notebook

This page will highlight new works by the Collective's writers, excerpts from works in circulation, as well as texts published previously on wordpress.com.

ESSAY COMPOSED IN A BUBBLE BATH

by Christopher Bair.  This essay appeared as an article titled "Tangerine" in April 2012 on wordpress.com

One 

Brief perusal of Genet’s Miracle of the Rose.  A hundred pages last night, then I dreamt of many things I dreamt that I could dream of again... Dreaming about dreaming.  My nostalgia for dreams is more intense yet less overwhelming than my real dreams nowadays. There are such things as vintage dreams, like the sturdy boots tried on at Goodwill, forgotten until needed, nevertheless easily afforded, that I was meaning to purchase last week if I had the time. 

Why is there one book for Vingt-cinq poemes and another for Le Coeur a gaz? The former is a facsimile, the latter a history of DADA. There is relic and there is history. My doubts are emerging about surrealism, especially over the truth of the surrealist novel. Poetry, yes, prose, no. No poetry, no prose? Poetry is prose, and prose, poetry allowing the writer is a reader and the reader is a writer, and the distinctions between them are therefore lost. But does this happen...? I am entertaining my doubts specifically about automatic writing and the possibility of its being applied to prose fiction (novel). But I should let these skepticisms of mine be nurtured in the bosom of this notebook… 

Whole paragraphs in this notebook should just be bumped around like ice cubes in an empty glass, shuffled like playing cards in a deck, though the dating of this work shall be rigorously kept and aphorisms and pronouncements shall be scrupulously avoided. The sacred pangs of remorse will be rigidly quarantined from the profane tendencies to suffer temptations, leading to catastrophes in literature heretofore unimagined. In consideration to the reader any and all possibility of constructive proof will have the least likelihood of its being introduced to him.  An inchoate argument against itself is better left unmade. An indulgence will be granted to each and every last descrambler of this woebegone text. 

It is getting later in the evening than I’m used to, though I started late and debated starting late though saying so has limited value. I could write this particular notebook and all notebooks as a rule over many nights, with little regard for time and even place, given the immediately aimless appearance of the text thus far written. Of course, I have no real concern for this project, therefore I am investing little or nothing of my psyche, my effort or even my attention. And these words will predictably enough warrant little of your attention, effort or empathy, since I am basically just typing and wondering why I even had the idea in the first place. A caveat, of course is appropriate and freely given, that my attitude should change without recognizing that the text in your hands is as dull and lifeless as it has been from the beginning, and my disappointing pretenses about art in particular, not to mention my perverted fantasies about life in general, will exhibit themselves without inhibition and so belabor every humble witness to that pathetic attempt at self-redemption into a personal trial of conscience so severe that they would entertain the moral necessity of book-burning or even worse forms of retribution for what should have been, but never was, a carefree, playful exercise in self-discovery meant to ennoble mankind and treat him to the consciousness of things equal to, if not better than, himself. It’s better to be safe than sorry. 

The reader is anonymous, the reader is a mystery. He is to be assumed as a public audience to a private exercise. The contest between the writer and the audience is one of effort, the less of which should determine the winner. The prize?  There is everything to lose and nothing to gain. You can say that there is no prize. Maybe the bookstore is running a promotion. One of my boutique publishers (there are a few) sends me nine or ten junk e-mails a day, advertising five or six promotions every week, for book fairs, marketing programs and others for publishing services. A surprise came yesterday when my e-mail told me that I have failed to sell any copies of my first book in the last year, and the publisher would be happy to return the publishing rights to my name for $200. This is one example of the publisher’s strategy, which is to charge the author for any marketing services, in fact all services short of printing and distributing (via mail order). It is a boutique publisher... with a happy face. So, I junk all the e-mails and pray that someone, anyone, will find my title and etc., become a member of my audience. The rule of thumb in such a case is let sleeping dogs lie and if you invested little or no effort into my work you can always say to yourself with pride you that you have emulated the author’s lazy, woebegone style and afterwords watch some soccer on the telly. You could even go so far as to adore me and wear a silkscreen of my image, indoors or out, or give something similar as a gift. Licensing is constantly expanding the horizons. Digressions aside, this journal is meant as a fairly casual experiment in 21st century literature, where there are really no rules, no boundaries, no readers, and no books. Such an assessment is not as daring as it sounds. The project has the potential to establish new parameters in the post-postmodern culture, all of which have been dismantled somewhat halfheartedly on occasion and in mortal panic on others. Whereas the reader has everything to lose, I as a writer have everything to gain, as long as I keep typing, but you, dear reader, quit reading, then you will have a lot less to do with your time, unless you can, at the very least, find another book to read. 

The truth of our relationship, Dear Reader, is currently anchored on the premise that I would rather be reading than writing, which on these pages makes me seem selfish and self-centered, but I can say that since I’ve been reading all weekend and I have about as much to say about life as one of the many animals I see when I go for a walk, and unlike Christopher Robin, Mr Rogers, or even Captain Kangaroo, I can’t even pretend that these various and sundry creatures are my friends. Moreover, this is less the root of despair for me than a casual allusion to the boredom I feel in the midst of a average constitutional. I am in the process of absorbing more books than usual which makes my attention span a little longer than it usually was, but that’s about all. I always seem to have more room to absorb, and this has the effect of reducing my capacity for self-expression, at least in terms of my willingness to discuss things that should typically go into a journal. While I was approaching this project consciously, I would be tensely crossing off subject after subject from my mental agenda in regards to the context of a diary just a few days ago, simultaneously entertaining myself with the idea of continuously writing a manuscript for a (for me) godawful long amount of time, I won’t say how long it was, and by virtue of a simple yet consistent regimen, deliver something like a telephone book into a kindle or other e-book that would sell by the pound or kilowatt hour. You could draw the conclusion that the decision to write this notebook, among other much more pertinent reasons not yet listed, comes at a rather inopportune moment and should only succeed in demonstrating my limitations as a person rather than any of my decent qualities. I am perfectly willing to accept this possibility, but I could imagine that much, much worse things could happen not only in this adventure known as writing but also in this wonderful experience we commonly acknowledge as life. I mention this early on in this particular section, in fact in the first notebook chronologically speaking, since I will need to develop my thoughts on this subject and achieve some comprehensive therapeutic equilibrium with my all of my needs as a human person / citizen of the cosmos in order to give some semblance of order, structure and meaning to my work here. I will reserve the right to keep you notified of my progress in writing, at least as a pleasant diversion rather than a substantive, consuming narrative. 

There was a time, quite frankly, when the idea of a journal would itself serve merely as a distraction and the time spent writing it out would be a ritual of self-abuse without much merit or consequence. The first journals I kept were unconscious things, when my writing was a visceral though primitive activity, and I did not regret them as much as I feared leaving them around because they were as incoherent and unimpressive as much of my young adulthood was; whatever I could discern of these pages written usually drunk or bored was of little personal value. There were acquaintances missing personalities or relationships without much feeling, or quasi-intellectual problems of questionable significance rambled on like descriptions of menu items from delicatessens with a million ingredients. Years later I would find notes to myself that read as if they were letters to Santa Claus, or stories that seemed to be written about people I would rather have forgotten or even never met. I was incredibly fortunate that I healed myself to the experience of those tender years and was able to move past those nascent efforts and write fiction, which was my calling. 

Again, I am taking a certain sabbatical from fiction and should do something here that gives me a chance to express myself as a person rather than as a writer, because as you can tell I really have no talent for this sort of thing at all and do not claim to be doing anything worth anyone’s time (which is a humble, though redeeming, professional ethos in American Letters). As I suspected, keeping a journal is a refreshing way to evaluate oneself from a more objective frame of mind, without committing too many resources or exposing too many weaknesses. 

There are very few rules in this project. Maybe it is a game. I am wondering actually if I feel like writing in this kind of narrative style, or if I should relate anecdotes, include experiments, compose dialogues, improvise word-association games or even draw things. Some ideas seem more pertinent than others, and maybe the affection for them is only temporary. There is a possibility that I could simply use this journal as a springboard for more fictions, since it is time that I came up with some more story ideas (and they usually come up every decade or so), but the fundamental idea here is to be disciplined and maybe there are more distractions in the however valiant yet ultimately vain attempt to be clever. I hate to be gimmicky. The notebook at least starts with a title, and has no outline, no pretense, no ulterior motive, so as to avoid the risks of impulses that would be better directed into such noble endeavors as listening to music, staring out the window on a bus, or watching grass grow. 

Tangerine is not so much a concept, obviously, as it refers to a color, or a fruit, or maybe some other things I am unaware of. I will have to look it up in a dictionary. It is a start. I am guilty of rather mundane baptisms... It isn’t inspired by anything, it probably isn’t even my idea. The individual chapter of the entire Notebook [working title] should be comparable to a still life, perhaps, even if I fail to convey this in any way shape or form. It is better if the efforts of both reader and writer were less direct in this respect and, allowing some patience, it would remain possible for this idea to be the case. Tangerine is not a working title, but while being somewhat cryptic, the word is not so connotative or suggestive as other titles could be. It could just sit there and be itself, like most things are in the world, and if anything happens to tangerines because of this diary, I will be absolved of any particular incitement to harm them, since not only have I said so, I have taken pains to imbue these pages with placid, soothing attributes that do not disrespect the fruit in any way. For now the word tangerine is a suitable reference to a text composed in for its own sake, and could just as well have taken any other word for a title, as long as it was, for the sake of critical theory, value-neutral or politically correct. 

The truth is, since the work in progress is so relatively free of constraints, literary, political, historical, and otherwise, that simple improvisation without any particular inspiration, forethought or planning, is means that each step I take in the direction of sustained journal-keeping is like an ever-bolder game of Russian roulette that may or may not involve a loaded gun... for what it’s worth I could go on for pages and pages without really discussing anything that was on my mind, or anything in or about my life, because my life is currently so dull that I am ashamed to share it with anyone especially in a public format such as a diary. But then again I could write a hundred pages in a couple of weeks about a night I had with a girl, or something about the places I’ve been, or a rambling discourse on contemporary politics, but I am really just taking things as they come and will let decisions like that go until they seem necessary. Mostly I am attempting something of an anti-literature, as close as I can get to it, without destroying myself in the process. The fact is, literature truly involves some faith, especially in oneself, but also in the concept that the writing one is contributing to society has some redeeming value by virtue of its values, structure, insight. It would be worth an entire career in literature to me if I could somehow explore the creative boundaries that determine what exactly those types of things mean. What gives them shape is not only of course what literature represents of them, how it accomplishes these feats, and how it informs readers, but what it doesn’t do, or how it doesn’t, more specifically, and textually, what that anti-matter signifies. So of course with these sentiments in mind, I am finding it difficult right off to tell a story with a straight face since I am skeptical about my intent to share a civilized perspective on my personal experiences... which sounds as forlorn and pathetic as telling one of my grade-school teachers that my dog ate my homework, but then again, I never used that excuse, and none of my teachers would ever have called me pathetic... I should have to just lay out the thought process I’ve been evolving as it becomes useful to the text here. Is there a story to tell here? Possibly, no.  Like with everything else I’ve written, I’m starting from scratch (don’t tell anybody) but this kind of book should have more of a documentary feel, if there were an apt enough description. I can probably do whatever I want as a writer, but why bother? I don’t have the time for it and I would be ashamed of myself if I went ahead and tried to write the things I’m planning to do. So a “notebook” with a title like “tangerine” might seem like an adolescent diversion, I wholeheartedly disagree. It is a welcome departure from the eventual grind of storytelling if I set myself down to compose a novel every year about this, or about that, without ever discovering for myself would be like if I didn’t write fiction. I just have no guarantee of the project’s success. 

This particular notebook is meant to establish some of the ground rules that come with an anti-literature. They must be explored before any particular artifact of anti-literature is attempted. So this piece lacks most of the substance associated with the regular literature displaying the array of devices at any and all writers’ disposal: the ones we are endeared to from our habit of reading as well as those endeared to us by a variety of cultural institutions (mostly school). Also, of course, an exhibition of such a phenomenon means that this text risks pedantry, as much as it assumes a deliberate, anarchic posture- a cruel irony. So intuitively one would predict that an anti-literature would keep dissociating from itself, over and over again, until inevitably it would be scared of its own shadow. Is anti-literature neurotic? Probably, but I am looking for boundaries to literature, not a bungalow. It’s probably a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. [This was the most I could actually dig out of myself as a conscious premise of the journal, and I wrote it out to demonstrate my intent in more explicit terms. I hope I can increase the potential of this work to include some less critical and more creative language into the manuscript, especially given enough time]. 

I am pretending for the moment that I could manage some writing under these auspices without provoking too strenuous an inquiry into my motive or methods, but I am an eternal optimist under circumstances like these. The format is indeed liberating. The journal seems to invent itself, its own terms, its own language, its own path. I could follow it at leisure, or race with it to a finish line wherever I feel like putting it. I could reset the clock and just start another chapter, as long as it made sense, or pretend that I was a narrator with a fictional identity (the diary of, say, another, make-believe person). Other ideas seem more far-fetched, such as using the diary as a pretext for a novel (which is something I’ve done before, albeit less conventionally) or imitating blogging, blogging being something which is inherently bland, and I used as an cover to write another novel, which to this day no one actually interprets as a work of fiction, but instead as electronic journalism. I am completely inclined to let the diary force the pace of my thought to a crawl, to passively resist all of my creative urges as strong as they are until they are as frustrated as the boys at liquor stores who ask passers-by to purchase alcohol for them, and to bring a literary universe of cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, cats and dogs to heel, all for the sake of my personal peace as a scribe. Man invented writing, I will absolve him of it. All its sins, temptations, terrors, penances, and salvations are meant to be examined, reviewed, evaluated, and repudiated. These thoughts will tell no fable or assert no belief, there will be no opinions, debates, realities, spells or venerations. Telling a story for me now is like jumping through hoops for a circus trainer. The circus is in town, I will be its witness. There are no rules because there is nothing to be done. Laws are meant to be broken; welcome to my commune. 

When I began writing seriously, writing was kind of a game that I played for myself. I never entertained the concept of an audience or opponent, judge or jury. Within a few years the game was so familiar that I was resorting to inventing audiences and even editors, publishers and contemporaries who wrote their own volumes and printed imaginary papyruses for the denizens of distant brothels. Just the same, I was completely alone and without any real assistance from a group or a corporation. It was irrelevant. I could have been playing with imaginary friends or toy cars, but there were still comrades who could recite their own poetry backwards or the poems of others while showering in a Factory party or party bosses who found revolution in a flower pot, I could go on, but they were participants in a subculture that was more or less buried in a landfill for all I cared, the fact was that I was still just writing for myself and if I kept going like that, without any particular appreciation for the ordinary world that was about to wrap me up like a parcel and deliver me to the looney bin, I would have suffered a psychotic break and would consequently endanger myself and society (I say that now, it never occurred to me then that I was so wantonly wallowing in self-abusive practices). What did happen at that point became a welcome adjustment in my approach to the craft. I simply manufactured one roman a clef upon another that ruthlessly exposed the seamy underbelly of my literary hell until the lovers all left me, the best friends had kicked me when I was down, and priests would no longer take confession from me. It was magnificent. Without selling more than a handful of books, I had freed myself from the preoccupations and anxieties of even the most famous writers, most of whom had chosen the most vile means by which to defeat such nemeses of their writing, and occasionally succeed. At least, you could say that occasionally some of them succeeded. And at what cost...? At lot of them are accused of being homosexual (and I won’t even read the biographies of the homosexual writers, because I don’t want to know what kinds of things the biographers say about the homosexuals). But all of them transcended writing. As Beethoven transcended music. Beethoven was known to have claimed, “There is is only one Beethoven,” but there are many writers who have transcended literature. Now, I had no fear, but little else, and still don’t, and I have improved myself quite a bit, but certainly I have never discovered transcendence. Because I have denied myself that condition of enlightenment in the manner of the mahayana. Perhaps I am that perpetual Bodhisattva, spinning a karma wheel studded with pencil erasers.... Is it always just a diversion or a sport, so to speak (writing/literature)? I would like to find out. What would it be like to be the Beethoven of literature, and spawn cults and fawning admirers? Can an author be deified, as the composer from Bonn has been? Questions like these only reveal a truth that is expressed in pure literature, literature for literature’s sake, the pursuit of which in my precious literary career may seem as a bottomless pit, but is still true in spite of any and all doubts. The writers your read and admire all have one thing in common, they hold literature above anything else, even above themselves, and saying so is as obvious as the sentiments in a greeting card or the words chiseled into stone. There is a question of dedication to writing that distinguishes it from an individual’s ordinary concerns with the scuttlebutt and minutiae of life, ultimately the distractions to a soul’s journey. And, in spite of having written thousands of words, I have nothing in the way of claiming transcendence in Letters, and I may have done all that I have done for nought, even though I have shrugged off countless demons whose sole concern was to disturb my naive conscience and threaten my hardening convictions with meaningless suggestions and surly innuendoes. Every new project is a declaration of failure and every completed manuscript is a supplication denied, as long as the game is being played, one way or another. And so the state of denial is henceforth obliterated: there is no audience, there is no performance, there is only literature. The vows are renewed, the champagne is uncorked, hope renews itself effortlessly. But tomorrow will share no more epiphanies and no one will wait for the news to arrive. You and I will just change the channel and throw another log onto the fire. 

I was dreaming prolifically about being younger and quite lucidly, though monotonously and right then and there I decided upon the disposability of dreams: their status as mental refuse had been conferred in my sleep by the agent provocateurs of my unconsciousness, and was patiently entertaining myself with the notion of milking cows, or watching the sun rise, or making a sandwich, when my dream ended, and immediately forgot even that I was asleep, except for noticing that I was still in bed, and staring at a glass of water on my nightstand. 

A journal without an audience occupies a limbo in my heart, it is a victim of its own necessity. It’s possible to invent an audience in the pages of a work, the existence of which is most well accomplished in Hamlet, if I should cite an example. It could be done here. How should I do it? Is it merely implied, or is it a literal witness to my own drama? Does it receive a wage or a salary? And would I retain it for future use/reference? Who would be my audience? It would have to be make-believe or otherwise not exist in an everyday sense of life. If so, would it have a moral purpose, and what would it be, exactly? So, what role would my audience play? 

The very limits of theory in respect of a loosely conceived train of thought are too quickly approached in my mind at the moment, and I blame myself for my shallow guests who forced the neighbors make a noise complaint and direct a dozen police officers to my front door. I should have left off with my comment underscoring my personal and professional insignificance, preferring instead to construct masks for my Greek chorus out of candle wax and pipe cleaners, and afterwards take a bath and/or read more Genet. I state: the audience is a creative impetus, not a critical object. It could be created where none had previously existed. But the obstacles to its genesis are found in the written word itself and independently of drama. I should explore this idea when I am better suited to elaborating upon it, since I could write a different journal about it, or write another text that simply executes whatever plan it was that I meant to lay out for the piece that was arranged with a third-person commentator/observer. It might all be the same. I am staring out past you, Reader, into a mirage. 

There are presently more questions than answers here, and more questions than I can answer, but this makes absolutely no difference to me. The whole thing could be a dead end. But it’s better to expose any qualms about the viability/validity of my work and get what I can out of it, since the it doesn’t really matter what you write about, as long as it’s being done tastefully. The bitter taste of the Bohemian lingers on in me, his stench remains in my clothes. He was one of my first enemies (and they are still accumulating). He was the spirit of the unfinished symphony, etc., not to speak ill of the dead, but I insist, he was an enemy, though he ever really minded me, at least that was one of the few impressions he made on me. He never seemed to mind anyone, as long as they didn’t mind him. But I digress, I meant to say that I would rather go on typing until my fingers bled rather than go on entertaining him. Such is life. But in the end, it is always better to repeat the maxim, If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I should think of something else. 

* 

On the other hand, given a cursory glance at this current development in my career, and the subsequent rationalizations for its encouragement and practice, it has crossed my mind that the fiction that I’ve written over the last few years has never succeeded in recording anything more than my mental states at any given time and that the recurring journal ambition is tantamount to a betrayal of this abject failure to develop creatively. And this is something I’ve advertised in my last novel, Convocation, which deployed an interesting number of creative approaches to the problems of artistic technique which confronted me initially at the turn of the century and threatened to violate my peace of mind as a storyteller worth giving a damn about and leave me nostalgic for things like having vision and creating suspension of disbelief. I mean specifically that once I’d written a few books, the rush for novelty and the confidence in my own ability eventually compromised the need for plot, characterization and all the fundamentals that go into traditional storytelling, and the dedication to the primacy of the written word as well as the ascendency of style over substance was effected at a cost to the invention of a compelling story. It is odd to think now just how much I kept emphasizing the subjectively poetic in my work when I was probably frantically searching for the objective and measured terms of a well-thought out and enjoyable experience in fiction, maybe the proverbial and required two-way street that readers and writers share as they make their way through the twists and turns of any book. But I make myself this allowance since I had found truth from the start in literature, and I was conveying in the most immediate terms available those things that preceded novels, stories, fictions, things that would serve as building blocks of my own language, culture and society that you don’t find everywhere you go, and were definitely missing from my life at the time. The earliest works that I was contributing to the outside world were, from beginning to end, this utterly pristine documentation of a world that that should exist, was incomplete in most places and would merely serve as a springboard for an increasingly bizarre obsession with a story that had everything and absolutely nothing to do with my life, only proved I was constructing distraction upon distraction to compose it, and would let no one steal from me. Because, I discovered, the story of my life was just a story within a story within a story, and the time and attention necessary to telling it would be a story in itself. 

If I were given the alternative of telling any of those stories, especially in order to to share the authentic, genuine article story of my life, the one that really counted, even if I were given the means to produce it, i.e. wealth, solitude, consultation, I would instead continue writing this journal and would continue to write it until I was exhausted, even write it as long as I could write, possibly without ever telling the story I was born to tell, because I could not permit myself to leave out the world that does not acknowledge such a story, and may not ever know it even if it were published and distributed like the phone book. This literary act should at least absolve me of any responsibility for that nth dimension, as I was the self-styled genius who created it (we may always entertain our doubts over the world, or worlds, of doubt, but I should be keeping my plate full with many sides and even more helpings). It doesn’t bother me in the least to grant this courtesy to the proletariat, and say so as comrade sympathizing with any and all of the world’s oppressed, viva la revolucion!) It should rightfully take its place in my bibliography on its own merits as well as for the fact that it could renew my respect for the totems and taboos of literature albeit from a solitary and distant position. It means that much to me. The sense of my career’s following a necessary and rational path is all the more justified by my patience and determination to prepare myself for the sake of a conscious, deliberate purpose. Such things are of little or no consequence regardless; and the alternatives beckoning me to relinquish my chase from all corners of the globe, those temptations bright and new, dazzling and impetuous, even callow and ruthless, are all transient and empty. To abridge this time of reflection and examination would leave me in an unforgiveable morass of contradiction and confusion, and would in the end cause my self-destruction. The cause is just; the mission is defined, it is only a matter of making sense of it all. 

Common sense would dictate the terms of this composition displaying a trifecta of ***: the state or condition of my literary career, as I would clearly and factually portray it; the story of its development, from the first steps through to the latest details; as well as the influences that caused and direct it. Broadly speaking, the text would aspire to a more or less universal appeal, if I am writing for anyone other than just myself, and I could share the tale of my humble journey from intermediate talent to veteran auteur with the requisite fortitude and gumption to move even the most hard-hearted of witnesses. I could fill the in the mortar the dyke is leaking, and every reader could admire this noble, ongoing gesture of contrition (it is not a sacrament). But first, Dear Reader, if your candle still burns, allow me the honor of pausing for our this word from our sponsors: 

Two 

The intent of this diary was not merely to record the thoughts and actions of my daily life, but to sincerely inquire and ruminate upon the novel as a means of expressing myself in principle, and also as a technique of invigorating my passion for writing, which I have found lacking in myself. And perhaps I have defined this passion of mine or have clearly expressed this void within myself, while visiting some of the defining characteristics of my work, or at least a few of it more noticeable tendencies. I will reserve commentary on most of these concerns for the time being and in the meantime let myself construct some context in which to discuss my contributions to literature, since I have avoided a lot of direction in this respect and suspect not too casually that there may be none. I am writing a journal on these subjects so that I may reconcile my artistic license with my intuitions about art, which at present are suffering from doubt at every turn. 

Off the top of my head I would be thinking that there are few similar examples of this particular approach to find a novel, unless the autobiography is included in an examination, or the writer’s semi-autobiographical struggle to find something to say. These and other examples form an abundant impression of the creative process, in a fictional setting, whereas an academic approach would question (or maybe should question) working assumptions about literature and especially the novel, but I am just guessing. You could make up your own aesthetic. I am still unsure of whether a novel truly exists or if it is by virtue of its creation, obsolete the moment it is rendered by the hand of an author, and is now longer new. Is it ever new? 

I would have just committed to writing a story in third person narrative, added a few characters, made up a love triangle, added a few subplots, for instance, a baseball season, maybe a wedding, who knows, and background the entire story with the intrigue of a previous affair, or the introduction of a moral crisis that challenges the threesome, then submitted the eventual stern ultimatums and defiant resolutions in order to mingle formula or cliche with a few neat twists and turns to produce a story which probably sounds like about three thousand other books coming out this year alone. It would take me about three months and I would forget about it before I finished it, then probably never get it published. In fact I could do it without a second thought. I would have to go back and make sure whether I’ve written it, it could be tucked away in my closet somewhere. I have always wondered about the novelty of most reading and what it means to “make it new.” Can you still write a story that makes such an impression? Can it be done? 

Those types of questions may or may not be taken seriously, and they are themselves as familiar as most of the books on the shelves of bookstores or libraries, and usually betray the laziness of the person asking them of himself. But I mean to ask these questions maybe in order to procrastinate at worst or practice my typing, at best. I didn’t say they could be answered, either, but asking questions should shed some light on writing and justify what comes out during writing, which is no doubt a good thing. I am actually digesting my thoughts as I formulate them, and the matter of coming to terms with myself will usually lead those issues into other things, other books, maybe, or toward their interring in the annals of Zen mysteries. In all probability my mind is a flat, monochrome landscape that is occasionally adorned with drinking fountains and petting farms, the stuff of adolescent fantasies, and is strewn with movie-theatre popcorn blowing across it like tumbleweeds, ancient junk from lost civilizations, the battered remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, and the centurions’ dice from Golgotha. It doesn’t hurt to ask yourself, sincerely, if it can be done, but the truth hurts, definitely, if it can’t. 

In reference to my bibliography I have produced maybe two or three experimental novels. I am still using this term loosely (novel), because I would like to rein in the definition (or sense) of it a bit in order to maintain a semblance of order about my life or through my art, lest I write pedantic psychobabble and shame myself for the rest of my life with chicken scratch, leaving me with no other option than to lay eggs and make fart noises with my armpit... God forbid! Removing the modifier from the object of my declarative would be quite a feat at this point in my career. The two words are locked together in some arcane, mocking duel to the death, and only one may survive. In fact I am a humble, awed spectator who may never know the outcome of the conflict. I will someday know exactly what I am talking about, but today, I am not sure. 

The more I explore the idea of novel here in this journal, the less certain I am of its meaning, just as I have come to be skeptical about the value of the experiments in my career as a writer. I just happen to be wondering if there are limits to the aesthetic of literature, just as there are limits to the human nature which may actually extend to and encompass his self-expression. Needless to say I am not very philosophical about this, since I am wondering out loud about this, and I don’t necessarily mean to be very derivative in my musings, let alone about my adventure. I am of course making a not-so-oblique allusion to La Nausee, which I always viewed as an excuse for not writing, and everyone knows Sartre dismisses literature as bourgeois folly regardless. I probably have something to say, unlike Sartre, who was a communist and therefore had very little to say; my own politics are irrelevant, because class struggle is missing from American history, and I see alternatives to modernism which existentialism had dismissed too quickly in preference for its own interests. I mean to plumb these depths, not as a critique of Sartre, but to contrast the aesthetic points of view, if necessary, since most of his opinions are well-known, whereas mine require some exploration or apologia. Besides, I just need to figure out a few things and put a work of art into motion, as it were, and stop making excuses for the lack of productivity. I say, if the shoe fits, wear it. 

The twenty-first century novel risks turning to a vague ether, a nebulous world, for its complete lack of profundity. My books are no exception. By some miscalculation of mankind, there is nothing to say anymore and maybe no way to say it, anyway. I could be wrong about this statement, but I am saying it nevertheless. Maybe there is something to say and I just need to say it. It could be a function of an author’s character or his learning. I remember watching Bugs Bunny the other day and laughing out loud at the “I’m going to shut up now. I’m shutting up now, I’ve shut up” routine that always pisses off the Tasmanian Devil or Elmer Fudd or whoever the fuck Bugs is avoiding getting killed by in one of those shorts. Bugs is a just a cartoon, so there is no telling, obviously, where he gets his knack for comic silences, but there is a lot of shutting up going on. Maybe this age is another Dark Age. Who knows why? The debate could be raging without any progress being made. I make this assertion and mention these possibilities, without too much accusation or alacrity, but then again, I am burdened by details and should keep sifting through the wreckage in order to find the clues that solve the mysteries of literature that are imposed on me from left and right. 

I need a gestalt shift in my outlook on writing. I persist in some mentality that the novel could, and should be, reformed, while the end product of my manuscript composition, in any and all abstractions, mostly reflects a project identical to what I have already determined. This phenomenon is a consequence of my overzealousness in formulating a technique for the sake of a technique. That I have told the stories that could be told through a particular narrative, through a particular style, without much attention to what I was doing. So I have drawn upon a few conventions over the last decade, in other words, and these conventions would normally precede the conceptions of plot, character, some important things. I was justified on the basis of performing a scientific investigation in literature of character without regard to plot, and the results have yet to be seen. I don’t know if it was worthwhile, especially because I may end up reporting on the characters who were my subjects earlier on. I am therefore in a quandry. Should I present them now, as subjects of literary criticism, or pursue a sufficient creative description of their personalities in my literature, or should I abandon them? In any case, let the dead bury the dead, it should be said. Some contingency has to be made for the eventual disposal of that early universe, the cessation of the chaos and confusion, including the pursuit of its truths and the witness to its illusions, as well as the inevitable monotony. It seems obvious enough that that world deserves to be destroyed, but it is a question of how, not if. 

* 

It should be noted that an obvious enough solution is available, in terms of a transitional novel that would signify the disposal of the universe and its inhabitants, perhaps even of the literary canon and its heroes. I bet every writer attempts a more or less desperate gambit along these lines, in proportion to his own individual genius, additionally in inverse proportion to his confidence in the civilization that transmitted its knowledge. Whether he is overwhelmingly confined by the mores of his society or ends up painting himself into a corner in a frenetic overindulgence of his urges, he must reconsider his relationship with the world he effectively borrows from and never quite repays, whether it is his own fault or not. I am speaking very broadly or in a general sort of way. I doubt I have my finger on it. I think I’m just making comments again and losing my train of thought. But still, a writer could conceivably address the cosmos of his stories, dreams, fantasies, aesthetics and experiences in order to relate it one last time, renew it, then possibly recreate it. Then all that stuff that gets in his way could be different, and the writer could even keep re-inventing the universe, with enough practice, as frequently as he would like. There must be a few loose ends to tie up in my writing, especially with regards to the supporting characters, or interesting juxtapositions between this or that character. There are things I haven’t thought of before. I could just re-arrange everything, utilize a minimum of background to the story, and let the characters fill the void. Alternately, I could put old characters in new settings, and see if they act differently. Then combine the two approaches, and voila! Some epic would be surely created out of thin air. And the realm of contrivances, accidents and collisions would be reducible to myth, by virtue of its veritable metaphysical versatility. Debbie Does Dallas. 

A writer would otherwise be swallowed up in his culture unless he could transcend it in a way that permitted a peaceful co-existence between his work and the society he was responsible for. What else is the point of transcendence? It is a function of pressure on the artist to reveal his true standing among his brethren. There is nothing static about the literary current, neither should there be about anything in literature. 

I am just writing some thoughts down, hopefully not contradictory ones, in order to determine how clear my thinking is on the subject. I could always go back and edit. In the final argument, I have nothing to prove. Maybe that’s all I need to say. I’m thinking about books, my books, other people’s books, whether there will be books, what is a book, but the subject itself tends in my opinion to be a little dry, or I lack discipline in the method to be applied, at specific moments when the text I’m writing threatens to assume an essay format, or I literally forget what I’m doing because I’m thinking of something else, usually a story, and that’s how I end up changing my mind about pronouncements made with unusual certainty a mere few pages before. I feel mystically detached, and my carelessness should lead me to some enlightenment eventually, but I have a sinking feeling coming to me about all of this postulating, an overwrought ambivalence about this procedure, because I am standing at an awesome precipice of shit where I may be exacerbating the dilemma posed by my creative journey, a worthwhile journey to this point, yes, but a potentially foolish one that in any case should annihilate me. 

I never have dwelled much on why I write, and writing is always something that came easily to me, but I think I have written comparatively little in my career, but one day that could change and I never ruled out being a prolific writer. There was always something else to do, and if I happened to have a literary bent, my enjoyment of literature from birth was usually spent reading. When I was growing up, either I would read the same book five times, or read everything I could by a certain author, or I would read a lot of things and forget about them immediately. Writing was naturally less precocious for me. The activity of reading books, regardless of whether I borrowed them from anywhere or any whom, or bought them or stole them, was casual and aristocratic, never taken for granted, while writing something out with a purpose in mind was a tad vulgar in principle, insofar as I was attracting attention to myself or making ado over mature subjects, so bringing a subject to light and into one of my notebooks I kept for dutiful record-keeping of such affairs was a significant event, attended with careful dignity and scrupulous extraction. Of course I wrote some boring stuff and threw it away once I was done with it. I never could take any of my writing seriously for the longest time, and never entertained any ambition whatsoever to be one of the writers that I was reading, except for Jack Kerouac, and in high school, where I was sufficiently cloistered in a moral family, I was rather naive about alcoholism and the nature of prose reveries. When Kerouac was an adolescent all he ever cared about was baseball, as far as I know. In hindsight, emulating Jack Kerouac with beatnik rants and prose portraits was probably the same as starting smoking because of Joe Camel magazine ads. [I don’t know anymore about Jack Kerouac, whatever the temptation may be to discuss him and other famous writers. The truth is, I had friends in my youth who wore Kerouac T-shirts and also Joe Camel T-shirts, and I believe strongly enough in education etc to remark that it is excruciatingly difficult for a young man under twenty-five, no matter his genius or his character or his chutzpah, blah blah blah, to functionally comprehend and admire the culture and its various sainted figurines of its chain-store decor as it is without displaying his complete vulnerability to and victimization from it, by adorning himself with the trendy gear that was hawked in Rolling Stone classifieds back then, or peddled on the street or God knows where now. We were at the mercy of the Sixties in my teen years and nowadays we are the pawns of that antiquated and exhausted, troubled and twisted time. Read with caution.] I quit smoking. Likewise, I would appreciate Kerouac nowadays from some more mature perspectives, actually, as in, his influences, his contemporaries, but not his biography or posthumous work. Everybody knows he wrote relatively little after On the Road, that might be all anybody needs to know about his career. I wouldn’t contribute financially or spiritually to the Kerouac industry that has managed to assimilate him into the mainstream and kept him near the bottom of the totem pole, charging admission fees to see re-enactments of his playing bongos or screwing black girls. I might digress after a spell, but even a hobo like Jack Kerouac was the occasion for me an ennobling experience. I always liked stories and every new book was the product of one accident or another in my magical idyll which one day will be dramatized by an as-yet unborn child actor with green eyes that melt women like ice swans during winter thaws... but there was never a conscious intent to imitate any of that stuff before I took writing seriously, and god damn if writing and reading were like night and day for me, respectively. But this awkwardness I suffered was a result of the unconscious intent to be original, to be my own writer, but of course I never had any idea what that meant or would mean until I grew up a little. There were no traumas, there was nothing significant about my adolescence, and I may as well have been one of the guys he was bumming smokes from or chewing gum with, … (oh, did you know that Dean Moriarty is Neil Cassidy, he was a real person and was, like, his best friend, … oh … Who’s Neil Cassidy?) Everything for a year or two in my life was kind of beat and I say so because it saved me money, not having to wear clothes that everybody else wore, or saved me the grief of acting alienated in a city that in the Eighties was blaming the Japanese for most of their problems, at least the ones they cared about, and would have really made me look like a jackass if I had problems of my own. 

Let me get one thing straight. I never said, “Oh, I want to be Jack Kerouac.” I don’t even know what that means. I couldn’t begin to tell you what any of these writers’ gifts signified to me. But the energy of his amphetamine-laden prose, the absolute joy of his living and the desire he felt for life were undeniable qualities of his personality that insinuated themselves as irrefutable elements of literature as I was coming of age. I say this matter of factly. Who doesn’t? But I say what I say as to be distinct from the relation that Kerouac was in influence. I don’t consider him to be an influence on my writing. When you’re that age, and the age I mean is sixteen or seventeen, the only thing you want to be is original, the only things you have to say are original, no matter what you actually say. Anyways, writing about Kerouac is such a sin, and it makes a terrible impression on any reader to be so presumptuous about another writer’s career, that any such reference, especially the one I’ve made, is to be made with great care and the willingness to bear the burden of a misunderstood soul back to his grave, and in this case, it is a fairly long way back to Lowell from where I sit. 

To be sucking your thumb in Rome by the Tiber among fallen leaves...   

--Allen Ginsberg, American Sentences, June 1990 

Kerouac is one example among a few writers that I was reading with some admiration or wanderlust, emulating in my sincere style more unconsciously than anything else, and I say so unhesitatingly. It was later how, when I found his On the Road MS on display, the circumstances under which he matriculated at Columbia, his getting published with Viking, and his last terrifically inebriated years, where he was misery incarnate, and I didn’t mind putzing around New York too much after that, especially since when I got back home in Queens from the NYPL that day, the stock market was crashing in slow motion and my answering machine was loaded as it was every day with calls from brokers who bet that my dusty, one-size-fits-all, year-old Monster account would occupy their time in between short sales on Citigroup. Everybody was a spectator to the End of Wall Street, the word FAIL was trademarked by anonymous patrons of bloopers, gaffes and genuine fuck-ups, and my exit from the local Pearson Testing Center, where I’d registered for my Series 3, was met by a brother who honked a horn for half a minute at me... was he practicing? And by then the heroic ditties of Ti Jean’s that I’d consumed vociferously like a child does comic books were all, in my adulthood, marched out onto the plank and threatened by sharks in the deep blue sea, cynically prodded by time, accidents, having been captured by pirates and looted without remorse, all while the world was mourning Hunter S on borrowed time, Allen Ginsberg was d-e-a-d, and of course, someone had paid, what, $2 million for the original Kerouac manuscript, written, as I always knew, on a roll of butcher paper, or paper taped together in preparation for a benzadrine binge, six thousand feet long, and was a transcription of it was selling in the gift shop in the very next room (one condition of the place that led me to conclusion that the 42nd St. Library is a misuse of space in general, by virtue of its design. The Rose Room, however, is the raison d'etre of, well, all human spaces, it justifies them, but more on that later ). The world without Jack Kerouac had become a dreary place, as much as everyone, myself included, would have liked him to stick around. Maybe that observation is interesting, as much as that entire biographical aside is interesting, or maybe not, but the point is that in my often-bemused, modestly-travelled, shit-stained thirties, I have to say that years after reading his books, I have as much in common with Jack Kerouac as a mouse does with a bowl of tomato soup. 

I stopped imitating Kerouac almost as soon as I was out of freshman English, and saw alternatives to the alternatives which I was at that point relentlessly pursuing. I could elaborate on that particular metamorphosis eventually, and will do so in the near future (since I was hopelessly vague right there about it), probably after I get the monks’ smell off of me and feed Kitty, or when I get enough sleep, which I’m not getting enough of right now. 

I’m actually humoring myself with the Joe Camel - Jack Kerouac reminiscence, and genuinely wonder how Kerouac would react to contemporary cigarette advertising. Personally, I smoked for about fifteen years, then I quit, because I couldn’t afford it. Joe Camel didn’t impress me, but a lot of mature advertising did, and it impressed me even more than trendy merchandising in general that dominated tobacco marketing in the Eighties (I grew up in the atmosphere of flashy product merchandising which has more likely than not been been criminalized, but the quiet dignity of the robed yuppie with his lover curled up beside him in print advertisements soothed most if not all of my youthful inadequacies, and I had more than a few, like all of my friends who were as loyal to various cigarette brands as they were to sports teams and politicians). The influence of those images and their subtle and not-so subtle connotations on my budding brain was literary as well, and I should be as culpable as any writer living or dead whose talents were compromised by their self-destructive behavior. But everything nowadays is merchandised, relentlessly promoted, and shoved down the collective throat, and I have to ignore it lest I fall to one perversion or another (there are no more temptations). Had Kerouac saved himself, he would have scoffed at the burgeoning consumer culture and the insanity of iconography, surely, but Joe Camel would have rattled his cage with its sheer preposterousness. It would mean the end of the American Dream, or even worse, the contamination of print media with an Andromeda strain. What the hell is a camel doing selling Camels? Perhaps he would be better off in the Kingdom of Heaven. May he rest in peace. 

It’s worth remarking that my exposition is fairly uncritical of the Kerouac legacy, not to mention unforgiveably trite. I pause momentarily, renewing my vows to maintain the proper investigative intensity as well as the standards of truth befitting such a journey in self-discovery. The success of my future projects should depend upon an attention to detail and a forthrightness in my affairs that I have lacked in my past endeavors. 

I should say that I simply became more conscious of Kerouac as I was grew up, and as a writer, I suffered the indomitable Hemingway as the major problem of influence or obstacle to my independent style. Reading has been a visceral kind of thing for me. I inevitably live out the fantasies of my writers, until they peter out in sordid details or soar in triumphant revelry, but emulating them in consequence of my participation with their creative dimensions as an author may even count among the seven deadly sins. You avoid imitation like you avoid the Balkans. There should be a Bad Hemingway contest in High Schools’ writing clubs or a Beatnik-themed Homecoming, anything to help teenagers to express themselves more fully and show them the value of creativity in all its myriad forms. If I could live my life over I would have done those things exactly, and in so doing I would have been more social and better adjusted. I am still learning from my mistakes, is what you could say. 

* 

And so it goes. I am reading again in my current phase of the creative cycle, though my pretenses have deserted me along the way. I should be collecting my karma into humble baskets and pensively awaiting the dreadful resurgence of false starts, pathetic delusions and naive expectations which unfortunately accompany the urge to write a novel. I suffered many of these obstacles from the beginning of my career as a writer, and I still confound myself with many of the same ideological frustrations, literary aspirations, and lingering doubts that make my writing an unnecessarily inefficient and tedious labor of unspeakable depravity. 

I must be reading a lot as an adult since I am procrastinating over something that comes as naturally as anything else in my life: daily chores, bad habits and biological functions. To describe the process of writing in my experience as a deliberate, willful action in the everyday sense of these terms is an alien concept. The socially accepted sort of intuition about human nature which says the self is a deliberating, willing entity does not apply to me. I am at the mercy of my writing. I never decided to write, and I consider writing to be as natural as bodily functions. I don’t think about it, I just do it. 

I wouldn’t argue that my own personal condition is something that inherently belongs to human nature. I believe that language, reason, and expression are natural things, within human capacity, but what they mean in an individual sense is beyond me. I have never claimed to be an excellent judge of character, and I am exceptionally bad at interpreting writers and their writing. I have never succeeded at uncovering a writer’s motive, for instance. I could read a book from cover to cover and never understand why somebody wrote it. Likewise, I cannot tell if writers are writing for their own time or for eternity, since I am unable to fathom such prerequisites as absolute truth or social consciousness. That stuff must not interest me as much as other things do... I mean reading can be difficult, but it is not impossible. 

For the first time in my life I am reading books for personal fulfillment or general erudition rather than for research or inspiration. And basically, it’s because I quit studying poetry, and gave up writing poems. It’s been years since I’ve written a poem. I just pay less attention to everything and let everything take care of itself, which arguably is what poetry is trying to accomplish-- maybe it has finally succeeded. But in this case, where I am conceivably in Nirbbana and therefore lacking in spiritual ambition, I find it imperative to read vociferously, with little need for entertaining myself or broadening my horizons. Books just come and go at the rapid pace at which I have selected them, and in the time I have made for them, I soak up whatever is useful to me as a person, citizen, whatever, you name it-- without any afterthought or commentary. And I blame my vocation of writing for it, since I am distancing myself as a writer from poetry in every way imaginable. 

I’m probably only saying this because I was such a terrible poet, especially during my formation as a writer. I would criticize myself for not learning to write verse. The poems I wrote don’t even count as poems. They count merely as sentiments. I henceforth retract all my poetry and consign my blasphemous attempts at lyrical self-abasement to the landfill of misguided intentions. The more I think about it, the more ashamed of myself I am! What a relief it is to leave behind the foibles of my childish musings! 

It’s awful to think about now, but I was an incredibly amateur poet whose poems never scanned, never rhymed, and were scrawled out by hand in lines that were meant to approximate something of the free verse that was briefly exhibited to me in English classrooms. It pains me to think of it now. I wish I’d never heard of free verse, I wish I’d never heard of any verse. I had no technical ability to write poems and never bothered to improve myself, but I would still dabble in it. I never understood poems, and at this rate I probably never will. My poems were always so melodramatic. Even when my prose writing was maturing and becoming more ambitious, the poems I wrote sitting in parks or cafes were syrupy things which I never showed to anyone, and my apparent need for poetic privacy did more damage to my verses than anything else. Absolutely no one ever volunteered an opinion of my poems. I spent my poetic youth in a vacuum. Maybe I was that boy in a plastic bubble who had no immunity to criticism. Maybe I caught AIDS and died. My poems were really bad and I wouldn’t even go back to them, such is my ancient fear of the adolescent yearning and trauma that forms the brick and mortar of the castle protecting that insipid, fragile psyche which was only crying out for help at the time but is now silenced forever. I would more or less characterize my relationship with poetry as academic, adolescent, repressed, and tortured. I no longer wish to speak of it. 

* 

Plumbing the depths of my youthful indiscretions was always a low priority in my writing career. For instance, I never planned a roman a clef or a memoir of my exploits, having considered the former too vulgar and the latter too libelous to bother with. I wrote exactly one story which summarized my entire attitude concerning autobiographies, then let the good times roll. I am in truth a very dull person. That is my secret. If I weren’t so dull, then I wouldn’t be able to write stories. Some people are surprised by how dull I am, after my friends tell them all about me and say what a swell person I am. Not true, and I never make a decent first impression. I have disappointed countless persons with an impromptu lone-wolf style that cripples conversations. I have a listless expression on my face almost constantly. I never smile. I have always tended to believe that most of my childhood friends were asked to be my companions, by parents, priests, and teachers. So I don’t really want to expose those unfortunate soulless tendencies of mine, not to mention risk taking out all the skeletons in my closet, by composing an autobiography which would only hurt people’s feelings and cause the angels of vengeance to wreak such fury on me that I would forget which day it is. 

Though I have always amused myself, on the other hand, with thoughts of what others would say of me and the effect I have made on their lives. In fact, magazines and newspapers are usually so goddam boring that I substitute my own lame, anonymous, passive personality for the celebrities mentioned in the papers, for the sake of vicariously enduring public opinion, political analysis, cheers, jeers, and various other pronouncements, or else I would be as ignorant of current events as a bushman in the Congo (in fact, I am presently entering a phase of willful ignorance of all media which, in my estimation, should be likened to a tour of duty in a nuclear submarine, say perhaps, Red October). But no one has brought any such testament of my own character to my attention. I mean, one girl in college said that I was immature, another said I was endowed with huge testicles. One friend told me that I was an asshole, another always related the anecdote how I must have bummed hundreds of cigarettes from him in High School. But I was never the subject of an expose like Primary Colors or the subject of a novel, as far as I know, even though I was acquainted with many writers and poets a long time ago, who infused me with their wit and wisdom, things that I was sorely lacking in my youth, all in exchange for a couple beers or a marijuana connection. No wonder I have that overactive imagination! I am so desperate for flattery that I am occasionally paranoid. But that would be a digression. On the whole, I am pretty even-keeled thanks to all my friends who have spared me those kinds of malevolent literary gestures that would cause me infinite embarrassment and overwhelming sorrow. My mother has even kept my baby pictures safe and sound. 

In hope of entertaining myself I have again, according to my insatiable egomaniacal urges, developed some broad story outlines which should flesh out some personal details and get around my blind spots. They aren’t quite accurate representations, but these jottings should reveal a few salient details. Buried like like the proverbial needles in haystacks, there must be some identifying traits waiting to be discovered by : 

Man goes to church for seventy-seven years before he finds out from a fellow parishioner that their minister is gay, then converts to Judaism with his very last dying breaths. 

A twelve-year old steals a bike in his neighborhood, then explains to his inquiring parents that it was “lent” to him. 

The thirty-one year-old mentally disabled mail-room worker whose favorite movie is Jackass ends up marrying a Brazilian belly dancer who promises to live in Rio with him and sail boats, the entire romance being a ruse to infiltrate his company’s hard drive and steal technological secrets vital to national security, and then frame the poor schmuck for espionage. 

A ragtag group of Shakespearean actors begin dealing crystal meth to finance their production of Titus Andronicus, becoming addicted themselves, stealing, looting and pillaging for days at a time , then finally killing each other in a fanatically dedicated production of such authenticity that the audience itself participates in the bloodbath, being driven to insanity with the help of theatrical programs soaked in LSD. 

A solitary, grief-stricken pet-owner joins a local humane society and learns to love again by teaching a neighbor’s little girl, who had attempted suicide after she didn’t get a pony for Christmas, to feed and train a crack-house mutt. 

A family goes to the zoo and accidentally leaves one of their kids, who is deaf, stuck in the chimpanzee exhibit, where he teaches all of the primates sign language. The chimps, who were going to be sold to the circus to help the cash-strapped park survive, instead put on a huge fund-raiser that raises attention to the zoo’s plight as well as the plight of endangered animals everywhere. 

A group of boys begin a staring contest in their neighborhood which enables a diabolical process of daemonic possession and subsequent bloodcurdling terror that can only be stopped once an autistic boy, mostly scorned by his playmates, confronts Satan himself, and wins a staring contest of apocalyptic proportions. 

I will let the reader draw what conclusions he or she is capable of from these acts of free association. They are not dreams, but I communicate these rhapsodies from the bottom of my heart to each and every one of you. I reserve the right to expand upon them especially later on in the journal, as I have been outlining future portions with the intent of creating, expressing and illustrating some aesthetic that would be integral to the writing of a novel. I don’t believe any of these ideas are good story ideas, but even so, I could construct one device or another to at least give them the recognition that they deserve. I have yet to write a screenplay and most of the epiphanies strike me as cinematic summaries, and these premises would allow me to draw interesting conclusions from them. 

I like the Titus description the best, it strikes me as the most apt personal self-acknowledgement of the last page, in the sense of making tragedy from a history, a rare feat in drama. As Anhiulh and Gide have retold Antigone, a production of Andronicus would be written in the modern idiom and intertwined with the exposition of the cast members, to be climaxed with various tragic fates as the deaths and atrocities multiplied, acclimating the audience to the consuming catharsis of destruction at many levels of the play/production, a tragedy foretold by the failure of a theatre to play the Bard for intelligent, sober audiences. I’m totally serious about doing this. I still revel in the memories of the afternoon I rented Titus, in the time of my carefree, indolent youth. Around the same time, I rented Looking for Richard, but of course the novelty of Shakespeare for me wore off since then. There are many precedents, in fact many more, that would be more loosely correlated with the preoccupying concept. Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things was a B movie that could be referenced explicitly, as its movie-within-a-movie plot line of occult fascination bred the same shocking style of horror as Night of the Living Dead did some ten years before. The split-screen editing in Chelsea Girls would serve to compare and contrast scenes of carnage, like the before and after mug shots of so many meth users that are broadcast on crime shows. But the story could be written for its own sake, and that is the most important thing. If you didn;t already know, I have a fetish for Jacobean revenge plays. 

Since the script idea was mine, I could write myself a big part, maybe the lead. It was supposed to highlight my twisted Roman style in the first place. Hedonism, savagery, revenge, meth, these are a few of my favorite things... Let us reconsider the premise, let us savor it: 

A ragtag group of Shakespearean actors begin dealing crystal meth to finance their production of Titus Andronicus, becoming addicted themselves, stealing, looting and pillaging for days at a time, then finally killing each other in a fanatically dedicated production of such authenticity that the audience itself participates in the bloodbath, being driven to insanity with the help of theatrical programs soaked in LSD. 

I would probably forward this script idea to Ralph Williams, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, to humbly beseech his opinion of the matter at hand. I still follow the twitter account that announced his every move in as meticulous detail as is possible with 140-character entries during his last days before retirement. The tribute I am pondering would properly demonstrate the debt of gratitude I owe this exemplary scholar and educator. 

Per @ralphgwilliams: “Reminder: Last public lecture, 4/21[/09], 7pm at Rackham Auditorium.” 

Aw, hell. I’d never get my heart into something as absurd as a meth troupe, but I am awed by the potential of the story to explore acting life behind the scenes, the dangers of drug abuse, as well as the pathos of modern theater. The challenge in strict literary terms of such a Titus is to demarcate its literary implausibility which is requirement of fiction, from the suspension of disbelief which would be necessary in a drama. Literature by definition precedes from implausibility, and every book you read substantiates this assertion. The movie just has to be sensational and/or graphic enough to keep an audience’s attention. A serious playwright could pull off something so tricky as a play within a play; currently, there are several of them. If I even considered myself a playwright, however, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. Shakespeare? How could you rewrite Shakespeare? And why would you argue that Shakespeare could be performed on drugs? Those are a couple of my concerns. As long as the urgency of the actors’ various plights were comparable with the motivations of the play, and if you throw in some subplots with the audience members, there is enough to indulge a yarn. It was just a thought, but still, while it was meant to emphasize some component of my self that a reader could comprehend, that one story bit humored me from here to next week, more than all the others combined. Even the horror story about the Staring Boys, which in my mind was beginning to approach the evil and courage of a Stephen King novel, and could have practically written itself, was no absolutely match whatsoever for the complete anarchy of The Last Play. 

* 

Despite this healthy promenade of criticism, nostalgia and brainstorming, I am no closer to the truth of literature or the cause of my work. However, I am content with this state of affairs. Obviously, there is no rhyme or reason to this endeavor, nor is there futility. I remain non-committal to forcing myself into either the analysis of a journal or the plot of a novel, simply for its own sake. I wish I were a hack. I must sound like a romantic. The bohemian is off running errands. 

I find no difficulty in putting my thoughts onto paper, and for the moment this project is more or less the path of least resistance to my creative energies. Either I will determine the proper end of my efforts in composition or from reading my own words. It’s the same difference, anyways; if someone else told me what I was thinking, though, I’d throw them out a window or worse. I’m always willing to take advice but I can’t comprehend how people would try to explain to me what I was doing. Stuff like that always gives me the impression that I am a dimwit who needs someone to hold his hand when he crosses the street. Ha! Not likely. 

Why should I blame her that she filled my days 

With misery, or that she would of late 

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, 

Or hurled the little streets upon the great. 

Had they but courage equal to desire? 

What could have made her peaceful with a mind 

That nobleness made simple as a fire, 

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind 

That is not natural in an age like this, 

Why, what could she have done, being what she is? 

Was there another Troy for her to burn? 

--William Butler Yeats, "No Second Troy" 

I have resumed an outline for a future novel and am tentatively assuming that one day it will be written. Why I am doing this is something of a mystery, and I generally prefer to possess an unequivocal justification for my work. That I write is a natural thing, but particular acts of writing are to me intuitively less instinctive insofar as they involve a conscious pursuit of truth, so if I were to just start doing something without knowing why, I would question my motives publicly, along with more intimate features of my selfhood privately. There is a very serious reason why: I burden myself in those situations with by-now useless questions that will probably never even see the light of day, around the sense of a project which is inherently unfathomable, as well as the purpose of meandering about meaninglessly in the twilight zone of notions received via prayer, osmosis, clairvoyance, what have you... These questions repeat themselves monotonously in my brain without respite, in harmony with the requisite emerging ad hoc, makeshift literary devices such as repetitive, loosely framed content of new found plot which, unnervingly to me, is never the same thing twice, or images of vague, idealized characters who enchant me suddenly while pondering the subtleties of the void, who constantly call upon my adoring attentions without hesitation, without pity, and disturb me even in my sleep... Maybe I see in my own reveries a hundred homeless men lining the streets singing for their supper, the pretty little cafes where I will meet my next lover, the afternoon I find a silver dollar lying on the sidewalk, or a turtle crossing the road. I may as well be sleeping. I definitely would not advise operating heavy machinery under these circumstances. 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. 

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; 

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil 

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? 

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; 

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil 

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 

And for all this, nature is never spent; 

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 

And though the last lights off the black West went 

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— 

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. 

--"God’s Grandeur," The Rev.Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ 

So I restrain myself with the appropriate caution and take all my inspired moods with a side of steak fries and malted vinegar. Today, I could really go for some fish’n’chips. 

Whenever the situation warrants, I just substitute distractions with distractions, a clever, if not somewhat clumsy, game. I go throw some dice. Or I go buy some lottery tickets. Fight fire with fire: that’s the rule of thumb. If your day is shot, don’t go piss it all away. The temptation can be unrelenting to follow your whims, but it’s still a temptation. The best writers know when to stop writing, even if it means killing themselves in the process, and a lot of writers have killed themselves. I think that that says a lot about patience, albeit strangely. I don’t mean any disrespect toward those people or their families, but in the end, I respect their judgement. 

Still, a life without writing is something I’ve never imagined, despite the intermittent absences and occasional bonfire of the vanities that have punctuated a steady stream of words which more often than not communicate my experience of the world or at least some idea of it, for lack of a better term. Excluding it from my daily regimen is out of the question. Retirement from this illustrious career of mine I suppose, is a foreign concept...? I haven’t even started yet. I haven’t asked anyone for advice about this, but then again I haven’t consulted on most if not all of my projects. Bloomsbury for me is a place on a map, everyone from Bloomsbury has condemned us to the libraries these last few decades. I’m sure it makes for nice coffee-table book, and there is more than one of them in print (I mean of Bloomsbury, either of London or the circle) that should be on my coffee table (but I would have to ask Santa for one for Christmas. I would necessarily be, however, the only boy in the neighborhood to ask for a Bloomsbury coffee-table book, and maybe that is a neat story idea, especially if it were inspired by the true story of a twelve-year old like me). I mean, there’s no reason for a support group. Is literature that stimulating? Is there such a thing as common ground? I could go on, but I won’t even bother. I’d rather join an insane asylum than eat other people’s shit. 

I detest the risks involved with socializing literature in respect of cultivating the appearance of solidarity or communion for art’s sake. I have endured far too many codependent relationships to waste my energies on collective consciousness. Let’s say you were one of the Bloomsburys. What if you were one of Virginia Woolf’s friends, and you made some off-color remark during one of her famous bouts of depression. Your being gauche would rob the world of a renowned essayist and author. And everyone would blame you for her death. You wouldn’t be a Bloomsbury for long if they were dropping like flies. You could be saving a life by abstaining from group allegiances, even your own. 

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others -Virginia Woolf 

I’ve never seen any advantage to group collaboration, in other words. Human relationships are too delicate and fragile for activities of this sort. The vulnerabilities are exposed, the tempers flare, the heart aches and for basically no reason. 

It’s just as well, there are a few projects to plan for, regardless of my calendar. I could occupy myself with them for the time being. Or if I stopped writing, I could volunteer for a charity and cleanse my soul. I could visit Europe and communicate with smartphone apps. Not writing is as much of an art as writing is, n’est-ce pas? As long as you could tell the difference between the two, you’d know what you were doing. Good writing seems effortless. All art is really effortless, if it is to be human. 

Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic. -Woolf 

Why would anybody do it? Nobody really knows. If they did, would it be art? I have never even bothered editing my books, but most ideas come and go like sunshine and rain. That’s not saying much, but the point remains that if it weren’t easy, nobody would do it. There is always something going on. I should let it go at that. Theories abound regarding the origin of art, ask any anthropologist for one, they’re a dime a dozen. The interpretation of these origins must give some perspective on modern man’s growing inclinations to create, annihilate, juxtapose, conceal and reveal, celebrate, transform, multiply, plagiarize, scandalize, enervate, transfix, captivate, satirize, emulate, the existence that laughs in his face. I have no problem with it, I always seem to be mystified by it. Art, that is. If it does everything it supposed to do, then the culture that generates it is thriving. Failing that, there are always new ways of saying the same old things. Is that the same as having nothing to say? Probably not, at least I hope not, or else the culture would be dead and I would be writing its death certificate! It’s just that I’ve entertained my fears about the world around me quite often. Most of them have to do with the dissolution of culture by one means or another. My vision is pessimistic, yet hardly dystopic. If it’s too late to do anything about art, there’s always something else to do, and it would (or should) eventually pass for art, but I digress. It should be easy. Maybe nobody wants to say anything because it would be too challenging to speak one’s opinion. I am speaking way too much in general here, just spouting thoughts under the rubric “Art is dead” or “Art is for everybody.” 

id quod videtur placet 

I sense a lull about me. I am in the eye of the storm. The last train has pulled out of the station. My shoes need polishing. I have forgotten my pocket watch again. The bag lady is about to push her cart off the platform. There is a restaurant just down the street. 

I hate to make the wrong impression about man’s motivation to art, but I was kicking some stuff around and thought it worth mentioning, basically, that a lot of writing, painting, media in general are so easy that children could perform the tasks of the artists, is the gist of it. But I am going to rediscover the novel in this record, and not expound on art, or continue to pontificate in peripheries such as these, where my expertise is minimal and my comments are out of place. I am simply exercising artistic license as a matter of course, and clinically at that, too. If I allow myself the luxury of doing so, I may retract all these statements and rededicate my efforts at studying a handbook of plot for writers, or ignore my conscience and pursue the roman a clef with renewed vigor, or rewrite an story of mine with traditional narrative, anything to prime the pump and continue on my merry way, the sooner the better, before my brain catches up with me and tells me to quit screwing off and grow up for a change. 

But I will somehow sympathize with the plight of art in its present condition, one day at least, as much as one day I will come to terms with my own sorry state, or the fact that art ever came into being. That fact is as inevitable as its reverting back to certain usefulness, or my resuming a normal, productive life. Nowadays, these goals are meant to be somewhat elusive. Perhaps there is a higher power at work, Who understands the meaning of life and all its precious minutiae... and we can blame Him. No, just kidding. I had to indulge myself, if for a moment. ... Ultimately, chaos, whether personal or social, is necessary, temporary, and indescribable. It is the cause of many a frustration. I may as well be wallowing in my own filth, with all this misdirected thinking. None of this was my intention. Perhaps this mess is a by-product of my ill-conceived journey into the wastelands, where I am vainly tossing change into the wind, whistling into infinity. 

This Side of the Truth (for Llewelyn) 

This side of the truth, 

You may not see, my son, 

King of your blue eyes 

In the blinding country of youth, 

That all is undone, 

Under the unminding skies, 

Of innocence and guilt 

Before you move to make 

One gesture of the heart or head, 

Is gathered and spilt 

Into the winding dark 

Like the dust of the dead. 

Good and bad, two ways 

Of moving about your death 

By the grinding sea, 

King of your heart in the blind days, 

Blow away like breath, 

Go crying through you and me 

And the souls of all men 

Into the innocent 

Dark, and the guilty dark, and good 

Death, and bad death, and then 

In the last element 

Fly like the stars' blood 

Like the sun's tears, 

Like the moon's seed, rubbish 

And fire, the flying rant 

Of the sky, king of your six years. 

And the wicked wish, 

Down the beginning of plants 

And animals and birds, 

Water and Light, the earth and sky, 

Is cast before you move, 

And all your deeds and words, 

Each truth, each lie, 

Die in unjudging love. 

--Dylan Thomas