MFA program had he received this story in an application. He also commented that I have a strong chance of getting into good programs around the country.


In his letter (these come with all of his responses, like a grade you might say): "Lastly, I want you to know how much I admired this story."

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"When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children?"

There is no home, only places where you've found love. There is no anxiety aside from the paralyzing suspicion that every action is lost in the sheer mathematics of our situation here. There is no end and beginning, time is an illusion crafted by a narrow experience. There are no rules, only primal reactions to uncertainty and fear. There are no exits or capitulation, there is only survival and decision.

My brother and I went out into the mountains this weekend to see if we could bang our bodies against rocks enough to chip off weakness. Twenty miles plus a mile vertical over ankle-breaking rocks, unforgiving rivers, and the previous night's insomnia in just under six hours. No record by any means, but I've got a scar and perhaps a lifelong ache from it.


Thanks for feedback on the story I posted so far; criticism of every sort is helpful. This last month or two has been very productive overall, and I feel like I'm building enough raw material to do something with. I'm getting it workshopped today and will put a little note here as to how it went.

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''coz I been in the lab with a pen and a pad"

So, I haven't been slacking. School has focused my efforts. I wrote
this story over the past week. It will be workshopped next week.

I've actually learned quite a bit in this class. The nuts and bolts of things, the subtle things that one isn't even aware of as they read. How to hide the seams, how to control the image the reader has in their head, how to hint at things and then finally drop them just as the reader is figuring them out, how to explicate emotions with nothing but the way a character cuts against their background.

Anyway, if you get a chance to read the story . . .I'd be psyched.

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Nowhere, man. Nowhere

And sometimes when you can't think of anything to write you just close your eyes and let the latent anxiety and joy trembling in your fingertips find a home out there in the ether. At what point does our language become coherent and instinctual, when do we stop thinking about it? And do you and I really speak the same language, or do we each have our own with overlaps based on familial and geographical relationships, education, tendency towards poetics?

I've done my best over the last half-dozen years to situate myself in the space between independence and isolation. To take control of my domain, my life, my experience. And then once a year my doting parents, their fears and ambitions vast and frigid as tundra, visit and every scaffolding I've arranged is either shoved into a corner or temporarily disassembled. I can smell the fear on them. And they try their hardest to convince me of its validity. Since they've arrived there has been no writing, no exercise, no reading. Just work and then sitting around wringing hands with nothing to talk about and finally me smoking under the covers at midnight so I can sleep for a few hours.

Next Wednesday marks the falling action in the most chaotic month of my life. I've felt the full range of emotion, and the hybridization of various strains I had never imagined. I don't want a reprieve, not necessarily, but 30 free seconds to scribble some lines about it. An hour to lay down and stare at my blank whiteboard for inspiration. A late-night foray out into the neighborhood to collect impressions, indentations, instances of anxiety. Alcohol saturating my cytoplasm.

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NY

As an epilogue to the craziness, I'm starting to decompress. The last few weeks had been anxious ones, the events of the present sort of brooding out over the fields and me holding my breath. But now, I'm in the thick of it, to be sure. I feel as though I've aged a decade in the last month.

Visiting with a great old friend is like visiting with all of the people that made up our tribe. As though we are merely out for an errand and caught up in some misadventure we will soon report to a smoky living room over Mickey's. And we had quite a misadventure. JK and I went to New York for a handful of days, after a stint in Boston. Boston is a beautiful town, really, though we spent most of it hung-over or rampaging through various bar districts with conviction. Night one we drank in the oldest bar in country and wandered around Boston's supposed slum practicing neuroscience. Night two we got kicked out of a decent BBQ as the BAC increased and everything we learned about fun in Detroit was laid bare. Hurdled balconies, thrown cups, melodramatics, more thrown cups and finally we absconded out into the street with pride in our mission, and a cadre of recent Bostonians willing to go anywhere or do nearly anything. Stops at a complete stranger's house to round up more, and out to the bars to get kicked out, drink Guinness, and simulate crack addiction.

A dazed four hour bus into New York with no explanations or entertainment, the subtle sense that this was all some front for the Chinese mob and that kilos of opium or dozens of illegals must be stowed beneath the bus. Finding ourselves from Chinatown to Times Square like the smart-ass kid from Family Circus's as we whirled through substations, mingled with tourists, waved to Angela Lansbury and sides-stepped the politest criminal alive. Finally into our stark hostel, staring down a pre-programmed fanny pack with a terse script and a high-counter. Into our rooms to contemplate location and plans, and then back out into the streets to meet good friend's I haven't seen since I made the leap. We wandered . . Empire State Building, several Perfect Pints, a stroll by twelve million peepshows, a drink in a vampire bar, and a endearing adieu. Down to Greenwich Village to drink as much as possible amongst languages we couldn't understand and several hundred of what I thought were caricatures of sailors on leave. Interesting smells and the dawning realization of how far this empire spans, and how entomological all this slithering around underground and emerging in alien lands drenched in familiar symbols. New York City is itself a caricature of infinity, as Forster would agree.

The next day we spent wandering Central Park, the Most Praiseworthy Natural History Museum. Met some Fellow Travelers at the Hostel and stormed the bar next door while we waited in anticipation for someone's friend to show up. Or something. We stayed up late ranting in staircases until the Fannypack sent us scuttling like cockroaches back to our cramped room.

The next day we accomplished little in the way of sight-seeing: Staten Island Ferry (witness to most of the city skyline), Wall Street, the WTC site, etc etc. In the evening we ran back into friends from the evening before, Australians and Brits, and went out in search of chaos and bass after general swigs of 151. After a few hours of stumbling around and dancing as if it would be our last opportunity for years, we all climbed out a window of the hostel onto a fire escape and watched the sky gradually become morning.

Joe left early. I staggered through New York with a few things left to see. ..

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Something New

I'm going to see if posting this PDF works, this is the story I posted here



NOTE: Clicking the link will take you to another page, where you must then click the grey "download this file"

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