"The Gloaming"

A poem by noted poet W.B. Yeast*:

Staring at the candle I fritter away
The last few hours of a winter's day.
Thinking deeply, on all that has past
On fractured remembrances of friend's days last.

Lost in the gloaming, the darkness creeps in
On the flickering light that is all that was been.
The candle goes out! Now what shall I find
In the deep, dark recesses that I call my mind?

The mind, the mind! Tis all we have left!
When the world turns funny and all reason has left.
Tis there we feel peace, tis there we feel calm.
Its meditative space is the Gilead balm!

Yet tis there I feel sad, tis there that I hurt!
There festers Paranoia, who keeps me alert!
Is nowhere safe? Is my temple profaned?
Maybe demons live in it to keep me insane...

Is that what tempts me? Some phantom, some ghost?
Is the world at large not what devil's me most?
Perhaps it is something beyond understanding...
Or maybe tis someone on some distant landing...

High up the gods, those distant great figures
Look down on us like we are low crawling creatures.
They break us and burn us and blow us to pieces.
Might also they stride in our most sacred places?

My thoughts aren't my own! My temple is theirs!
From them comes all that I think unawares
My love, my hate, my passions and fears,
All whispered by voices that I never hear.

Do I still sit darkness? No, only a wind
Had flickered the candle; the light it had hid.
But now I see more, the wax that is burned
It is not alone, to be by the gods turned.

*White Bread Yeast, that is. Who is actually a character in a story I am working on. The real person who wrote it is me. While subbing in health class. The kids were watching a video.

Voice

Recently, I have been working on a scene that would take place in one of the much later parts of SK, in, oh, Book III or so. It's a short scene, and I am stalled on it by having to write a passage of dialog from. It's fun to just jump around like this, write a scene that comes to me, even if it is not related to the place I am actually on in the story. I feel that actually writing these scene that pop into my head fullformed is an essential part of getting over my Fear of Writing.

An interesting part of working on this piece is that I think I have begun to develop a voice for the SK material. I think part of why I have been hesitant in writing this one (I have been stalling on it since last week) is that I am not sure if it's the right voice, partially because its very similar to the very first attempts I have had at writing this story.

It's very sparse. It relies heavily on simple descriptions of setting, sometimes, when I'm on, embracing imagist language. I tend to excise prepositions and linking words, resulting in long sentences that functions as lists of actions committed by the characters. I avoid narration of internal thoughts and emotions, relying more on a careful description of mannerisms, facial expressions, movements within a space, and vocal tone to convey what characters are thinking. In a sense, this shows almost a cinematic influence, as if I am describing the choices that actors would take to express their characters inner worlds. It is also very heavy on dialogue and portraying specific scenes.

There are a variety of reasons why I think I keep settling into this voice, but it keeps giving me pause. I guess I wish it was more flourid, more artful, more lyrical, with words that sang and danced off the page. Instead it feels more workmanlike, and boring to read. Which is discouraging.

Anyways, here's a taste of it. Tell me what you think.

Torquesville found Ahasaurus among a glade of trees along the river. They were sparsely popular, but once you walked a few dozen yards in, the outside was hidden. Ahasaurus was standing at the far edge, where the trees began to part, revealing a cliff overhanging the Rhine; he was staring at a pile of stones about as high as a man’s knees. There were many of these piles of stones scattered throughout the wood, all roughly the same size, made up of stones that went from being as small as a fingernail to as large as a head.

Ahasaurus turned, startled, then breathed out uneasily. Torquesville smiled kindly in return. “Oh, it’s you,” said Ahasaurus. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stalk off like that, like a small child.”

Torquesville raised an eyebrow, smirking, looked down intently at one of the piles of stone. He nudged one stone about with the tip of his foot. “Oh, that’s quite all right,” he said, looking up. “I know how it can be. He can be quite insensitive, can’t he?”

Ahasaurus let out a little laugh, more of a breath than anything. “Yes, well, thank you. But really, I shouldn’t be so, so…”

“Touchy?” asked Torquesville. He was rolling the stone about on the ground like a ball.

“Yes,” said Ahasaurus. “Like a woman.”

Torquesville laughed.

“It’s just that I should be more…thick-skinned about it now. Not getting all hysterical and rushing off in a huff all the time.” His voice quieted almost to a whisper. “It’s been four centuries, after all.”

“Hmm,” said Torquesville, frowning slightly. He stared intently at the stone he was rolling with his foot.

They were quiet for a moment. Birds were chirping in the distance, and the Rhine hummed quietly along beyond the cliff.

It was Ahasaurus who broke the silence. “What are these stones doing here?” he said.

Torquesville kicked the stone he was playing with back into place. “You mean you don’t know?”

Ahasaurus turned and looked squarely at him. “Am I supposed to?”

Torquesville shrugged. “Not necessarily. It’s just, I thought it was obvious. They’re graves.”

Ahasaurus stepped back quickly from his pile, looking frightened.

Torquesville laughed.

Update: The scene is now finished.

Politics, part 1

Though it has never been stated quite this clearly, I can't shake the feeling that the reason everyone else in my family supports Hillary is because she's a woman.

I feel like that's not supposed to be said, that it feels like I'm impugning their judgment, but that's what I think the case is. No matter how much Anne tries to talk about how she watched all the debates, and she clearly and rationally saw that Hillary was just the most ready capable and the best speaker of the bunch, I just don't buy it. Because at almost a drop of the hat she will start talking about how it is harder for a (white) woman to elected president than a black guy. And when Mary said that voted for Clinton because felt like it was her duty, I was pretty sure she wasn't talking about how devoted to Clinton's policies she was.

I can kind of understand where they are coming from. I can understand that emotional connection to a candidate. I think I actually have something similar with Barack Obama. It's not really a identity thing, although we are both lefties. I feel an emotional connection to Barack Obama because of his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

That speech was the first time in as long as I could remember that I had felt proud of my country.

I actually remember the day pretty well. I was at the Zeiger's house. Dave and Colleen were home. It was the summer that I was taking off from work to try my hand at writing. I remember talking to them about how I wasn't writing much at the time, but I was reading a lot. Specifically, I was reading a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, who Anne had suggested to me. We were talking about the election then, and the seemingly awesome Senator we were about to elect, and he was speaking at the Convention, tonight you know, and then we were downstairs, and we watched the speech on PBS. I think it was just by luck that we ended up catching it. But I got to see it live.

I remember being reticent at first, as I am about just about everything concerning politics, I didn't want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. I never want to give politicians the benefit of the doubt. I don't trust them. I didn't trust them then, I don't trust them now. It's like I freeze up, like there are nails on a chalkboard, whenever I hear them about to speak. That's how I was at first with Obama: prepared to distrust him.

But as the speech went, I started to get wrapped up in it. I was following him. Not just the rhythm of his speech, but the things he was saying. The substance. There were some parts I kind of thought, "eh." The whole red state/blue state comparison sticks out to me, for some reason. But the part that got to me was the part where, after talking about his father, how he grew up in Kenya and raised goats and all that, and walked through his family history, was the bit where he said (something like) "This is the only country in the world where a story like mine is possible."

It was like a light dawning on me. Because it was true. I mean, there are countries that have economic systems that are better. There was ways in which America is like a third world country. And there is all sorts of racial divisions and ugly sectarianism and really really ugly sentiments crawling all over this place.

But no other country has that kind of promise. It's the only country that you can come here, and make a home for yourself, and you belong. Anyone can be American, and no one can take that from you. America is the only country that is not a nation. What is a nation? A set group of people living in a set geographic location, sharing a common language, religion, and culture. There is no set group of Americans; most of our ancestors didn't live here when the country was founded. Sure almost everyone speaks here speaks English, but it's not official, and it's more a lingua franca than a official part of our culture. Just check out some parts of downtown Chicago to get a sense of just how unofficial it is. Some might argue that Christianity is the American religion, that America is a Christian Nation. Are Jews less American than everyone else? Are Buddhists? Muslims? Atheists? And a common culture? Don't get me started. I experience culture shock in different parts of my state.

When I was watching Barack speak, I have spent the last four years feeling abandoned. It was mostly because of dad's passing, but part of it was politics. It was the republicans. It was conservatism. It was Bush. The way they talked, the way he talked, about America? It wasn't my America. It wasn't the America I had learned about it school. It wasn't the America that I had taught that I was a part of. It was something narrow and set, Judeo-Christian and conservative. That's what it was to be a real American, and I didn't belong. And as I didn't belong, I kept on learning about the ways that the America I had been taught about in school, that America that I had been told I was living in, had never existed, how it had always been flawed, and had never lived up to it's promise, not even now, and with these people in power, they would try their hardest to make sure it never would.

But Barack Obama, standing up there on that stage, with all those people cheering, hanging on his word, words that he himself had written, going out on television all over the country, he was describing my America. He was telling me that there were other people out there that felt the same way, enough to make it allowable for him to get up and describe it too us. And if we all saw that that America could be there, than it could be there, we could make it be there, even if it wasn't now. And I felt connected to all those people that felt like me. that were cheering, or sitting next to me on a couch. It wasn't so much that Barack Obama created that America, it's that he presented it to us.

And I took it. And I was proud to be a part of it. And I felt grateful to him, for giving me the chance to have it.

As soon as that speech was done, the commenter on TV was talking about people were not just talking "Senator Obama" but "President Obama." Which elated me, because I had already arrived at that conclusion. I didn't want him to be in the Senate. I wanted him to be President now. Because shouldn't the president be the person who makes you feel like that?

And so ever since, I have had an emotional connection to Barack Obama, rooted in gratefulness for the way he made me feel about my country.

This was, I recognized, a big problem.

To be continued.

Update

It's been a while since I've posted, an event I have been strangely dreading in recent days, as if some kind of bogart. Since I last posted, mom has broken her leg, I have taken care of her, I've admitted that I have nearly crippling depression and started taking antidepressants, Christmas has come and gone, and I've started working at Target.

And Indy has died.

I think I have been dreading writing anything, whether fiction or journaling, out of some contrary feet-dragging tendency on my part, a fear that, if I rush forward, I will trip over myself and fall all over again. It's hard to describe, since it's an impulse rooted in the truly murky depths of my nature. Since I have been on antidepressants, I have, I feel, been coming out of my shell, and returning to some semblance of routine and contentment, but I have been afraid of rushing into old activities. I want to move slowly. I don't want to overtax myself. And in the time that I have taken off from many activities, they have grown into looming giants in my mind's eye, unconquerable living mountains that I dare not face nor climb, but turn away from, wishing to think of other things. There is a degree of performance anxiety. Anytime I talk to anyone on the phone, they ask my if I am writing anything yet, and I always have to disappointingly tell them "no." I haven't even written in notebooks. I have been putting off all writing. Writing, like drumming, is something I both love and fear. doing it well, or at least what I perceive as well, elicits the greatest feeling in the world, a kind of artistic apotheosis, glory in a act done well. But doing it poorly, directionlessly, insipidly, feels like a deep betrayal, an act of sacrilege. So put if off, and it's shadow grows longer, slowly, inexorably following me like a glacier. I have long known that the only way to banish this shadow is to do some bit of writing, any writing, just to break the ice.

But I have put that off, any thought about other things. I have been reading a lot, a lot about King Arthur. I have about half through La Morte d'Arthur, and about three quarters through History of the Kings of Britain. I got close to writing recently, working out an timeline of events for a version of the Arthurian cycle as a kind of game with myself, to create my own version of the mythos, and it felt nice to do some kind of doodle.

But I just got done reading Mary's post about Indy dying, and I just felt like writing something. The ice broke for some reason, some alchemy of the soul. It doesn't feel frightening anymore.

I don't really have to much to say about it, at least not directly. Indy is kind of a vast topic for me. I feel like I am supposed to Eulogize him, make some definitive statement about him, and my relationship to him. A summation. But I just don't have that in me right now. Besides, Eulogies stink of artifice, and artifice has no place in mourning.

I do have a couple of random thoughts that keep popping up. One is that He was probably the pet that I have been closest to in my life. Moreso than Sheeba or Mittens, though I miss them too. The second is a kind of collective memory of when Indy was a kitten, he would come into my room at night, when I still have a waterbed, and I would move my legs around under the covers, and he would leap after them. I would giggle, and see how much of a fury I could work him up into. The third is the way he would sometimes pose while sitting, or standing, with his back arched, his paws in front, and his chest puffed out. He looked like an Egyptian statue, so regal and proper. I thought it was hilarious that anything could be at rest in such a state. I wonder what was running though his head while doing that. The fourth is his loud, loud purr, the loudest of any cat I know of. It was like a motorcycle. The fifth was the nuzzle, that adorable nuzzle, when you were petting him, and he was really content, and he would stick his face down in a crook. Every time he did it, it was too cute to bear, I felt like I was overdosing on cuteness. When Mary got to the part in her post, where he did it, for the last time, and I knew, reading it, that it was really that last time, that he ever did that, to anyone, I teared up and sobbed. Oh Indy.

That's it for right now. There is something else I want to talk about, but I think I will save it for it's own post. And I haven't even touched on the seventh anniversary yet. But right now, I need to stop. God, I miss them.

FUCK ME

Sorry for the vulgar title, but it's early morning on a Saturday, I'm drunk on a glass of 4 dollar wine that is turning my spit purple, and I feel a need to vent, now. Shit, I feel the need for a typographic enema (is that an appropriate adjective?).

My second to last post is about a new story, and how I did it so fast. Well, I haven't done shit since writing that story, just typed it up, edited it one and a half times, (I went over the first half twice, having made an aborted edit) and printed it out just today. That's fucking it.

Oh, and I wrote a page of a third draft of some thing that I am keeping on the back burner, and only thought to revisit because it was evoked by Pattern Recognition, the latest Gibson novel I have read (It's very good, maybe his best; I liked it better than Spook Country, I think, though I only listened to that on Audiobook. I think Gibson is at his best when using a single focalized character. His ensemble pieces aren't as hooking).

Since then, I have gotten bogged down in a laborious job search, characterized more my procrastination than actual searching, during which I tried to get a job as an insurance salesman, succeeded, then decided I didn't want to do it. That makes two jobs that I have gotten and turned down, no jobs that I have actually gotten. Meanwhile, I failed somehow to make it through the initial interview stage for a online application at Best Buy, thought that might have been a computer fuckup, maybe, on my part, and the application didn't go through. And I haven't gotten any callbacks on the shitjobs I applied for last Friday.

In short, I have been feeling depressed, useless, and lazy for the last 20 days or so. I have gotten nothing done. My jobsearch has gone from a lazy procrastination to a selfhating freakout. I have no interest in getting a job. I have no interest in getting fucked by the system, or fucking others with the system. The entire American economy has, for a long time, felt like a series of commutations of exploiting and being exploited, and I don't want anything to do with any of it. I am unhappy, feel useless, uninspired, frightened, and angry. I hate this entire fucking economy and want nothing to do with it, feel both uninspired and disinterested in trying to have anything to do with it, guilty, and wanting to, if anything, be exploited by it, just so as not to be past of the monster, and horribly depressed and frightened and angry that, in twenty days of not getting a job, I have managed to do fuck all in terms of writing.

Now, I am listening to Sinead O'Connor, enjoying feeling properly drunk for the first time in ages. It's good, I think, to get drunk every so often. Let the demons out to fly and around and access the decorating, give it their honest opinion, break anything that doesn't seem to be doing much good.

My friends visited last weekend. Sunday night Boyle and Craig inexplicably, in an act of spur-of-the-moment initiative, drove all the way out to Iowa City, harassed me, and took me out for breakfast at eleven at night, then drove back. Boyle now has a shit-paying job with possibility for advancement. Craig is dating the Hot Polish Chick at Follett. All they did was harass me, probably because I am in an pitiable shit state, and such was obvious. I haven't gotten a job in nearly three fucking months. They questioned why I moved out here. Like most point blank questions, I stuttered and gave answers that felt like fake justifications.

I feel like my entire life has been a waste. I have no idea why I am doing anything that I am doing. I feel that every day I am sinking deeper and deeper into depression and melancholy. I feel alone and frightened. The entire world, all of my surroundings, feel like a foreign country, transplanted to an alien world with odd, idiosyncratic customs. I want out. I don't like it here. I keep waiting for it all to make sense and it never does, just feels more and more alien. Why can't I get on something that feels like that right track. Is it me? It is the rest? Do I even want to?

I don't want to sell insurance. I don't want to be here. I don't want to fake being a person. I just want to be a fucking writer.

So why can't I even manage that?