i have a love/hate relationship with my job and with life. mostly, i hate how little time and energy it provides me for this kind of thing. sometimes, it is as though i am on forced sabbatical from my writing, and i get frustrated and angry. in my head and heart, though, i know that it's only temporary, and the time invested here will serve me well when i turn starving and unemployed, haha. so here is a small peace offering for the past few weeks' absence.
---
'red leaves'
i watched a man take a flower to his daughter's grave today. it was by accident, i suppose you could say: i was simply on the way home, and passing, when the bright red leaves of this particular tree, poking ever so slightly over a tall concrete wall, caught my eye. i had to take a look. it was beautiful, those vibrant crimson leaves already odd in the early spring morning.
the tree herself was hidden behind the wall, her leaves the very fingertips of her withered hands, delicately resting atop and draping over the faux-stone. she was an old tree, to be sure. wrinkled bark worn, the years' passing weathered in the curve of her limbs; spinster of seasons. i was enthralled; to the point that i didn't notice him until he was only a few feet away. the old man was bent and marked by time as the tree, and shuffled out of my view around the wall. i followed.
just around the edge of the wall, though, i could see the tree for all she was: the guardian of a small graveyard. a courtyard of headstones, miniature obelisks, and the tiny stone humans draped in red that serve as this country's wards for the too-young dead. the elderly mistress watching over the last resting place of those too young for this, too young, too young. even the wind was quiet, here.
the old man was making his way, gently, along the farthest wall. past rows of stone jizobosatsu in red bibs, each perhaps eight inches tall. stillborn in single file. leaves the colour of broken hearts scattered across the pebbles and dirt, here and there resting lightly on one grave or another. those would be swept up and discarded in a matter of hours; at least, for now the leaves lay where they had fallen. a touch of the real, of the messiness of life. a grey-breasted starling hopped lightly across the gravel and moss, pecking and probing, oblivious to either of our human presences.
the old man continued along, stopping only at the very last statue in the row, in the farthest corner of the little courtyard. a small headstone sat next to the jizo, almost hidden by those beside it, and shaded from the morning sun by the converging walls.
he stood for minutes, motionless except for the barest rise and fall of his sunken chest, breathing in the smell of the dirt and the tree's fallen leaves. i shuffled my feet, nervous. i felt... profane. like i was intruding, disturbing something personal and private.
something i hadn't noticed: a stem protruding from a hand cupped against the chest. long, and green; fresh-plucked, then, or well-kept by the florist. a quiet voice in my heart said it was the former. long, the stem, and green; all that could be seen, until he uncupped his hand. i could see the delicately drooping petals, white and specked with what seemed to be red droplets. he held the lily as though porcelain, which i'm sure to his mind it was, and stood still once more.
i felt increasingly alien and out-of-place the longer he stood, silent. i had no cause to be here, no reason besides my curiosity; and no excuse, at all, to be so intruding on this rite. for a rite it was, as he solemnly knelt and lay the lily, pale and bloodied, on the grave. the morning was still cool, the sun yet to reach this little corner, but my shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
my mother lost a child, between my sister and i. we spoke about it maybe once. like most other subjects she would rather avoid, she was terribly matter-of-fact and succinct about it. my parents had met relatively late in their lives. there was always going to be some measure of risk to her pregnancies. she was going to have a baby; it didn't happen. no bitterness, and very little hurt showing, although the abrupt change of topic to more mundane subjects told me, even at my self-absorbed age of fifteen, that there were feelings buried here that i would rather not disturb.
the starling startled, suddenly taking to the air in a burst of feather and fright. it surprised me. its wings aflutter were, to my intruding ears, a gunshot ringing and ricocheting around the garden of stone. i couldn't help but watch as it took off through the lower branches of the old tree, alighting higher up, backed by what was becoming a brilliant azure morning sky.
when i looked back, the old man had straightened, and was looking right at me. the sunlight now fell almost directly on his face, making his eyes an uncommon and eerie golden-brown. i just stood there. riveted, as though seven years old again and found out in a lie. the cool breeze died, and the stone memorial garden became incredibly still.
he gave an ever-so-slight nod of the head, and the spell broke. my presence forgotten again, or ignored, he turned to the corner and knelt one more time. the starling twittered, and rustled feathers and leaves. i backed out slowly, the view disappearing once again around the corner of the wall, until i could see only stone and the crimson leaves of the old matron tree draped atop them.
then i turned and walked away, fast, without looking back; feet moving as quickly as the heavy, clumsy things could.
---
peace.
---
'red leaves'
i watched a man take a flower to his daughter's grave today. it was by accident, i suppose you could say: i was simply on the way home, and passing, when the bright red leaves of this particular tree, poking ever so slightly over a tall concrete wall, caught my eye. i had to take a look. it was beautiful, those vibrant crimson leaves already odd in the early spring morning.
the tree herself was hidden behind the wall, her leaves the very fingertips of her withered hands, delicately resting atop and draping over the faux-stone. she was an old tree, to be sure. wrinkled bark worn, the years' passing weathered in the curve of her limbs; spinster of seasons. i was enthralled; to the point that i didn't notice him until he was only a few feet away. the old man was bent and marked by time as the tree, and shuffled out of my view around the wall. i followed.
just around the edge of the wall, though, i could see the tree for all she was: the guardian of a small graveyard. a courtyard of headstones, miniature obelisks, and the tiny stone humans draped in red that serve as this country's wards for the too-young dead. the elderly mistress watching over the last resting place of those too young for this, too young, too young. even the wind was quiet, here.
the old man was making his way, gently, along the farthest wall. past rows of stone jizobosatsu in red bibs, each perhaps eight inches tall. stillborn in single file. leaves the colour of broken hearts scattered across the pebbles and dirt, here and there resting lightly on one grave or another. those would be swept up and discarded in a matter of hours; at least, for now the leaves lay where they had fallen. a touch of the real, of the messiness of life. a grey-breasted starling hopped lightly across the gravel and moss, pecking and probing, oblivious to either of our human presences.
the old man continued along, stopping only at the very last statue in the row, in the farthest corner of the little courtyard. a small headstone sat next to the jizo, almost hidden by those beside it, and shaded from the morning sun by the converging walls.
he stood for minutes, motionless except for the barest rise and fall of his sunken chest, breathing in the smell of the dirt and the tree's fallen leaves. i shuffled my feet, nervous. i felt... profane. like i was intruding, disturbing something personal and private.
something i hadn't noticed: a stem protruding from a hand cupped against the chest. long, and green; fresh-plucked, then, or well-kept by the florist. a quiet voice in my heart said it was the former. long, the stem, and green; all that could be seen, until he uncupped his hand. i could see the delicately drooping petals, white and specked with what seemed to be red droplets. he held the lily as though porcelain, which i'm sure to his mind it was, and stood still once more.
i felt increasingly alien and out-of-place the longer he stood, silent. i had no cause to be here, no reason besides my curiosity; and no excuse, at all, to be so intruding on this rite. for a rite it was, as he solemnly knelt and lay the lily, pale and bloodied, on the grave. the morning was still cool, the sun yet to reach this little corner, but my shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
my mother lost a child, between my sister and i. we spoke about it maybe once. like most other subjects she would rather avoid, she was terribly matter-of-fact and succinct about it. my parents had met relatively late in their lives. there was always going to be some measure of risk to her pregnancies. she was going to have a baby; it didn't happen. no bitterness, and very little hurt showing, although the abrupt change of topic to more mundane subjects told me, even at my self-absorbed age of fifteen, that there were feelings buried here that i would rather not disturb.
the starling startled, suddenly taking to the air in a burst of feather and fright. it surprised me. its wings aflutter were, to my intruding ears, a gunshot ringing and ricocheting around the garden of stone. i couldn't help but watch as it took off through the lower branches of the old tree, alighting higher up, backed by what was becoming a brilliant azure morning sky.
when i looked back, the old man had straightened, and was looking right at me. the sunlight now fell almost directly on his face, making his eyes an uncommon and eerie golden-brown. i just stood there. riveted, as though seven years old again and found out in a lie. the cool breeze died, and the stone memorial garden became incredibly still.
he gave an ever-so-slight nod of the head, and the spell broke. my presence forgotten again, or ignored, he turned to the corner and knelt one more time. the starling twittered, and rustled feathers and leaves. i backed out slowly, the view disappearing once again around the corner of the wall, until i could see only stone and the crimson leaves of the old matron tree draped atop them.
then i turned and walked away, fast, without looking back; feet moving as quickly as the heavy, clumsy things could.
---
peace.
japan - wtf?: help me i am in hell
I’m beginning to suspect that Pringles Japan have a large group of 13 year-old ADHD sufferers as their brainstrust. It’s the only answer I can come up with to the sheer ridiculousness of their range, which has recently expanded to include the following two atrocities and one oddly-acceptable offering. Plus: Fanta and Nestle bring their A-game!! Read on.
Pringles ‘FUN PICNIC’ Cheese Potato Flavour
You like fries? Who doesn’t like fries? Hot, golden, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside… Fries are great. Cover them in melted cheese? F***ing fantastic. Of course, fries become thus through being submerged in oil and fat like some Turkish wrestler, and covered in enough salt to dehydrate Aquaman. And that cheese fondue? Colonic regularity be damned, and let’s not start on your arteries. You know who doesn’t like cheese-covered fries? Cardiologists, colon hydrotherapists… health care professionals in general. Cheese Potato Pringles are like eating week-old McDonald’s fries, theoretically dusted with instant mac-and-cheese cheese dust. All you get out of the exercise is a greasy mouth and the vague feeling that you’ve just turned two of your body’s vital exhaust valves into the Interstate 5 out of L.A. on Friday: clogged to high hell.
Two out of five cheddar Buick-59s.
Pringles ‘FUN PICNIC’ Spicy Chicken Flavour
According to the package imagery, the inspiration-du-jour for this particularly puzzling Pringle is the Buffalo wing. A noble goal. Unfortunately, it appears as though the snack itself was created on some kind of parallel Earth where Buffalo wings taste like cardboard. Cardboard armpit protectors, in fact. You know, the little inserts some ladies garments have to prevent embarrassing armpit sweat marks in summer? Like that, on cardboard, in your mouth.
One out of five Margaret Thatchers.
--
An Aside: WTF, ‘FUN PICNIC’, WTF? If I’m taking potato fries doused in hot cheese and buffalo wings to a picnic, it sure as s*** ain’t going to be fun: unless it’s an ambulance service work picnic, and all the daddies get to show their kiddies how to deal with cardiac arrest victims.
--
Pringles Texas Barbeque Flavour
Here’s where things get a little iffy. Quite incongruously, considering the hyper-obvious imagery on the can (entire red onions , capsicums and t-bone steaks threaded on skewers), these are possibly the most successful and dare I say edible Pringles I’ve come across since landing in Japan. A slightly tangy hint of barbeque-sauce over a smoky base, neither overwhelming (I’m looking at you, Cheetos Yakiniku Flavour), and an excellent accompaniment to Red Bull - surely the hallmark of any good dehydrated potato snack product. As much as it pains me to say so, I actually enjoyed these. Until the acute stomach cramping thirty minutes later, but hey, if you don’t have some kind of gastrointestinal cramping after eating this shite, you’re clearly waaaaaay too used to it.
Four out of five stunned mullets.
Nestle Kit Kat Bar Banana Flavour
People who know me, know that I nominally enjoy objects in the subset ‘barely foodstuffs that barely taste like other foodstuffs’, as evidenced by my inability to walk past chocolate, biscuits, bread, cake, and indeed anything else that even remotely resembles green tea-flavoured anything. Which, unfortunately, has evolved into a curiosity about anything-flavoured anything, the weirder the better. Japan is a haven for this, if by haven you mean graveyard where good taste has gone to die. Nestle have gotten into the game previously with Spring (plum) and Autumn (pumpkin) variations on their Kit Kat bar (known as the Big Finger in Australia; more than a little appropriate), the latest of which is shockingly banana flavoured. ‘Shockingly’, in this case, referring to the tongue-curling intensity of the flavour. This is banana flavour for people whose tastebuds have been scoured by napalm and balmed with salt, lemon and spite. The net result is an otherwise delicious wafer snack encased in a kind of neon-yellow deflector shield, a Force bubble created and maintained by Darth Plantain. There is deliciousness inside; you’d just have to spend time and energy divesting the delicious of its shell before you could enjoy it. Which would be an interesting banana-centric meta-commentary on Nestle’s behalf, were it intentional, but let’s face it: they just f***ed up.
Two out of five canary-yellow James Earl Joneses.
Fanta ‘Moo Moo’ White
Oh, Fanta, you rogues. I didn’t think you had anything left in the tank after U.S.A. Hip Hop. Yet here it is, lemonade and milk together at last in the carbonated taste explosion the world has been begging for! To be fair, this is not a new phenomenon in Japan: the venerable Calpis brand puts out approximately seventy versions of its Calpis Water and Calpis Soda per annum. Fanta Moo Moo is essentially a vanilla ice-cream soda in a bottle. Oddly (or perhaps not; this is Japan), the drink is plastered with slogans like ‘CALORIE OFF!’, and a major selling-point appears to be its 200ml of calcium IN EVERY BOTTLE. Which, as every native Japanese knows, is the Gaijin secret to our incredible musculature and towering height. Aside from its Through the Looking-glass growth capabilities, Fanta Moo Moo is an inoffensive and innocuous cream soda drink, and if that is your thing, go for it. Oh, and on a final note: legend has it that the name Calpis is actually a portmanteau constructed from calcium and sarpis, Sanskrit for ‘supreme taste’, which describes the essense of the Buddha’s teachings. And not, as you might think, bovine urine. The More You Know.
Three out of five carbonated cattle.
peace.
I’m beginning to suspect that Pringles Japan have a large group of 13 year-old ADHD sufferers as their brainstrust. It’s the only answer I can come up with to the sheer ridiculousness of their range, which has recently expanded to include the following two atrocities and one oddly-acceptable offering. Plus: Fanta and Nestle bring their A-game!! Read on.
Pringles ‘FUN PICNIC’ Cheese Potato Flavour
You like fries? Who doesn’t like fries? Hot, golden, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside… Fries are great. Cover them in melted cheese? F***ing fantastic. Of course, fries become thus through being submerged in oil and fat like some Turkish wrestler, and covered in enough salt to dehydrate Aquaman. And that cheese fondue? Colonic regularity be damned, and let’s not start on your arteries. You know who doesn’t like cheese-covered fries? Cardiologists, colon hydrotherapists… health care professionals in general. Cheese Potato Pringles are like eating week-old McDonald’s fries, theoretically dusted with instant mac-and-cheese cheese dust. All you get out of the exercise is a greasy mouth and the vague feeling that you’ve just turned two of your body’s vital exhaust valves into the Interstate 5 out of L.A. on Friday: clogged to high hell.
Two out of five cheddar Buick-59s.
Pringles ‘FUN PICNIC’ Spicy Chicken Flavour
According to the package imagery, the inspiration-du-jour for this particularly puzzling Pringle is the Buffalo wing. A noble goal. Unfortunately, it appears as though the snack itself was created on some kind of parallel Earth where Buffalo wings taste like cardboard. Cardboard armpit protectors, in fact. You know, the little inserts some ladies garments have to prevent embarrassing armpit sweat marks in summer? Like that, on cardboard, in your mouth.
One out of five Margaret Thatchers.
--
An Aside: WTF, ‘FUN PICNIC’, WTF? If I’m taking potato fries doused in hot cheese and buffalo wings to a picnic, it sure as s*** ain’t going to be fun: unless it’s an ambulance service work picnic, and all the daddies get to show their kiddies how to deal with cardiac arrest victims.
--
Pringles Texas Barbeque Flavour
Here’s where things get a little iffy. Quite incongruously, considering the hyper-obvious imagery on the can (entire red onions , capsicums and t-bone steaks threaded on skewers), these are possibly the most successful and dare I say edible Pringles I’ve come across since landing in Japan. A slightly tangy hint of barbeque-sauce over a smoky base, neither overwhelming (I’m looking at you, Cheetos Yakiniku Flavour), and an excellent accompaniment to Red Bull - surely the hallmark of any good dehydrated potato snack product. As much as it pains me to say so, I actually enjoyed these. Until the acute stomach cramping thirty minutes later, but hey, if you don’t have some kind of gastrointestinal cramping after eating this shite, you’re clearly waaaaaay too used to it.
Four out of five stunned mullets.
Nestle Kit Kat Bar Banana Flavour
People who know me, know that I nominally enjoy objects in the subset ‘barely foodstuffs that barely taste like other foodstuffs’, as evidenced by my inability to walk past chocolate, biscuits, bread, cake, and indeed anything else that even remotely resembles green tea-flavoured anything. Which, unfortunately, has evolved into a curiosity about anything-flavoured anything, the weirder the better. Japan is a haven for this, if by haven you mean graveyard where good taste has gone to die. Nestle have gotten into the game previously with Spring (plum) and Autumn (pumpkin) variations on their Kit Kat bar (known as the Big Finger in Australia; more than a little appropriate), the latest of which is shockingly banana flavoured. ‘Shockingly’, in this case, referring to the tongue-curling intensity of the flavour. This is banana flavour for people whose tastebuds have been scoured by napalm and balmed with salt, lemon and spite. The net result is an otherwise delicious wafer snack encased in a kind of neon-yellow deflector shield, a Force bubble created and maintained by Darth Plantain. There is deliciousness inside; you’d just have to spend time and energy divesting the delicious of its shell before you could enjoy it. Which would be an interesting banana-centric meta-commentary on Nestle’s behalf, were it intentional, but let’s face it: they just f***ed up.
Two out of five canary-yellow James Earl Joneses.
Fanta ‘Moo Moo’ White
Oh, Fanta, you rogues. I didn’t think you had anything left in the tank after U.S.A. Hip Hop. Yet here it is, lemonade and milk together at last in the carbonated taste explosion the world has been begging for! To be fair, this is not a new phenomenon in Japan: the venerable Calpis brand puts out approximately seventy versions of its Calpis Water and Calpis Soda per annum. Fanta Moo Moo is essentially a vanilla ice-cream soda in a bottle. Oddly (or perhaps not; this is Japan), the drink is plastered with slogans like ‘CALORIE OFF!’, and a major selling-point appears to be its 200ml of calcium IN EVERY BOTTLE. Which, as every native Japanese knows, is the Gaijin secret to our incredible musculature and towering height. Aside from its Through the Looking-glass growth capabilities, Fanta Moo Moo is an inoffensive and innocuous cream soda drink, and if that is your thing, go for it. Oh, and on a final note: legend has it that the name Calpis is actually a portmanteau constructed from calcium and sarpis, Sanskrit for ‘supreme taste’, which describes the essense of the Buddha’s teachings. And not, as you might think, bovine urine. The More You Know.
Three out of five carbonated cattle.
peace.
begin rant.
so, my second Western Digital external hard drive has failed. this is the second one in as many weeks. last week, i freaked minorly because the one that crapped its pants was my backup for all of my Illustrator and Photoshop work for the club. a hassle to replace, surely, but nothing that would be severely missed in the event of catastrophe.
THIS one, however, is my iTunes library.
over 200gb of music.
THIS one is my life, and it is f***ing dying.
even DiskWarrior has nothing to say on the matter - the disk needs a full reformat. so i'm backing it up now.
problem is, i have to do it piecemeal, because individual files have been corrupted and won't copy. so every time i attempt a bulk backup, and OSX runs into a corrupted file it doesn't like, it error -36's me an craps out.
so i'm backing up 200gb, artist by artist, and in some cases album by album, to weed out the corrupted files.
and i want to PUNCH SOMETHING.
end rant.
so, my second Western Digital external hard drive has failed. this is the second one in as many weeks. last week, i freaked minorly because the one that crapped its pants was my backup for all of my Illustrator and Photoshop work for the club. a hassle to replace, surely, but nothing that would be severely missed in the event of catastrophe.
THIS one, however, is my iTunes library.
over 200gb of music.
THIS one is my life, and it is f***ing dying.
even DiskWarrior has nothing to say on the matter - the disk needs a full reformat. so i'm backing it up now.
problem is, i have to do it piecemeal, because individual files have been corrupted and won't copy. so every time i attempt a bulk backup, and OSX runs into a corrupted file it doesn't like, it error -36's me an craps out.
so i'm backing up 200gb, artist by artist, and in some cases album by album, to weed out the corrupted files.
and i want to PUNCH SOMETHING.
end rant.
there is a new blog post over at www.jikahatsuden.net that i would love for anyone to read and leave a comment on, if you have the time. it's called 'doing literature'.
again, for click-impaired, the full text here.
---
sometimes, things are just a joy to write. they are fun, and they roll off the end of your fingers as though they were always supposed to be this way.
and then you become stuck. you forget how the damn things was supposed to end, if you knew it in the first place. you lose track of what you meant, or how it was supposed to feel.
an artist friend always tells me that he is never done with his paintings, they are never finished: they are just abandoned, because otherwise they wouldn't exist at all.
here is an abandoned story. this was a joy to write, and then i got stuck, and then eventually i figured it might as well be abandoned just like the rest of them.
---
‘Doing Literature’
The day after you left, I sat in my room and looked at your photographs (yes, I had your photograph on my wall and my desk and my bedside table), and I thought to myself that I would make something of you to remember. “Watch!” I said to your photographs that day, “watch! Here, I shall do Poetry to you!”
So watch, your photographs did, as I sat at my desk with my nice writing pen and a blank ream of paper that slowly and surely became tattooed with my hatching and scratchings. Slowly, a picture emerged of you, painted in rhyme and what little reason I could conjure; a fractured, fractal funhouse version of you built with my mind and my fingers. In it, you were golden, and you rode a chimera made up of all the little pieces of the world you had touched, fused into a myth to bear you. The chimera’s leonine feet beat in time with my labored metre, a galloping gait, claws tapping staccato syllables.
Your photographs looked on.
“You are riding a chimera!” I crowed when I was done. “You are made of gold that moves and breathes, and atop that beast you bestride the world! Are you not impressed?”
Your photographs looked on.
“Fine,” I shrugged, unperturbed, and I tucked the Poem of you into my desk. “For my next trick, I shall do Music to you! Watch me remake you with Song!”
And so, perhaps a week or so later, your photographs did watch as I abandoned my pen and picked up my guitar. I took her in my hands and began to strum, at first a simple two chords, over and over, looking for a rhythm to ride; and then I found it, and two chords became four, and I put down Charlie (remember, I called her Charlie) and scratched them onto a pad, then picked her up and began again, building notes into progressions and riffs. Each time, I kept coming back to those first two chords, as though they were your name and I was sewing it into the song. No matter how long and how far and how complicated my fingers wandered along Charlie’s frets (after all, if I was to do Music to you, I had to do it right), I kept returning to that simple duo of minor chords, as though they were the heart and the song was spiraling in and out from them like breathing.
Then, I started to Sing. First, just an echo to the chords; fingers and voice playing Marco Polo with each other from across a lake. I was never much of a singer, as you had told me playfully before, but the song suited my rough throat well enough, and soon I had a counter-melody, simple ornament to the Music, and I had you in Song.
I put Charlie down again, and went to make a cup of coffee. Brought the cup back to my room, sat down, and slowly sipped it while I thought over the Song of you carefully, memorizing with my fingers. Then, I picked up Charlie once more, and played you to the room, your photographs looking on.
When you were done, the last notes of your passing having faded into that afternoon’s birdsong, I looked up into your photos, smiling.
“There! There you are! I have done Song to you! You are beautiful, no?” No false modesty; you were marvelous in song, playful and secretive and familiar and unknowable all together. I played your chords again, slowly. “Are you not happy, to be so made into Music?”
Your photographs looked on.
I was quiet, for a time. I loosely played you again, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore, and my voice cracked over simple notes, and I gave up before I made it through your first bridge. I sat, for a time, a little put out. I had made Music of you, after all.
“Fine, fine,” I said calmly. “You’re quite right, of course. Quite right. Should have thought of it earlier.” I took the pad with the chords of your Song, and put them away in my desk drawer with your Poem. “Forgive me. Of course, Poetry could not be enough, and what is Song but Poetry with a little Music rag-tagging along? No, you are worth so much more.” I stood; and although I felt more than a little foolish, it was just me and your photographs, so I struck a pose.
“Here! Here! I shall do to you as you so deserve! I shall make Literature of you! Watch!” And I went to sleep, fitfully.
The following day, I left the house in the early morning and returned in the afternoon, armed with a typewriter and ribbon, and good firm leaf on which to type (for this would be Literature, not some tawdry penny-dreadful or pamphlet. For this you would be typed, damnit). I sat down, in my chair at my good, solid desk, and set the typewriter before me. Took my reading glasses from their case (you remember, the ones you always told me to get rid of; the ones that made my eyes appear a little milky and far-seeing, as though I were going blind), and put them on my nose, and began to type.
I type for days. I called my friends, told them not to expect me to dinner or the baseball or to the pub for a while; I was doing Literature. To which they invariably sighed and nodded, most of them having had, at the least, Poetry done to them at some point, some even knowing it; but all understanding what it meant. I typed for hours in the day. Sometimes, it would be fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hour stretches… Me, the typewriter, and the Novel of you becoming, keystroke after keystroke. Of course, some days I would sit down with the typewriter and… nothing. On those days I would get up after an hour or so, and take my notepad, and go walking around town watching people and seeing places and all the time scribbling little plot points or characters into the notepad of the Ideas of the Novel of you.
Slowly, you took shape; a story of adventure and discovery, elements of the fantastic, told in a simple and unadorned style that anyone would have instantly recognized as being yours. Your characters, too, came alive in my notes and in the type, all the characters of the Novel of you. The musician, the artist, the photographer, the homeless drunk, the effervescent thirteen-year-old costumed crimefighter and her autistic twin sister. And the telekinetic schnauzer.
Oh, the twists you took. The suspense, the drama, the ridiculous farce and the pathos and the romance of you. I took you to coffee houses, left pages of you on tables and retired to a corner to watch, and write. The people would come, and as they sat and sipped their mocha or jasmine tea or what-have-you, I would watch them read your pages and write their reactions into my notes. Like the women who started crying, or laughing, or combinations of the two. The students who picked you up one afternoon (who I guessed were Media or Film or Creative Writing students), who wrote their names and contact numbers on your pages and left you for the next, more well-connected person to find.
That was the only time you were left behind, though. Even the lawyer-looking man who read you, then re-read, then took you to the counter and demanded to know who had left you there. Even he, who stalked around the shop asking all the other drinkers if you belonged to them, growing progressively angrier until he stormed out, throwing his half-finished drink half-in the trash; even he took your pages with him. (I could never understand why he was so angry. I often wondered what, in those few pages, he had thought he’d recognized.)
Of course, I didn’t tell him that I had written those pages. Not because I was afraid, you see, but what would I have told him? “Yes, they’re mine. Yes, it’s someone I used to know; I’m doing Literature to them.” It sounds mad.
Months, it took, of typing and collating, editing, revising and typing again, until one day, there it was. The Book, the Novel of you. You, Literature, completely. I took all your pages, putting them straight and ordered, and bound them together. Then I put it aside for one, then two, then three whole days; and tried incredibly hard not to think of the Book, sitting there, waiting to be read. I tried to forget it, filling my time with other things: books other than you, songs other than you, poetry and art (other than you, of course); making soup and drinking too much coffee, and taking photographs of the world. Taking all of that data, and thinking and stewing and mulling and coming up with ideas that would be poems and songs and stories other than you.
I reconnected with people. Talked to my friends and told them I had finished the Doing of Literature, and they congratulated me and asked, “Well, where is it then?” So I made copies of the bound manuscript for my closest, gave them out, and waited, the original still sitting unread on my desk.
In the following weeks, while the original Book remained untouched on the desk, the copies came back one by one. Each of my friends told me that it was beautiful, amazing, unique, confusing, intense, compelling, frustrating, epic; until I collected the last, and began to smile. For, apparently, I had done it.
So back to my room and my desk, and the original manuscript of the Literature I went, and sat, and I opened your cover and began to read. They had been right, my friends, for it was all of those things. It was, after all, you in Literature. All the twists and turns, all the ups and downs, beauty and violence and everything rolled together; into a story and characters that variously screamed and whispered your name. I found myself lost in it like I hadn’t been lost in a story since I was twelve and Frank Herbert showed me how worlds were made. And I had written the damn thing. Each chapter draped another layer of sinew and muscle and skin over the bones of your plot; crises and triumph and quiet little moments right up to the climax. Even a denouement I barely remembered (that must’ve come in the deep parts of my caffeine-addiction-induced insomnia).
It took me a couple of days to finish it, to absorb it all. Then I sat back. I had done it. I looked up at your photograph on my wall, and I grinned triumphant.
“There! There it is! I have made Literature of you, Literature that speaks your name to all who read it!”
Your photographs looked on.
“What?” I said, disbelieving. “What is the matter? Are you not pleased?”
Your photographs looked on.
“What else do you want?” I cried angrily. “I have done Poetry and Song to you, made you Literature! I have done Alchemy three times over now, each more truthful than the last. I have turned you into beauty in three forms, and still? Still!?!? You have nothing to say? What must I do?”
I slammed the manuscript down. I felt powerless.
“What do I have to do?”
Of course, your photographs said nothing. Impassive as always, they looked on. The truth was as obvious now as it had been before you left. There was nothing I could do, except take your Book and put it away, inside the drawer of the desk that kept your Song and your Poem.
Of course, while I had been here doing Literature, you had been elsewhere, doing Life.
Without me.
---
peace.
again, for click-impaired, the full text here.
---
sometimes, things are just a joy to write. they are fun, and they roll off the end of your fingers as though they were always supposed to be this way.
and then you become stuck. you forget how the damn things was supposed to end, if you knew it in the first place. you lose track of what you meant, or how it was supposed to feel.
an artist friend always tells me that he is never done with his paintings, they are never finished: they are just abandoned, because otherwise they wouldn't exist at all.
here is an abandoned story. this was a joy to write, and then i got stuck, and then eventually i figured it might as well be abandoned just like the rest of them.
---
‘Doing Literature’
The day after you left, I sat in my room and looked at your photographs (yes, I had your photograph on my wall and my desk and my bedside table), and I thought to myself that I would make something of you to remember. “Watch!” I said to your photographs that day, “watch! Here, I shall do Poetry to you!”
So watch, your photographs did, as I sat at my desk with my nice writing pen and a blank ream of paper that slowly and surely became tattooed with my hatching and scratchings. Slowly, a picture emerged of you, painted in rhyme and what little reason I could conjure; a fractured, fractal funhouse version of you built with my mind and my fingers. In it, you were golden, and you rode a chimera made up of all the little pieces of the world you had touched, fused into a myth to bear you. The chimera’s leonine feet beat in time with my labored metre, a galloping gait, claws tapping staccato syllables.
Your photographs looked on.
“You are riding a chimera!” I crowed when I was done. “You are made of gold that moves and breathes, and atop that beast you bestride the world! Are you not impressed?”
Your photographs looked on.
“Fine,” I shrugged, unperturbed, and I tucked the Poem of you into my desk. “For my next trick, I shall do Music to you! Watch me remake you with Song!”
And so, perhaps a week or so later, your photographs did watch as I abandoned my pen and picked up my guitar. I took her in my hands and began to strum, at first a simple two chords, over and over, looking for a rhythm to ride; and then I found it, and two chords became four, and I put down Charlie (remember, I called her Charlie) and scratched them onto a pad, then picked her up and began again, building notes into progressions and riffs. Each time, I kept coming back to those first two chords, as though they were your name and I was sewing it into the song. No matter how long and how far and how complicated my fingers wandered along Charlie’s frets (after all, if I was to do Music to you, I had to do it right), I kept returning to that simple duo of minor chords, as though they were the heart and the song was spiraling in and out from them like breathing.
Then, I started to Sing. First, just an echo to the chords; fingers and voice playing Marco Polo with each other from across a lake. I was never much of a singer, as you had told me playfully before, but the song suited my rough throat well enough, and soon I had a counter-melody, simple ornament to the Music, and I had you in Song.
I put Charlie down again, and went to make a cup of coffee. Brought the cup back to my room, sat down, and slowly sipped it while I thought over the Song of you carefully, memorizing with my fingers. Then, I picked up Charlie once more, and played you to the room, your photographs looking on.
When you were done, the last notes of your passing having faded into that afternoon’s birdsong, I looked up into your photos, smiling.
“There! There you are! I have done Song to you! You are beautiful, no?” No false modesty; you were marvelous in song, playful and secretive and familiar and unknowable all together. I played your chords again, slowly. “Are you not happy, to be so made into Music?”
Your photographs looked on.
I was quiet, for a time. I loosely played you again, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore, and my voice cracked over simple notes, and I gave up before I made it through your first bridge. I sat, for a time, a little put out. I had made Music of you, after all.
“Fine, fine,” I said calmly. “You’re quite right, of course. Quite right. Should have thought of it earlier.” I took the pad with the chords of your Song, and put them away in my desk drawer with your Poem. “Forgive me. Of course, Poetry could not be enough, and what is Song but Poetry with a little Music rag-tagging along? No, you are worth so much more.” I stood; and although I felt more than a little foolish, it was just me and your photographs, so I struck a pose.
“Here! Here! I shall do to you as you so deserve! I shall make Literature of you! Watch!” And I went to sleep, fitfully.
The following day, I left the house in the early morning and returned in the afternoon, armed with a typewriter and ribbon, and good firm leaf on which to type (for this would be Literature, not some tawdry penny-dreadful or pamphlet. For this you would be typed, damnit). I sat down, in my chair at my good, solid desk, and set the typewriter before me. Took my reading glasses from their case (you remember, the ones you always told me to get rid of; the ones that made my eyes appear a little milky and far-seeing, as though I were going blind), and put them on my nose, and began to type.
I type for days. I called my friends, told them not to expect me to dinner or the baseball or to the pub for a while; I was doing Literature. To which they invariably sighed and nodded, most of them having had, at the least, Poetry done to them at some point, some even knowing it; but all understanding what it meant. I typed for hours in the day. Sometimes, it would be fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hour stretches… Me, the typewriter, and the Novel of you becoming, keystroke after keystroke. Of course, some days I would sit down with the typewriter and… nothing. On those days I would get up after an hour or so, and take my notepad, and go walking around town watching people and seeing places and all the time scribbling little plot points or characters into the notepad of the Ideas of the Novel of you.
Slowly, you took shape; a story of adventure and discovery, elements of the fantastic, told in a simple and unadorned style that anyone would have instantly recognized as being yours. Your characters, too, came alive in my notes and in the type, all the characters of the Novel of you. The musician, the artist, the photographer, the homeless drunk, the effervescent thirteen-year-old costumed crimefighter and her autistic twin sister. And the telekinetic schnauzer.
Oh, the twists you took. The suspense, the drama, the ridiculous farce and the pathos and the romance of you. I took you to coffee houses, left pages of you on tables and retired to a corner to watch, and write. The people would come, and as they sat and sipped their mocha or jasmine tea or what-have-you, I would watch them read your pages and write their reactions into my notes. Like the women who started crying, or laughing, or combinations of the two. The students who picked you up one afternoon (who I guessed were Media or Film or Creative Writing students), who wrote their names and contact numbers on your pages and left you for the next, more well-connected person to find.
That was the only time you were left behind, though. Even the lawyer-looking man who read you, then re-read, then took you to the counter and demanded to know who had left you there. Even he, who stalked around the shop asking all the other drinkers if you belonged to them, growing progressively angrier until he stormed out, throwing his half-finished drink half-in the trash; even he took your pages with him. (I could never understand why he was so angry. I often wondered what, in those few pages, he had thought he’d recognized.)
Of course, I didn’t tell him that I had written those pages. Not because I was afraid, you see, but what would I have told him? “Yes, they’re mine. Yes, it’s someone I used to know; I’m doing Literature to them.” It sounds mad.
Months, it took, of typing and collating, editing, revising and typing again, until one day, there it was. The Book, the Novel of you. You, Literature, completely. I took all your pages, putting them straight and ordered, and bound them together. Then I put it aside for one, then two, then three whole days; and tried incredibly hard not to think of the Book, sitting there, waiting to be read. I tried to forget it, filling my time with other things: books other than you, songs other than you, poetry and art (other than you, of course); making soup and drinking too much coffee, and taking photographs of the world. Taking all of that data, and thinking and stewing and mulling and coming up with ideas that would be poems and songs and stories other than you.
I reconnected with people. Talked to my friends and told them I had finished the Doing of Literature, and they congratulated me and asked, “Well, where is it then?” So I made copies of the bound manuscript for my closest, gave them out, and waited, the original still sitting unread on my desk.
In the following weeks, while the original Book remained untouched on the desk, the copies came back one by one. Each of my friends told me that it was beautiful, amazing, unique, confusing, intense, compelling, frustrating, epic; until I collected the last, and began to smile. For, apparently, I had done it.
So back to my room and my desk, and the original manuscript of the Literature I went, and sat, and I opened your cover and began to read. They had been right, my friends, for it was all of those things. It was, after all, you in Literature. All the twists and turns, all the ups and downs, beauty and violence and everything rolled together; into a story and characters that variously screamed and whispered your name. I found myself lost in it like I hadn’t been lost in a story since I was twelve and Frank Herbert showed me how worlds were made. And I had written the damn thing. Each chapter draped another layer of sinew and muscle and skin over the bones of your plot; crises and triumph and quiet little moments right up to the climax. Even a denouement I barely remembered (that must’ve come in the deep parts of my caffeine-addiction-induced insomnia).
It took me a couple of days to finish it, to absorb it all. Then I sat back. I had done it. I looked up at your photograph on my wall, and I grinned triumphant.
“There! There it is! I have made Literature of you, Literature that speaks your name to all who read it!”
Your photographs looked on.
“What?” I said, disbelieving. “What is the matter? Are you not pleased?”
Your photographs looked on.
“What else do you want?” I cried angrily. “I have done Poetry and Song to you, made you Literature! I have done Alchemy three times over now, each more truthful than the last. I have turned you into beauty in three forms, and still? Still!?!? You have nothing to say? What must I do?”
I slammed the manuscript down. I felt powerless.
“What do I have to do?”
Of course, your photographs said nothing. Impassive as always, they looked on. The truth was as obvious now as it had been before you left. There was nothing I could do, except take your Book and put it away, inside the drawer of the desk that kept your Song and your Poem.
Of course, while I had been here doing Literature, you had been elsewhere, doing Life.
Without me.
---
peace.
to all writers, artists and lovers of art: be afraid.
this may be short; i may expand later, once i've had time to get rid of the terrified nervous twitching in my stomach.
you might not be aware of the Handley case. WIRED has provided fairly clear, accurate coverage. essentially, an american comic book collector was prosecuted and convicted under obscenity law for possessing japanese 'lolicon' manga - comics whose theme is generally sexualisation of underage, often pre-pubescent girls.
you might not understand why something like this would make a normal person fearful. fearful and angry.
to break it down quick and dirty (and i urge you to read the WIRED article and do some research), what has happened here is that Congress has enacted a law by which they may tell you what you can and cannot read in the comfort of your own home, in this first instance under the guise of protecting you from 'child pornography'.
quite aside from the debate as to whether these manga constitute 'child pornography' in the first place, the further-reaching aspects of this PROTECT ACT (doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?) directly impact both individual rights and the first amendment right to free speech. given "depictions that the defendant’s community would consider 'obscene' " (emphasis mine), the government can now de facto outlaw art.
someone tell me i'm being hysterical over all this, but from where i'm sitting, i can see bonfires on the horizon. we follow this kind of thinking, the government will be telling us what books are legitimate, next, and what films, what music... what culture is legitimate. god forbid if your culture ever becomes illegitimate.
this kind of thinking will get us all killed.
please, get reading, and please buy a Comic Book Legal Defence Fund membership.
here's hoping.
peace.
this may be short; i may expand later, once i've had time to get rid of the terrified nervous twitching in my stomach.
you might not be aware of the Handley case. WIRED has provided fairly clear, accurate coverage. essentially, an american comic book collector was prosecuted and convicted under obscenity law for possessing japanese 'lolicon' manga - comics whose theme is generally sexualisation of underage, often pre-pubescent girls.
you might not understand why something like this would make a normal person fearful. fearful and angry.
to break it down quick and dirty (and i urge you to read the WIRED article and do some research), what has happened here is that Congress has enacted a law by which they may tell you what you can and cannot read in the comfort of your own home, in this first instance under the guise of protecting you from 'child pornography'.
quite aside from the debate as to whether these manga constitute 'child pornography' in the first place, the further-reaching aspects of this PROTECT ACT (doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?) directly impact both individual rights and the first amendment right to free speech. given "depictions that the defendant’s community would consider 'obscene' " (emphasis mine), the government can now de facto outlaw art.
someone tell me i'm being hysterical over all this, but from where i'm sitting, i can see bonfires on the horizon. we follow this kind of thinking, the government will be telling us what books are legitimate, next, and what films, what music... what culture is legitimate. god forbid if your culture ever becomes illegitimate.
this kind of thinking will get us all killed.
please, get reading, and please buy a Comic Book Legal Defence Fund membership.
here's hoping.
peace.
stories can come from anywhere. people, places, events. mostly, it’s from a number of those things sloshing around in your head, until piece A slots into piece B like first-time lovers, gingerly, and then you have the beginning of something – painful, sure, but beautiful in its possibility and potency. this is headed somewhere. although, whether it’s the main character, the time/place, the two crackheads upstairs, or the whole ‘ghost’ thing, i don’t know.
they can go anywhere, too. that’s what i love about writing. sometimes, the most surprising things come out of your own mind.
—
’static’
Behind the static, there is something there. Something to be seen, to be decoded. It just takes time, to walk through all that pixellated snowfall… or is it ash? Is it Christmas in New York, or Chernobyl? Does the distinction mean anything? White on black or black on white. They’re both cover for something.
He checks his watch. The face is open, unlike the flickering glamour box in front of him, and simple to read. It reads a quarter past three, but it stopped working some twelve years ago now. Oddly enough, the digital readout on the microwave silently reads 3.15, also. The stopped watch is right twice a day, he thinks, and shudders in the cold.
It is cold. It is February. The electricity is still on, for now, but the gas has been out for days. Company says they can’t get out until Thursday due to the snow. That’s all well and good, since he doesn’t the cash to have it switched back on, anyhow. Seems everyone’s behind on their payments these days.
He is a misshapen, lumpy silhouette on the wall behind, cast in pale radiation-grey and black, flickering in and out of substance in time with the fall of static and snowflake. He’s not crazy about the cold. Hasn’t been this cold for maybe three, four years. Since April.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Most people you talk to, they say no. Don’t believe in the afterlife; or if they do, they don’t believe in ghosts. The divine resurrection, of course. Poltergeists? What do I look like, an idiot? Happens too often, to too many people, though. Whether it’s a mass hallucination, or common cerebral anomaly, or whether ghosts are objectively real… They’re there, all right. Voices, images.
He keeps seeing ghosts in the static. It’s all a little odd.
The snow, outside, it won’t stop falling. Neither will whatever it is on the screen. Still undecided whether ice or ash. They’re both apt, metaphorically. It just depends on what prescription you’re on, really. He’s on a bunch of them; well, not tonight, of course, he’s ghost hunting. Most he can’t pronounce.
The thing about static, he thinks, is that it can be anything you want. It can be a thing, or an absence of a thing, or a flickering filter imposed between you and a thing. It can be purposeful in and of itself, or gloriously random.
He likes random. Dice, mostly. The devil’s knuckles rattling around in a cup, spilling to the asphalt, and in a second you have yourself a new coat, or dinner out at a nice restaurant with a warm, soft female body for the night. Or, you end up without money for the gas, and ghosts in the static telling you something you can hear on the edge of your vision. At least the dice won’t screw you on purpose.
The upstairs is banging up a storm again. You’d think they were trying to set a fucking land fucking speed fucking record, with all their jackhammer banging. Gets annoying, especially when the weather turns like it’s turned now, like the gas is out in theirs, too, and they’re rutting to keep away the cold. That, or he’s laying an almighty of a beatdown on her. The voices are muffled so you’d not know either way until the sirens; and, with the rent as low as it is, it’s little surprise you never hear police or ambulances at this end of town. He doesn’t call. Doesn’t head upstairs to check What’d it be worth, anyway? Interrupt some crackheads fucking, or fucking each other up, and you’d be more as likely to get fucked yourself, in the end. And the ambulances equally wouldn’t come for that. Good intentions or no, you’re still south of 8th Street.
Damn, they’re making a racket. Nothing to do, though, except hunker into the blankets and stare into the static. It’s like this. The crackhead brain only responds to a set of narrow and highly specific urges: the urge to do more crack, the urge to fuck the living shit out of something, and the urge to murder someone. Interrupting a crackhead in the throes of urge A or B invariably results in a sudden spike in urge C, which then results in a similar spike in someone’s pain centers; if not a spike (railroad) through those pain centers. This is math of the most basic kind. It’s not coming-down-from-the-trees, learning-to-throw, discovering-speech kind of math. Single cells do this kind of math in a half-life.
The snow clears for a second. The ash gets thicker. God’s sputtering cigarette raining carcino-skin on TV, on repeat.
Ghosts. He’s looking for ghosts in TV static. People would think he was crazy, if they weren’t all looking for the same thing. And if he wasn’t the only guy in town who could find them.
—
peace.
they can go anywhere, too. that’s what i love about writing. sometimes, the most surprising things come out of your own mind.
—
’static’
Behind the static, there is something there. Something to be seen, to be decoded. It just takes time, to walk through all that pixellated snowfall… or is it ash? Is it Christmas in New York, or Chernobyl? Does the distinction mean anything? White on black or black on white. They’re both cover for something.
He checks his watch. The face is open, unlike the flickering glamour box in front of him, and simple to read. It reads a quarter past three, but it stopped working some twelve years ago now. Oddly enough, the digital readout on the microwave silently reads 3.15, also. The stopped watch is right twice a day, he thinks, and shudders in the cold.
It is cold. It is February. The electricity is still on, for now, but the gas has been out for days. Company says they can’t get out until Thursday due to the snow. That’s all well and good, since he doesn’t the cash to have it switched back on, anyhow. Seems everyone’s behind on their payments these days.
He is a misshapen, lumpy silhouette on the wall behind, cast in pale radiation-grey and black, flickering in and out of substance in time with the fall of static and snowflake. He’s not crazy about the cold. Hasn’t been this cold for maybe three, four years. Since April.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Most people you talk to, they say no. Don’t believe in the afterlife; or if they do, they don’t believe in ghosts. The divine resurrection, of course. Poltergeists? What do I look like, an idiot? Happens too often, to too many people, though. Whether it’s a mass hallucination, or common cerebral anomaly, or whether ghosts are objectively real… They’re there, all right. Voices, images.
He keeps seeing ghosts in the static. It’s all a little odd.
The snow, outside, it won’t stop falling. Neither will whatever it is on the screen. Still undecided whether ice or ash. They’re both apt, metaphorically. It just depends on what prescription you’re on, really. He’s on a bunch of them; well, not tonight, of course, he’s ghost hunting. Most he can’t pronounce.
The thing about static, he thinks, is that it can be anything you want. It can be a thing, or an absence of a thing, or a flickering filter imposed between you and a thing. It can be purposeful in and of itself, or gloriously random.
He likes random. Dice, mostly. The devil’s knuckles rattling around in a cup, spilling to the asphalt, and in a second you have yourself a new coat, or dinner out at a nice restaurant with a warm, soft female body for the night. Or, you end up without money for the gas, and ghosts in the static telling you something you can hear on the edge of your vision. At least the dice won’t screw you on purpose.
The upstairs is banging up a storm again. You’d think they were trying to set a fucking land fucking speed fucking record, with all their jackhammer banging. Gets annoying, especially when the weather turns like it’s turned now, like the gas is out in theirs, too, and they’re rutting to keep away the cold. That, or he’s laying an almighty of a beatdown on her. The voices are muffled so you’d not know either way until the sirens; and, with the rent as low as it is, it’s little surprise you never hear police or ambulances at this end of town. He doesn’t call. Doesn’t head upstairs to check What’d it be worth, anyway? Interrupt some crackheads fucking, or fucking each other up, and you’d be more as likely to get fucked yourself, in the end. And the ambulances equally wouldn’t come for that. Good intentions or no, you’re still south of 8th Street.
Damn, they’re making a racket. Nothing to do, though, except hunker into the blankets and stare into the static. It’s like this. The crackhead brain only responds to a set of narrow and highly specific urges: the urge to do more crack, the urge to fuck the living shit out of something, and the urge to murder someone. Interrupting a crackhead in the throes of urge A or B invariably results in a sudden spike in urge C, which then results in a similar spike in someone’s pain centers; if not a spike (railroad) through those pain centers. This is math of the most basic kind. It’s not coming-down-from-the-trees, learning-to-throw, discovering-speech kind of math. Single cells do this kind of math in a half-life.
The snow clears for a second. The ash gets thicker. God’s sputtering cigarette raining carcino-skin on TV, on repeat.
Ghosts. He’s looking for ghosts in TV static. People would think he was crazy, if they weren’t all looking for the same thing. And if he wasn’t the only guy in town who could find them.
—
peace.
colour. sometimes the smallest things can colour your work. i write a lot by instinct... 'craft' is something i'm working on, but mostly, i just keep pushing forward and the words seem to appear as they want. that's odd, occasionally. i get the feeling that the story isn't being written so much as writing itself. take, for instance, this little piece. i wrote this specifically as a way to come down off of the contact high from performing live a few months ago, and it ended up birthing a character that wormed his way into the manuscript i'm writing now. seems he wanted more of the limelight. hah.
peace.
---
he bestrode the stage like it was the world, and he owned it all. the sweat droplets gave his skin an odd sheen, like cubic zirconias or glitter or fairy dust. microphone pressed tightly to his lips, the words intoned solemnly;
"this is a call to arms; a clamouring clarion to all those who are drawing their first or final breaths, and everyone in between. this is a fist raised high, a heart soaring with passion and fury..."
fuck, but he could work a crowd. there was always that about him, that way of making a group of a hundred or a thousand strangers get down and want to blow him, then and there.
"this is a song for lovers, for fighters, for those who love to fight and fight to love."
we stood there, flies in amber, enraptured. this was the moment, this was the time, and later on we would all look back on this as the single instant where everything else began, and began to fall apart. but then, it was just the moment.
"here, i want you to feel in your heart the beat of a thousand other hearts all beating together to the rhythm of this song - your song, our song, a song for those unafraid to live and not yet ready to die."
i looked over into her eyes, but they were locked on his silhouetted frame in the spotlights. our golden god.
"... and i want to hear those voices and feel those hearts and see those hands in the sky, and together we will raise this call from inside this place and set it ringing out, across everywhere, and the people will fall in love to it and they will burn with it, and they will talk in the days to come, about,"
and his voice became hush and coy for a moment, and we all leant forward, straining to hear over our own breathing,
"'oh, what i would've given to have been there, at the start...', and it will be YOU,"
and his voice ratcheted up another notch,
"and it will be US,"
and became more forceful and more powerful and more intoxicating and i felt myself start to fall in love with the bastard,
"who will turn and say YES! WE WERE THERE! THIS IS OUR SONG!"
and i can't remember then whether the pyros went off or the spotlight went out, or they just started playing, but something exploded inside of my brain, and i left later that night with those words stuck in my head, thisisoursongthisisoursong, and they stuck with me out to the pickup and onto the interstate and long after the city lights had faded to a bitter glow in my rearview.
---
peace.
---
he bestrode the stage like it was the world, and he owned it all. the sweat droplets gave his skin an odd sheen, like cubic zirconias or glitter or fairy dust. microphone pressed tightly to his lips, the words intoned solemnly;
"this is a call to arms; a clamouring clarion to all those who are drawing their first or final breaths, and everyone in between. this is a fist raised high, a heart soaring with passion and fury..."
fuck, but he could work a crowd. there was always that about him, that way of making a group of a hundred or a thousand strangers get down and want to blow him, then and there.
"this is a song for lovers, for fighters, for those who love to fight and fight to love."
we stood there, flies in amber, enraptured. this was the moment, this was the time, and later on we would all look back on this as the single instant where everything else began, and began to fall apart. but then, it was just the moment.
"here, i want you to feel in your heart the beat of a thousand other hearts all beating together to the rhythm of this song - your song, our song, a song for those unafraid to live and not yet ready to die."
i looked over into her eyes, but they were locked on his silhouetted frame in the spotlights. our golden god.
"... and i want to hear those voices and feel those hearts and see those hands in the sky, and together we will raise this call from inside this place and set it ringing out, across everywhere, and the people will fall in love to it and they will burn with it, and they will talk in the days to come, about,"
and his voice became hush and coy for a moment, and we all leant forward, straining to hear over our own breathing,
"'oh, what i would've given to have been there, at the start...', and it will be YOU,"
and his voice ratcheted up another notch,
"and it will be US,"
and became more forceful and more powerful and more intoxicating and i felt myself start to fall in love with the bastard,
"who will turn and say YES! WE WERE THERE! THIS IS OUR SONG!"
and i can't remember then whether the pyros went off or the spotlight went out, or they just started playing, but something exploded inside of my brain, and i left later that night with those words stuck in my head, thisisoursongthisisoursong, and they stuck with me out to the pickup and onto the interstate and long after the city lights had faded to a bitter glow in my rearview.
---
he returns!! new year was hellish and long... think i lost a good few pounds, none of it good. ugh.
sleep patterns still out the f**k of whack. i nearly slept for seven hours today... which is odd. disturbingly odd.
anyway, a new poem ('sand and incense') is live at www.jikahatsuden.net ... i'd post it here, but i think i might use it as bait to get more people reading my other stuff. forgive the overt manipulation. haha.
hope the rest of SG enjoyed their new year.
here's to 2010 - after all, it is the future...
sleep patterns still out the f**k of whack. i nearly slept for seven hours today... which is odd. disturbingly odd.
anyway, a new poem ('sand and incense') is live at www.jikahatsuden.net ... i'd post it here, but i think i might use it as bait to get more people reading my other stuff. forgive the overt manipulation. haha.
hope the rest of SG enjoyed their new year.
here's to 2010 - after all, it is the future...
for all the people who are following along, this can be read more easily at its home at
www.jikahatsuden.net
otherwise, a little christmas present.
Let me preface this by saying: I really love Christmas time. It’s just that, in general, it is a very lonely time for me – what with the cold and the isolation, both self-imposed and that comes with the territory. I love Christmas for its people, for the family time and the selflessness that typifies the best of it. The chances to show the people you love that you do, again and forever. It becomes a little difficult when everyone you love is far, far away, but we make do.
This came about through a series of observations I’ve made over the past few days, and the past few years. Some of these situations were real. Makes me happy, and sad. Which I think is what Christmas is all about.
To everyone who has been reading along, to all my friends both present and absent, and to everyone else… Merry Christmas.
-----
‘Christmas Stories’
Somewhere in the world, there is a Christmas tree on fire. Not Beirut, not Iraq. More than likely, somewhere down the road in a quiet town or village, or some small suburban development in California. Sunnyville. Somewhere very much in the dead center of the Ordinary. Things like this happen everyday in the Ordinary; why not Christmas? A father is pointing a fire extinguisher in the direction of the blaze, cursing as though cursing is how to turn the bastard thing on.
“This is why I didn’t want to get a goddamn tree in the first place!! For Christ’s sake, how hell do you turn this fucking thing on?!?!?!!”
Mum is in the doorway, clasping her daughter’s face to her skirts, pointing at the tree and saying something, although the sound is drowned out by her husband’s shouting and the ululations of the young girl at her hem.
There is a boy, of about twelve, watching from the sofa as though a pantomime were being enacted in his living room, for his own benefit. He won’t realize it until years later, but the best Christmas present he will get this year will come from his father in the form of a live audiobook which might as well be titled, On the Correct and Varied Syllabic Emphases of the Word Motherfucker.
--
Somewhere there is a boy walking the blue-black night streets with his hand buried deep in fleece pockets, Christmas wishing that he could see her face and work up the courage to say, “I’ve been writing poems about you in my head since the first day we met.” He is looking up into the sky, wistfully, hoping for snow. It is cold enough.
--
Somewhere, a father is tucking his four year-old daughter into bed. It is the night before Christmas. The cookies and milk (for Santa) are in the den. The celery and carrot (for the reindeer) are out in the yard. This is the first year they will do this without mum. She cries, a little, and he holds her to his chest and feels the little flutter of the breath in and out of her lungs. It doesn’t last long, though; she is a good girl, and strong like her mother. He says so, and she smiles.
“Do they have Christmas in heaven?” she asks. She is so grown up.
“Of course they do, honey. Mum is up there right now, putting a present under the tree for you.”
She smiles, a little more. She kisses him on the cheek, as though sending him to bed. She is so grown up. He tells her he loves her, ever so much, and leaves the light on just a little as he leaves.
He nibbles at the cookies, drinks the milk. Then he sits in the chair in the den, in front of the fireplace, and silently sobs.
--
Somewhere, the Christmas tree farmer is packing up for the afternoon. They are all sold, and his wife is waiting at home. They were married a year ago on Christmas day. He looks at the picture in his wallet as he climbs into the truck cab. She is beautiful.
--
Somewhere, two friends are trimming ribbons to dress tables. There is a party tonight, you see. She is hosting; he is along for the ride out of some kind of misplaced puppy love. Or so you might think. He’s actually had his eye on one of her friends’ boyfriends for a long, long time now. She (the girlfriend) is out of the country on some kind of exchange program/study course or something, he really doesn’t give a damn. All he’s thinking of, as he curls green and white ribbons together with one scissor blade, is of how many drinks it’ll take. Everybody gets lonely at Christmas, after all.
--
Somewhere, a couple is last-minute Christmas shopping or their respective families. It is 9 in the evening on Christmas Eve. They’ve both been working all day. He’s irritable and impatient. She’s unreasonable and irrational. It starts in one of myriad toy aisles of Department Store X.
“They don’t have any more.”
“Why not? It’s Christmas. They have to have it.”
“They sold out. You need to pick something else.”
“But it’s all he wants. He doesn’t want anything else.”
“You should’ve thought about that earlier, then, eh? Hurry up.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m going to call the manager.”
“Don’t be stupid. They’re not hiding them.”
“Don’t call me stupid!”
It devolves from there. Having not been of a particularly illustrious conversational level to begin with, it quickly becomes the kind of argument that alternates like current, between passive-aggressive sniping and outright yelling, all amongst the Cabbage Patch Kids (who knew they were still making them?) and RC cars.
Here it gets creative. New insults have to be invented. Unfortunately, nothing of the truly genius level that involves multiple sexual diseases and a detailed genealogy. No, more of the off-the-cuff creative mad-libs that result in curse-noun combinations like “fuck-bag” or “cock-bucket,” and in moments of duress, curse-curses like “shit-cock.” You’ve seen it before. It’s the conversational equivalent of two idiots finger-painting pictures of Santa with their own feces.
It spills out into the carpark, him pushing a cart laden with presents bought with love, and topped with a last few gifts bought with venom in the heart. She trails behind, struggling to see over the top of reams of paper, ribbon and whatnot. They will load the car at high volume, and drive in cold silence. Dinner, too, and wrapping individual gifts in separate rooms to be placed under the tree at separate times.
Of course, they break down eventually. It is Christmas, and bed is a terrible place to keep an argument aflame. They make up with the kind of desperate lovemaking you only see in the movies, or at the end of the world while everything burns around. It is equal parts love and the vestiges of rage, intense and on the safe side of violent, but only just. She screams, and digs her nails into his back. He grunts in response, pushing harder. She will look at the gouges in the morning, while he is still asleep, and run her fingers across them gingerly. She will be a little surprised and excited at herself. They will make love again in the morning, gently. And when they eventually break up in six months time, and marry and divorce and remarry in the following years, they will both remember it as the best Christmas they ever had.
--
Somewhere, two young lovers are having their first Christmas together. It is everything you imagine. Nothing terrible happens at all. It is perfect.
----
peace.
www.jikahatsuden.net
otherwise, a little christmas present.
Let me preface this by saying: I really love Christmas time. It’s just that, in general, it is a very lonely time for me – what with the cold and the isolation, both self-imposed and that comes with the territory. I love Christmas for its people, for the family time and the selflessness that typifies the best of it. The chances to show the people you love that you do, again and forever. It becomes a little difficult when everyone you love is far, far away, but we make do.
This came about through a series of observations I’ve made over the past few days, and the past few years. Some of these situations were real. Makes me happy, and sad. Which I think is what Christmas is all about.
To everyone who has been reading along, to all my friends both present and absent, and to everyone else… Merry Christmas.
-----
‘Christmas Stories’
Somewhere in the world, there is a Christmas tree on fire. Not Beirut, not Iraq. More than likely, somewhere down the road in a quiet town or village, or some small suburban development in California. Sunnyville. Somewhere very much in the dead center of the Ordinary. Things like this happen everyday in the Ordinary; why not Christmas? A father is pointing a fire extinguisher in the direction of the blaze, cursing as though cursing is how to turn the bastard thing on.
“This is why I didn’t want to get a goddamn tree in the first place!! For Christ’s sake, how hell do you turn this fucking thing on?!?!?!!”
Mum is in the doorway, clasping her daughter’s face to her skirts, pointing at the tree and saying something, although the sound is drowned out by her husband’s shouting and the ululations of the young girl at her hem.
There is a boy, of about twelve, watching from the sofa as though a pantomime were being enacted in his living room, for his own benefit. He won’t realize it until years later, but the best Christmas present he will get this year will come from his father in the form of a live audiobook which might as well be titled, On the Correct and Varied Syllabic Emphases of the Word Motherfucker.
--
Somewhere there is a boy walking the blue-black night streets with his hand buried deep in fleece pockets, Christmas wishing that he could see her face and work up the courage to say, “I’ve been writing poems about you in my head since the first day we met.” He is looking up into the sky, wistfully, hoping for snow. It is cold enough.
--
Somewhere, a father is tucking his four year-old daughter into bed. It is the night before Christmas. The cookies and milk (for Santa) are in the den. The celery and carrot (for the reindeer) are out in the yard. This is the first year they will do this without mum. She cries, a little, and he holds her to his chest and feels the little flutter of the breath in and out of her lungs. It doesn’t last long, though; she is a good girl, and strong like her mother. He says so, and she smiles.
“Do they have Christmas in heaven?” she asks. She is so grown up.
“Of course they do, honey. Mum is up there right now, putting a present under the tree for you.”
She smiles, a little more. She kisses him on the cheek, as though sending him to bed. She is so grown up. He tells her he loves her, ever so much, and leaves the light on just a little as he leaves.
He nibbles at the cookies, drinks the milk. Then he sits in the chair in the den, in front of the fireplace, and silently sobs.
--
Somewhere, the Christmas tree farmer is packing up for the afternoon. They are all sold, and his wife is waiting at home. They were married a year ago on Christmas day. He looks at the picture in his wallet as he climbs into the truck cab. She is beautiful.
--
Somewhere, two friends are trimming ribbons to dress tables. There is a party tonight, you see. She is hosting; he is along for the ride out of some kind of misplaced puppy love. Or so you might think. He’s actually had his eye on one of her friends’ boyfriends for a long, long time now. She (the girlfriend) is out of the country on some kind of exchange program/study course or something, he really doesn’t give a damn. All he’s thinking of, as he curls green and white ribbons together with one scissor blade, is of how many drinks it’ll take. Everybody gets lonely at Christmas, after all.
--
Somewhere, a couple is last-minute Christmas shopping or their respective families. It is 9 in the evening on Christmas Eve. They’ve both been working all day. He’s irritable and impatient. She’s unreasonable and irrational. It starts in one of myriad toy aisles of Department Store X.
“They don’t have any more.”
“Why not? It’s Christmas. They have to have it.”
“They sold out. You need to pick something else.”
“But it’s all he wants. He doesn’t want anything else.”
“You should’ve thought about that earlier, then, eh? Hurry up.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m going to call the manager.”
“Don’t be stupid. They’re not hiding them.”
“Don’t call me stupid!”
It devolves from there. Having not been of a particularly illustrious conversational level to begin with, it quickly becomes the kind of argument that alternates like current, between passive-aggressive sniping and outright yelling, all amongst the Cabbage Patch Kids (who knew they were still making them?) and RC cars.
Here it gets creative. New insults have to be invented. Unfortunately, nothing of the truly genius level that involves multiple sexual diseases and a detailed genealogy. No, more of the off-the-cuff creative mad-libs that result in curse-noun combinations like “fuck-bag” or “cock-bucket,” and in moments of duress, curse-curses like “shit-cock.” You’ve seen it before. It’s the conversational equivalent of two idiots finger-painting pictures of Santa with their own feces.
It spills out into the carpark, him pushing a cart laden with presents bought with love, and topped with a last few gifts bought with venom in the heart. She trails behind, struggling to see over the top of reams of paper, ribbon and whatnot. They will load the car at high volume, and drive in cold silence. Dinner, too, and wrapping individual gifts in separate rooms to be placed under the tree at separate times.
Of course, they break down eventually. It is Christmas, and bed is a terrible place to keep an argument aflame. They make up with the kind of desperate lovemaking you only see in the movies, or at the end of the world while everything burns around. It is equal parts love and the vestiges of rage, intense and on the safe side of violent, but only just. She screams, and digs her nails into his back. He grunts in response, pushing harder. She will look at the gouges in the morning, while he is still asleep, and run her fingers across them gingerly. She will be a little surprised and excited at herself. They will make love again in the morning, gently. And when they eventually break up in six months time, and marry and divorce and remarry in the following years, they will both remember it as the best Christmas they ever had.
--
Somewhere, two young lovers are having their first Christmas together. It is everything you imagine. Nothing terrible happens at all. It is perfect.
----
peace.
heeeey. so, finally managed to wrestle my mac back from apple japan's insane bureaucracy... all brand spanking shiny and refurbished, too. feels a little weird; almost TOO new and clean, like it hasn't been worn in again. new jeans feeling.
on the completely awesome side; the SAM&ROCK live event on sunday went SMASHINGLY. coproduced by SAM&DAVE (the bar i manage) and CHOPSTICK TATTOO (osaka's best tattoo shop), it was a night of rock and metal mayhem, debauchery, and guest guitar from LOUDNESS' own AKIRA TAKASAKI, who is a osaka resident and longtime friend of CHOPSTICK's owner, YASUO. where do i fit in? i've known YASUO for years, and so when he was thinking of bringing the annual SAM&ROCK event back from a 2 year hiatus, he asked me if i wanted in. i used to front a hard rock/metal band in australia (called SEMYE, no less, hehe), and so i gladly said yes.
the night is essentially a big love-in of bar and tattoo staff from all over osaka, band luminaries and such, all jamming together in an all-star cover event... and so i get thrown in with YASUO on drums, WAKA from osaka hardcore band SLAPDOWN on rhythm guitar, SETCHIN from CLUB KARMA on bass and the aforementioned AKIRA TAKASAKI on lead guitar in a Rage Against the Machine tribute. haha.
we slammed through 'guerilla radio', 'wake up', 'take the power back', 'know your enemy' (where i got to do my maynard impression - SQUEE!!), and finished with 'bulls on parade'. seemed to go over well enough, but the big takeaway was that it got me excited to make music again. so, i got TAKASAKI-san's number and am going to jam with him later this week.
HAH!
hope everyone else is having as insane a christmas season as i am.
feliz navidad!
on the completely awesome side; the SAM&ROCK live event on sunday went SMASHINGLY. coproduced by SAM&DAVE (the bar i manage) and CHOPSTICK TATTOO (osaka's best tattoo shop), it was a night of rock and metal mayhem, debauchery, and guest guitar from LOUDNESS' own AKIRA TAKASAKI, who is a osaka resident and longtime friend of CHOPSTICK's owner, YASUO. where do i fit in? i've known YASUO for years, and so when he was thinking of bringing the annual SAM&ROCK event back from a 2 year hiatus, he asked me if i wanted in. i used to front a hard rock/metal band in australia (called SEMYE, no less, hehe), and so i gladly said yes.
the night is essentially a big love-in of bar and tattoo staff from all over osaka, band luminaries and such, all jamming together in an all-star cover event... and so i get thrown in with YASUO on drums, WAKA from osaka hardcore band SLAPDOWN on rhythm guitar, SETCHIN from CLUB KARMA on bass and the aforementioned AKIRA TAKASAKI on lead guitar in a Rage Against the Machine tribute. haha.
we slammed through 'guerilla radio', 'wake up', 'take the power back', 'know your enemy' (where i got to do my maynard impression - SQUEE!!), and finished with 'bulls on parade'. seemed to go over well enough, but the big takeaway was that it got me excited to make music again. so, i got TAKASAKI-san's number and am going to jam with him later this week.
HAH!
hope everyone else is having as insane a christmas season as i am.
feliz navidad!
