Finished the gift. It's strange to not have to worry about it. I get home and the docket is empty. I kick off the muckers and there's no sadness because there's no where else to walk in them. There are places I need to be and things I still need to do, but there is nothing hanging over. It's good and bad. Like a lot of things. It's a hard feeling to express. There's a pretty gaping gash where it was, the gift, and now that there's nothing in there to hold the tide aside it's washed high and hard. I wasn't expecting that. I probably should have been after working on it for so long. It's a backward empty nest kind of thing.
Not that the writing is unimportant anymore. If anything it is more important than it was as there is territory unoccupied and the last thing I need is to have the hunger for discovery eat me alive. I feel like I've been turned loose all over again. Learning what to do with that, because over the course of the work it was something that I unlearned. The timing was poor. Landed right in the holiday let down between Christmas and New Years, but I'm glad I did it. It had to be done. So it's time to dive in again. Time to shoe up the head saw and cut into myself with renewed abandon.
There's work still to be done. Year end looks. The year end playlist. Resolutions. Drawings. Poetry. Fiction. Sleeping. Games. Theories. Maybe even more stand up (but probably not for a while. I can't get my head around it to save my life) Sorry I've been away for so long. Part of finishing was really turning myself toward it with everything I had left after work days and work weeks. I think I miss the gut of the effort as much as the result. It didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted, but it was as close as I was going to get without getting lost in detail work and shoving the deadline to the horizon of another middle year. So we're back on it. I'm back on it. Time to see where the universe ends. Back from space, and off again into the star blacked banner of dreams.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
12/28/11
12/25/11
That Instant
That instant you realize you've been ending your day spitting into your spit jar and it's burgundy from spitting blood into it and you didn't realize it until now, but the music is so good.
12/17/11
Low Lighter
I've been mulling craft over. Disappointed in the body so far. I try to grade myself week to week. Did I nail it? Did I glance it? Did I make something I can stand behind? The answers are easy in a lot of fields. Harder in writing. One thing I miss about college was workshops. Sure, half the people there are only there because they need to have creative arts credits or just needed something to add to their schedule they could coast through. That's the major difference between writers and other people. At least at that level.
The classes are only as hard as you make them. Writers make them some of the hardest classes they've ever taken. Other people don't. Humanities and social studies is like that. How deep do you want to drive into the subject matter? The same goes for many of the other largely subjective classes offered at university.
I've been asked more than once and probably too many times how a person, or how I, know that I am or they are a writer. The answer can be answered fairly simply in many different ways using very simple, and also very personal, tests. I am not saying the answer to the question is simple. It's always complicated, but can be simplified in terms of the writing being done. One of the tests, I believe, is the level of dissatisfaction with "good enough." Not the good enough that tells you that item A or B is amusing or digestible to other people, but the good enough that hits the points and edges, lines and graphs, of the things you want to map. If that lack of good enough directs you to work harder than you are a writer. If that lack of personal good enough draws you to an "oh well, I tried" sort of answer than you are probably not a writer, but did manage to put words together into a coherent string. I dunno. It's tough. Goes without saying at this point.
I haven't been disappointed with the effort as much as the second effort. I usually relied on working with criticisms to see where things were failing and where things work better. Part of learning how to write is learning how to simulate workshops within yourself. Time consuming stuff. What I have been doing is working on very short time scales. Hours instead of days and weeks and months. The pressure works well at sharpening the blade or at least keeping it sharp, but does not do enough, for me, to make progress. So I'm working on a new idea, an old one, but new to the times, on a new channel. A low line.
I've been riding the high line for a very long time and the problem is it does not leave enough time for gestation and things get excessively hit and miss and I'm not happy with that. I have to give myself time to step away and look at it again and punch it right in the craw until it's disfigured and see how I can make it better and then do it better and then look at it again. Give things time to precipitate. I haven't given myself that time partly because I over estimated what I can do (arrogance), but also because running back over what you've done is rarely pleasant. It's not fun or enjoyable to see how badly you put something together and that's a lack of discipline.
So a second Auralport is coming at a much lower line. It's not going to be about cranking out and pushing forward as much as it will be trying to put one gem together in a week. We're going dual channel. A thing for every place and a place for everything. Or something like that. Just trying to satisfy the urge to put pen to paper and make it something worth seeing just once. I want desperately to be better at it, but all I've got is me, so we're gonna figure this shit out and make something ill.
///Bowery Electric - "Freedom Fighter" ... cue dreams.
The classes are only as hard as you make them. Writers make them some of the hardest classes they've ever taken. Other people don't. Humanities and social studies is like that. How deep do you want to drive into the subject matter? The same goes for many of the other largely subjective classes offered at university.
I've been asked more than once and probably too many times how a person, or how I, know that I am or they are a writer. The answer can be answered fairly simply in many different ways using very simple, and also very personal, tests. I am not saying the answer to the question is simple. It's always complicated, but can be simplified in terms of the writing being done. One of the tests, I believe, is the level of dissatisfaction with "good enough." Not the good enough that tells you that item A or B is amusing or digestible to other people, but the good enough that hits the points and edges, lines and graphs, of the things you want to map. If that lack of good enough directs you to work harder than you are a writer. If that lack of personal good enough draws you to an "oh well, I tried" sort of answer than you are probably not a writer, but did manage to put words together into a coherent string. I dunno. It's tough. Goes without saying at this point.
I haven't been disappointed with the effort as much as the second effort. I usually relied on working with criticisms to see where things were failing and where things work better. Part of learning how to write is learning how to simulate workshops within yourself. Time consuming stuff. What I have been doing is working on very short time scales. Hours instead of days and weeks and months. The pressure works well at sharpening the blade or at least keeping it sharp, but does not do enough, for me, to make progress. So I'm working on a new idea, an old one, but new to the times, on a new channel. A low line.
I've been riding the high line for a very long time and the problem is it does not leave enough time for gestation and things get excessively hit and miss and I'm not happy with that. I have to give myself time to step away and look at it again and punch it right in the craw until it's disfigured and see how I can make it better and then do it better and then look at it again. Give things time to precipitate. I haven't given myself that time partly because I over estimated what I can do (arrogance), but also because running back over what you've done is rarely pleasant. It's not fun or enjoyable to see how badly you put something together and that's a lack of discipline.
So a second Auralport is coming at a much lower line. It's not going to be about cranking out and pushing forward as much as it will be trying to put one gem together in a week. We're going dual channel. A thing for every place and a place for everything. Or something like that. Just trying to satisfy the urge to put pen to paper and make it something worth seeing just once. I want desperately to be better at it, but all I've got is me, so we're gonna figure this shit out and make something ill.
///Bowery Electric - "Freedom Fighter" ... cue dreams.
12/13/11
Have and Half Knots, Making Dead Lines, and Explosive Decompression
So I think I am finally approaching upper lower class. Inching toward car ownership and consistent internet access that doesn't cut off if I watch ten feature length pornographic movies in one month. It only took a year to save up the money for both, but I'm not mad because that was roughly the time span I estimated so many moons ago. Not that I'm some kind of social climber, but it certainly makes life a lot easier for me (being that at least half of my waking time is dependent on connectivity). If I think about it the only reason why I have a job, let alone two, is because of the internet. A major factor in my escape from New York was the internet. My creative outlets, well three out of the five, are internet dependent. Not originally, but since I opened myself up to being read, along with the good and bad that comes from it, that is what they've become. A pair still remain personal and internet independent, and they are my babies, whom I coddle and pet unceasingly. So I'm not quite a "have", but I am the possessor of many knotted ends.
Everyone likes to sew things up. Who doesn't. From the youngest age you can remember some of the most satisfying moments are the moments when you connect one and one and get to bask in the glory of your hard earned, bent spined, but elegant in that way, two. Whatever operand falls between the two slivers of symbols matters little. All that matters is you put in the hard think and the finger fumbles and drew something out of two separate things that ended up being beautiful, simply, the answer. Not just an answer, but the only answer possible within the frames of the rules of everything else that described the world around you. That is clutch. That is what I want to be able to do, but instead of sewing my things up I have ended up with knot after knot, with some fine stitch work in between.
It's not failure. Every time you tried to tie your laces and ended up knotting the threads when you were little, you did not just sit down and cry. Well maybe sometimes I did. Eventually, though, I ended up going outside to play regardless because the fact of the matter was that I was not concerned so much with the ending. I was not so much concerned with the fact that eventually I would have to take the shoes off, as much as I knew, no matter what I did after the episode of frustration, the things were going to do what they were designed to do, and that was stay put. So although I am a possessor of more knots than neat and fixed loops, and although I will sit and cry about it for a while, I know that I can still go out and get it done with the best of them. The difference being when I get home and the game is over I have to cut the laces apart and rethread them.
Making deadlines is hard, in that way. Not that I have to start over every week, but the things people take for granted are things I have to redo every week and make them work like new all over again. I would be more upset about it, if I had not had to live with it for so long. It's the standard. Part of the allure of medication is that it offers the promise of a consistent starting point. It simplifies, to the detriment of other experiences. I alternately accept and reject that promise. It depends on how frustrated I get tying knots when I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they refuse to respond. When I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they answer and accept and then absent themselves from the chain of command altogether because it turns out I did not have the con to begin with.
Making deadlines is hard, but having deadlines helps the continuity. I think that's why I hate days off so much. Days off are like being thrust into the airlock of my ship half suited, half relaxed, half giddy just to be there without having a reason, and then the count begins for the hatch release and I realize it is for real. I realize there was something I set out to do when I entered and soon I will be sucking vacuum if I don't get it together and I have to fumble and scramble to abort the entire venture because my helmet is still sitting right where I left it, in the lounge, and there is no way I'm going to manage to make something meaningful out of the next ten seconds (ten hours) besides flailing for molecules.
That analogy was a stretch, but that's what it feels like. Trying to get things done without a hard plan is difficult. Days off are always unplanned. Uncharted and unplannable. The hardest thing about it is going without contact. When I'm down on the surface among people I know what's real for the most part. Well, for the some part. When all I have is time spent with myselves it's a dicey affair. Tremendous amounts of necessary dialog and balance checking and enforcing limitations. I wonder sometimes why I sleep so much. What is wrong with me? And the answer often comes back that I cannot afford not to. A little escapist as the life across the bridge is so damn rich and half the time I am awake I want to go back there, but also because it's so certain there. A is A. B is B. C is C. And D is D. Every time. Not like here. Here person A is sometimes Z. And B is an irrational number. And C is A, but only when Z is B.
Maybe that's why I like to work so much. Formulaic. Math in action. Inactivity through action. Long story shorter, I want to finish the gift for Christmas. A gift of intent. A gift of a promise that I won't stop fighting. Not yet anyway. So game on?
Yeah, I think so.
///luke slater - "Hectic Bag" ...start as you mean to grow on.
Everyone likes to sew things up. Who doesn't. From the youngest age you can remember some of the most satisfying moments are the moments when you connect one and one and get to bask in the glory of your hard earned, bent spined, but elegant in that way, two. Whatever operand falls between the two slivers of symbols matters little. All that matters is you put in the hard think and the finger fumbles and drew something out of two separate things that ended up being beautiful, simply, the answer. Not just an answer, but the only answer possible within the frames of the rules of everything else that described the world around you. That is clutch. That is what I want to be able to do, but instead of sewing my things up I have ended up with knot after knot, with some fine stitch work in between.
It's not failure. Every time you tried to tie your laces and ended up knotting the threads when you were little, you did not just sit down and cry. Well maybe sometimes I did. Eventually, though, I ended up going outside to play regardless because the fact of the matter was that I was not concerned so much with the ending. I was not so much concerned with the fact that eventually I would have to take the shoes off, as much as I knew, no matter what I did after the episode of frustration, the things were going to do what they were designed to do, and that was stay put. So although I am a possessor of more knots than neat and fixed loops, and although I will sit and cry about it for a while, I know that I can still go out and get it done with the best of them. The difference being when I get home and the game is over I have to cut the laces apart and rethread them.
Making deadlines is hard, in that way. Not that I have to start over every week, but the things people take for granted are things I have to redo every week and make them work like new all over again. I would be more upset about it, if I had not had to live with it for so long. It's the standard. Part of the allure of medication is that it offers the promise of a consistent starting point. It simplifies, to the detriment of other experiences. I alternately accept and reject that promise. It depends on how frustrated I get tying knots when I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they refuse to respond. When I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they answer and accept and then absent themselves from the chain of command altogether because it turns out I did not have the con to begin with.
Making deadlines is hard, but having deadlines helps the continuity. I think that's why I hate days off so much. Days off are like being thrust into the airlock of my ship half suited, half relaxed, half giddy just to be there without having a reason, and then the count begins for the hatch release and I realize it is for real. I realize there was something I set out to do when I entered and soon I will be sucking vacuum if I don't get it together and I have to fumble and scramble to abort the entire venture because my helmet is still sitting right where I left it, in the lounge, and there is no way I'm going to manage to make something meaningful out of the next ten seconds (ten hours) besides flailing for molecules.
That analogy was a stretch, but that's what it feels like. Trying to get things done without a hard plan is difficult. Days off are always unplanned. Uncharted and unplannable. The hardest thing about it is going without contact. When I'm down on the surface among people I know what's real for the most part. Well, for the some part. When all I have is time spent with myselves it's a dicey affair. Tremendous amounts of necessary dialog and balance checking and enforcing limitations. I wonder sometimes why I sleep so much. What is wrong with me? And the answer often comes back that I cannot afford not to. A little escapist as the life across the bridge is so damn rich and half the time I am awake I want to go back there, but also because it's so certain there. A is A. B is B. C is C. And D is D. Every time. Not like here. Here person A is sometimes Z. And B is an irrational number. And C is A, but only when Z is B.
Maybe that's why I like to work so much. Formulaic. Math in action. Inactivity through action. Long story shorter, I want to finish the gift for Christmas. A gift of intent. A gift of a promise that I won't stop fighting. Not yet anyway. So game on?
Yeah, I think so.
///luke slater - "Hectic Bag" ...start as you mean to grow on.
12/9/11
The Original
The original sideways scrolling adventure. Now with extra bits. Extra dimensions sold separately and subject to license and title restrictions. Not available in all states. Taxes and principles extra. All features subject to network availability and data rates may apply. Purchase now to receive your free weapons expansion pack and blue key.
12/7/11
Moving Pictures
I have been dodging, though I hope artfully. I have been fairly thick into writing as I should be. I had a bad spate of poetry that was sexual frustration pure and simple. It never got resolved but like the urge to work out or smoke it went away with time so I could get back to imagination. It's still there on the back burner crisping up into something unrecognizable, but it's a thing I can at least be okay with.
Had a major identity crisis. Not really a crisis as much as a realization that there is no way I can use somebody or let somebody use me again. Even if it is a mutual causation, a mutual understanding of the fact of the reduction of the human being to object. Basically I came to the understanding that shifting my expectations of what fucking is backward to the level of what someone else understands it to be, successful or not, is a failure on my part. It gets to the point where trying to meet someone halfway, because they don't believe knives should be involved and pretending you think that is okay with you when you are on the hunt for someone at least as open and screwed in the head case as you and also homosexual and who will not turn pale when you describe your dream date, becomes an effort to use someone to fulfill, by most standards, bad fantasies. And I'm a user of many things, but I will never use a human being. Hell, I would never use an animal for that matter.
I don't care two licks for most classes of emotions just because I don't feel many of them as they relate to relationships and friendships fairly often unless they fall into my pretty obscure and unrecognized code of ethics and procedure, but I do care for the idea of the preservation of happiness. I think that should be the governing principle in life. If everyone did everything they possibly could every day to disappoint the least amount of people... who am I kidding. That would be a terrible policy. On an individual level, an isolated level, it works, but scale it up and you don't have to go far before it produces stinging and awful results.
The point is I have been dodging you. At first I was dodging you because I had nothing to show. Then I had something to show, but I was so long away I was ashamed to return. And then I had something to show and was ashamed and then on top of that I was gone so long I felt what I had to show did not justify the length of the absence. And it went around and around and around until I came to be here to face the music, my own music, an orchestration I gestured on my own, all the while missing you and the me that could still make sentences. The worst is over, again. Missed out on health insurance. Not by my own lack of action. I was excluded because of how the time line fell into place. So I don't have to worry about meds in the short term. Which means I do have to worry. It's aggravating. Disparaging? Is that even the right word? No it is not. Disappointing. Anti-soothed.
I did put together a pair of stories. It was difficult. They were souping up and I ended up forcing both endings because I ran out of time. The problem was that the stories still had a few thousand words to go before they reached reasonable clipping points where they would sew themselves up nicely and I jumped the gun. Not an honest mistake. Just a regular mistake, but sometimes being able to move on to other things is a good thing. It's not like I can't go back and reopen the sutures, dig my fingers back in, and get the knife out. That's the best thing about having them out there in the bin. And they're not complete still births. Some things worked well and part of the work is learning what works and then using the structure and pieces later on to make other things better. Same thing with poetry. Anyway. Rearranging some things to get more out of myself without pushing too far over the line and shutting down.
Take care. I'll try to. I've been thinking of what I actually use facebook for. I think at this point my wall is basically an art space. Just one big ball of expression. An interactive art piece of sorts. I think I'm happy with that. I don't really use it for connecting with people. I don't think people use it for connecting with me. Maybe they do. Maybe it's pretty much as close as some people should get. I think I am okay with that too, most of the time, as anger management and interpersonal relations are not exactly fortes these days. Those social skills keep eroding because I hardly use them. Partly my own fault. Circling the camps. Every time I go in I'm reminded of why I shouldn't be there. So I'll keep balling up art.
Later on.
///Tricky - "Excess" I believe in people being.
Had a major identity crisis. Not really a crisis as much as a realization that there is no way I can use somebody or let somebody use me again. Even if it is a mutual causation, a mutual understanding of the fact of the reduction of the human being to object. Basically I came to the understanding that shifting my expectations of what fucking is backward to the level of what someone else understands it to be, successful or not, is a failure on my part. It gets to the point where trying to meet someone halfway, because they don't believe knives should be involved and pretending you think that is okay with you when you are on the hunt for someone at least as open and screwed in the head case as you and also homosexual and who will not turn pale when you describe your dream date, becomes an effort to use someone to fulfill, by most standards, bad fantasies. And I'm a user of many things, but I will never use a human being. Hell, I would never use an animal for that matter.
I don't care two licks for most classes of emotions just because I don't feel many of them as they relate to relationships and friendships fairly often unless they fall into my pretty obscure and unrecognized code of ethics and procedure, but I do care for the idea of the preservation of happiness. I think that should be the governing principle in life. If everyone did everything they possibly could every day to disappoint the least amount of people... who am I kidding. That would be a terrible policy. On an individual level, an isolated level, it works, but scale it up and you don't have to go far before it produces stinging and awful results.
The point is I have been dodging you. At first I was dodging you because I had nothing to show. Then I had something to show, but I was so long away I was ashamed to return. And then I had something to show and was ashamed and then on top of that I was gone so long I felt what I had to show did not justify the length of the absence. And it went around and around and around until I came to be here to face the music, my own music, an orchestration I gestured on my own, all the while missing you and the me that could still make sentences. The worst is over, again. Missed out on health insurance. Not by my own lack of action. I was excluded because of how the time line fell into place. So I don't have to worry about meds in the short term. Which means I do have to worry. It's aggravating. Disparaging? Is that even the right word? No it is not. Disappointing. Anti-soothed.
I did put together a pair of stories. It was difficult. They were souping up and I ended up forcing both endings because I ran out of time. The problem was that the stories still had a few thousand words to go before they reached reasonable clipping points where they would sew themselves up nicely and I jumped the gun. Not an honest mistake. Just a regular mistake, but sometimes being able to move on to other things is a good thing. It's not like I can't go back and reopen the sutures, dig my fingers back in, and get the knife out. That's the best thing about having them out there in the bin. And they're not complete still births. Some things worked well and part of the work is learning what works and then using the structure and pieces later on to make other things better. Same thing with poetry. Anyway. Rearranging some things to get more out of myself without pushing too far over the line and shutting down.
Take care. I'll try to. I've been thinking of what I actually use facebook for. I think at this point my wall is basically an art space. Just one big ball of expression. An interactive art piece of sorts. I think I'm happy with that. I don't really use it for connecting with people. I don't think people use it for connecting with me. Maybe they do. Maybe it's pretty much as close as some people should get. I think I am okay with that too, most of the time, as anger management and interpersonal relations are not exactly fortes these days. Those social skills keep eroding because I hardly use them. Partly my own fault. Circling the camps. Every time I go in I'm reminded of why I shouldn't be there. So I'll keep balling up art.
Later on.
///Tricky - "Excess" I believe in people being.
12/2/11
dear (______):
Dear Steelers fans,
Every game it looks like the Steelers may lose is not a "trap" game. There are definitions to these things. One definition you should learn is "Inadequate". Used in a sentence: the Steelers offense was inadequate to expect victory. Used in another sentence: the Steelers defense was inadequate against a sound offensive effort by the opposing team.
Sincerely,
An armchair coordinator and scout (at best) who is not so high on himself to believe every loss is due to apotheotic player talent and over achieving opposition or that he could somehow have been a more capable head coach for sixty minutes.
Every game it looks like the Steelers may lose is not a "trap" game. There are definitions to these things. One definition you should learn is "Inadequate". Used in a sentence: the Steelers offense was inadequate to expect victory. Used in another sentence: the Steelers defense was inadequate against a sound offensive effort by the opposing team.
Sincerely,
An armchair coordinator and scout (at best) who is not so high on himself to believe every loss is due to apotheotic player talent and over achieving opposition or that he could somehow have been a more capable head coach for sixty minutes.
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