Thursday, January 27, 2011

Counsel: On Writing Blogs

 When you're on your way in to work in the morning, the landscape of the day steals across the splatter images of remembered night and occasionally in that interplay a light bulb clicks, don't trust that you will remember it when you get to your desk. Write it down right away.

When you are sitting in your office and I wanted to briefly write about things before you forget them, do it. Briefly. Notes.

When you have enough disparate notes to merit substance start interlacing them together through narrative or balletic poetics, don't worry if you're not-yet inspired. Write them together as best as you can, wrap a sentence around your thoughts as best as you can, build word bridges between the islands of your ideas. And when you inevitably stray away and get caught-up in an errant fact-finding mission, grousing about the derelict text mines and code mores of the interweb backwaters remember: you'll wind up with a lot of interesting points that still amount to nothing unless you put a personal touch to them. Internet surfing is a cheap thrill, and you won't find much of quality anywhere on the web that you can't manifold by yourself in the same timespan. Most of what we all (as web-denizens) say is flat and stupid. Find three points that warrant a second glance and take them down as notes. Look for the underlying theme that connects them before your foray turns out to be more trouble than it's worth.

When you find yourself stuck, summoned by a fresh page perhaps and left alone to hope and linger, do not be content to wait there and deny the painful inevitability that no muse of inspiration is going to come. Press on I say.

I like to practice my fair share of healthy skepticism and often find redoubt in the notion that by not writing anything all morning I will allow the clouded alleys of my mind to becalm and thus produce a line more terrifically splendid yet ere afternoon. Sadly, this is not how it works.

The blanks become large and horrible. All those blanks and your words atop them, so small, like a mole on the cheek of an albino, like ants on a sudsy white beach, black men in Nunavut...

One must hurdle the gaps of the mind with anapestic vocables if need be. Forget the resplendant anapestics clothing an exquisite phrase. Use thee pre-words, pathway quasi-verbs through the wildernesses of cabin syllables, stake nouns of reclamation that slowly form into intermittent sentence settlements until you find yourself with great sea paragraphs about to break over the shore. Let your words squeak out like little mice, infest the ripe white page like black rats in a maze, around the white walls and over them, spilling hither and fro, etching lines of the utmost severity and purpose across every lonely expanse of unwritten page.

Now it is lunchtime and you break away from your office for a bite to eat. The smell of food distracts you from your thoughts so much so that you become a new person. At the checkout line in the grocery store, tabloid secrets shout horrible gut-wrenching revelations to you that you do not wish to hear. When you return from your lunch break you type in your computer password and check your email.

That's enough work for now. Back to the blogging. What's this? Now your paragraphs are crowded! Like dark rooms without a lightswitch and you do not know the way out when you sit in the middle of one, you call for room service, (F7) thinking someone will come, but no one does, or if they do you cannot hear them arrive, so cluttered and stuff. Your story has become a tree and there is no soil for the seeds of your original idea to grow. It's roots, disordered and ablemished by ordure, a sprawling imbroglio and you am desperately lost.

Time to snip some branches. Edit. Cut that line about irritations. Excise your tangential justifications and excuses. Your ambition and pride hold those big words in their clutches, but your gut tells you that two little words'll do. They'll do fine. There, see, light?

Now, remember your audience. Are they gonna want to read this whole thing? Yes, good, great! If not then make some more cuts. Move the middle part up to give it some air. Put your best lines at the top. Prettify! Voila! Post! You are done! They'll love you!

And phenomenally it's only 2:30. Guess you better try doing some work today.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Braids


 

Way to haunt me in my dreams last night. Seriously. (Not Seriously, figuratively.) That was awesome. (It wasn't. And before you clamor UNFAIR I know that it wasn't anyone's fault but my own. It was my dream, after all. But bear with me here: {being a dick is the fundamen tall of maskedmandom!})

Do you ever have those dreams where people ask you things that you don't know? People in your dream know things that you don't know, what's with that?! And then later in the dream they tell you the thing you didn't know, or couldn't remember, and you know they are right. That ever happen to you?

Last night I dreamed that I was at a live concert, but since I don't go to live concerts anymore the dream shifted and I was watching a live concert recording, on youtube. Watching youtube in a balcony booth at the opera, and my date was wearing those little quaint opera glasses to see the laptop on which we were watching (hereafter: McLappy). When I borrowed the glasses to see for myself however, within the lenses was a sepiatoned motion picture reel of Diora Baird stripping while some song about the Old West and trains played, or rivers... and there was a old preacher with a beard there saying something from the Bible.


"Exalt not thyself, lest thou fall"
-Sirach


Of course, what we dream, and how we remember those dreams, and how we write those remembrances down and post them online and read those posts aloud to disinterested loved ones, may be a major clue toward revealing our future selves...
...
......
..........not sure where I was going with that. But HEY!
let me tell you a story: The other morning I was sitting around popping my lips when my ________ friend Henry showed up asking what was doing.
“What's doing?” Henry asked. Nothing was doing. We listened to the new Decemberists album and smoked some pot. Laughed scads. (I jotted this down in my notebook like it was key: “Does the name Pavlov ring any bells?” -Henry) Talked about women and music and then decided to go for a drive out to place where we could go for a walk.

He was wearing a green woolen sweater that seemed to attract the little listless blue snowflakes falling ponderously, as if almost reluctant, to reach the ground. Henry asked "So what's on our agenda for the day?"  There was no agenda for the day.  We started walking through the old wanton wing of the city.

This neighborhood was dying or dead fifteen years ago, now it thrives, having found new life in the shell of old forms.  Most of the businesses along the street were housed in old brick or stone buildings, many of them with the second and third floors rented out as small, dingy apartments. The sidewalk however, was busy with young vibrant people, most of them skinny college-looking girls and their attendant shaggy boyfriends with fringy beards. On the corner of the bright Sunday street we ran into a sidewalk traffic jam of people, most of them bundled up tight and, milling around a performer on stilts dancing and juggling in front door of a small café. The man was tall and skinny, taller still due to the stilts, and he did various canned magic tricks like pulling a coin from a woman's ear, cupping it in his hand and producing a gold-coloured rose.

I think he would be what's called a thaumaturgist."
“Remember that thing you wrote about the darkness?” he asked, making no attempt to conceal his lack of paying attention to what I had said.
I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “Yes” I remembered.

I miss her all the time. And I hate to say this but over time its lessening. I miss her and I am scared by this lessening as if it means my love wasn't really ever real. But loss it is and loss it remains.

A solid emptiness.

Its worse at night. The world uneasily dark, a catalyst that quickens the spiraling searches for any distraction. There's nothing to distract you. The din of culture — the constant buzzing whirring noises of the world that surround us — all stopped, and even streetlights through the window seem to reinforce some strange silence within you, a hollowness.

I reach out into the cold, turn on a single lamp and write my dreams. I write her letters, speaking to her as if she were still here, though I am alone in an otherwise dark room. A single light in single room, so so far away from anything warm or bright.

We walked on then, past the extemporaneous performer and his motley curios, into and across a park accumulating a soft dandruff of snowfall and contemplation. The path wend round a frozen pond where I kneeled to finger the snow, drawing signs and ciphered symbols.

"Why would you write that?"
"Because of sadness."
"Are you really that sad?"
"No, but you are. And that's why you read it, and reacted to it like you did. That's why I wrote that."

He stared into the blank frozen pond, looking painfully sagacious, poignantly deep, pointedly reverent, and vanquished.

I walked home alone. No one calls. It's only half-true that I wrote the passage in question for Henry's sadness. Actually it stemmed from a bit of overheard conversation years ago at the grocery store. Two old women loading their items onto the checkout counter were speaking about a man they knew whose wife of forty years had recently died (a widower as the parlance dances,) and one commented that although he had unmistakeably been keeping active, the man was still consumed by his grief. This man reported to her, I heard, that no matter how much you do to keep yourself occupied during the days it makes no difference, "the nights're awful quiet."


Robert Frost wrote "Something we were withholding made us weak/ Until we found out that it was ourselves" long before I was born. Long before I met the first demon to haunt me (in its initial incarnation, dressed fashionably in the icy dregs of the January winds of 1998) or the second lurid monster to thwart my ascendant pitch toward apotheosis (the thick teenage braids of hair, black curly tresses and ropes falling across that pubescent girl's shoulders & touching the brim of my deskfront in 1st period Geometry)


 

Women and the Seasons. Having fought these demons now for years, both in sequence and in tandem, I can see how true Mr. Frost was. They are the same. They are me. Here comes the season again, I say to myself. That confounded dragon: winter. All things are wan. I want to scream and whine and suffocate and choke and die, and this all before morning coffee. The best way to fight this beast is through routine. I know this, I have learned this through many battles lost, I must plan my days meticulously, waking every morning to the sign that says 'Take Joy' and doing the hundred tedious little things throughout the day that reinforce the status quo.

Then comes spring and nature's song is lust. I meet a girl, there are always girls, and to impress them I bend over backwards and curse the routine. Girls like the routine but they also want me to be the endlessly playful, ever inventive and always daring rogue in the mask. The spontaneous improvisational gentleman, whom I become and it destroys me. They tell me I'm not what they expected. Not what they are looking for. I should do more, I think, and this thought is depressing. Soon I am alone again and it is winter. I make for myself a comfortable routine, knowing I should do more.

Tonight as I drift again toward sleep I fear I have done too much today already. I listened to the new album by that band she loved. I stalked her friend's boyfriends on Myspace. Someone passed who looked like her and I fear sleep where she haunted my dreams last night with reproving eyes and accusations worse than life.

It's the fear that is the monster. I'm afraid of winter and so it taunts me. I fear the girl in my dreams because they are me, and I am harsher on myself than anyone.

I don't blame you. Really. I know that my external-evolution will have to come from internal-involution, and that's a hard pill to swallow so instead I passed the buck. I'm sorry. I that hope you are well.



 

Tonight I hope to sleep. As Dylan might've said “Take me then disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind, down through the foggy ruins of tunnelled time far past the frightened frozen leaves, the proud and haunted trees, out to the extent of the winds reach, far beyond the writhing twists of sorrow, to dance beneath the diamond starry sky free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by circus sands, with all fate and memory driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow” for in this prison I have promised myself the freedom to live, and so it shall be, and I am not alone, there are three of us, you and I and the story that I am telling. A story alive and therefore prone to the wants and needs that any man may have, and therefore let us start tomorrow by giving him sex.


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Monday, January 17, 2011

Apothegms: A Preponderance of Coldplay



"as a pendulum, man oscillates"
-Emerson

"People couldn't believe what I'd become"
-Coldplay

Y'ever get the thought in yer head that everything you need is right here, with you, right now?
Yea not so much me.
I get the impression frequently that if I were to just change a few things in my life everything would be perfect;
And by 'a few things' I mean one thing. Namely; location.

Namely or mainly?

It's snowing like the Dickens out here.
I told my roomate I would kill a man just to see the color green
(he offered me a rubber tree if I would consider killing his ex girlfriend instead,
but
don't worry,
he's just having a bad day. We all are.)
Where the fuck is the sun?


My ex girlfriend has a new boyfriend.
I haven't met him yet. Is it alright if I hope that he's ugly?
No, probably not. I do anyway. This from a man who wears a mask.
I do not need to wear this mask. I choose to. More people should wear masks.

If more people wore masks then I could stop.

Anyone else out there hate listening to Coldplay because whenever they hear Chris Martin jangling around in search of a marketable melody all they can envision is his white ass pumping in time with the music atop a lovely naked thumbs-up Gwyneth Paltrow?
Anyone?


I'm getting older.
I never thought I was a vain person but it turns out
I've been quietly in love with myself until about a month ago.
Now I avoid the mirror like the pleg.
Plague, sorry, something in my teeth.


There. Got it. On my way to lunch today
in the elevator while I was picking my teeth hungrily a man got on
and starting chitchatting with me regarding advice on book choices and how, really, (I am not making this up)
enough praise could not be heaped on Jonathan Franzen as an essayist. I couldn't wait to get away from the guy,
such a violent surge of dislike and hunger churning within me that I rushed away without
even excusing myself from the conversation and realized I didn't have change for parking meter.
Luckily, the strange man followed me out and gave me the change I needed.

I hope that guy isn't her new boyfriend.

Is it alright if I say gooch on the internet?
Gooch. Haha.

I hope Mr. Interweb doesn't bleep me like they did to that scene from that movie on TV.

"i love you because of your strenght and because of your weakness. i can't explain it"
-e

It's January and I usually succumb to despair or cynicism or both.
Cynicism is fine when you're wearing a mask but despair
means darkness and I've got enough of that without needing to try at it.
There are times in January when I get hangovers without drinking.
There are moments that surge like penecillic hot flashes when I am ready to descend into
Balearic hedonism, throw defenseless things against the wall,
a couple children,
a cute puppy,
and burn my face off.
Then I am fine.

Anxiety & frustration ebb. My counseler advises me via Skype
that they are out of my purview when really they are under my thumb.
Control them with cigarettes. No. Wait. Scratch that.
Control them with cigarettes.
I quit smoking and took up running marathons. Something else that ebbs.
We expel carbon dioxide when it accumulates. Inhale oxygen to fill that void in our lungs and then consume it.
When I don't eat I get hungry. When I spend my money I am poor.
When I want to be with someone I find someone to be with
and then when things start going well I fuck that up
and she starts seeing
Chris Martin or the guy from the elevator someone new.

Nature moderates all things. There's give and take. Coldplay used to rule the world, apparently, and now, well, let's just say that cycles happen. It's not neccessarily compelling narrative, but it's observable phenomenon, and this is blogging. You want compelling narrative, go read Chris Martin's blog. Or Jonathan Franzen's. I hear it's good.
I used to take walks down unfamiliar streets only to find myself right back at home.
Now I go down the same streets every day and I don't know where home is.


Obama says it's all about how and who we love.
My evidence sadly confirms this. But also
"it's all about people," sayeth Dennis the trucker, "and people always suck,
so it's all about the suck."

Overanalyzing is passe. So last decade.

I got a job last week that my buddy Jan told me would be one-day-only-easy-money but by that afternoon I had done nothing easy and realized I was out in a half frozen warehouse feeling wounded and shivering lifting big burlap bags of something that smelled like powdered cheese. I worked out the day and made 40 bucks. Walked across the tire track arcs in the snow in the fading light at the end of the day body tired, mind weak and felt the lull of sleep like I haven't felt in forever. Working hard is good for the soul. But man the unspoken voice in my head is one cynical bitch.

I know there is much to be said for living in the moment,
but what if living in the moment gets you so caught up
that then yer at the detriment of future moments?

Sometimes when I am sitting on the couch with my belly hanging out eating hamsteaks my desire to get up and do something with my life explodes into an orgasm of plans. If I try to do more than 3 things at once however I overwhelm myself and stop doing everything.

That said, next week I am taking a trip up north and I am living for nothing else. I remember the day on my trip last year when my friends all slept in nursing their hangovers and I wandered the streets alone. It was so peaceful and exhilerating (Exciting calm) to be on streets I did not know again, my eyes tearing up of their own accord while dallying in the bitter biting cold of the shadows and then the change to soft warmness in the sun. The way your eyes pick up little things because you're seeing everything for the first time: Truth in all its nakedness coming upon you in a sudden backalley stairwells, overhead electrical lines, bench ads for local lawyers, a school. The sounds also; the wet squeak & rotary clank of someone`s bicycle as they chug past or the warm lull of Ella wafting from a cosy cafe that I walk into to warm. This year I will try to take the same walk, only, without the cigarette addiction.

There used to be safety in coming home.
Now there is safety in being places I merely remember recognizing.
I can imagine someday I will only feel safe in the consistent and utterly unrecognizable.

"Travel more, they always said to her, and so she bought a ticket. On the Titanic."
-Jan

Now I'm glancing over at the snow falling while Dennis watches episodes of Jersey Shore
(nvm, he's back to playing Red Dead Redemption) and I'm ready to fall back asleep.

"Gooch."
- DMM

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