1/22/2021

a lot has happened in a few days.

1) my wife's company, the one she's worked for for over 20 years... it is closing shop. ALL stores. after feb. 15, the stores are all going to be closed. so suddenly, our two income household will become a one income household... also, our health insurance, which ran through my wife's job, will now have to come from mine. and from what i hear, it's extremely expensive through my job. so that will eat a significant chunk of our income as well. add to that, my daughter's preparing for college next year... i know a lot of people are struggling, so i know we're not alone, but we've gone from a position of weathering it out, to suddenly being exposed. in any case, we're just taking it a step at a time. my wife is working on her resume, and looking at options. and as my daughter's situation with colleges becomes clearer (in other words, as she gets acceptance or rejection letters, along with financial aid packages) then we can proceed to making some of those hard choices...

2) i'm sick. i hate getting sick, not just because of having to suffer through the illness, but because it requires me to consider coverage issues... like: can i get a sub? if i do manage to secure a sub, which is a miracle in itself, how am i going to convey the complex plan that we run every day? this morning, even though technically, i'm not supposed to go on campus, i tried to set everything up for whomever had to come in to run my class (i don't think a sub showed up). hopefully everything went well.

i tested. still waiting on results. to be honest, i don't think i have the rona. it all started with some dry coughing, and then i experienced drops in my energy level... i've been resting up a lot. i do have periods where i essentially feel back to normal, but then unexpectedly, i get really tired.

so, there's all that.

*****

for my writing: i composed the piece that's going to be read at our writer's workshop this sunday. they're going to have 4 actors actually read the parts of our works. it's kind of awesome, actually. i just don't know if my work is up to that sort of honor. but in any case, i tried to rework the piece; i even had my family read it (imperfectly) to get a sense of the timing. i realized some parts sort of dragged, and though i didn't entirely correct them (didn't want to make such radical shifts), i did make some minor adjustments. we'll see what happens. i think i'm going to try to record it if i can.

mamet keeps saying stuff about how a piece should not be written by the conscious mind. that is, it shouldn't be a "cautionary tale," a tale with an obvious "punchline": the example he uses is "deaf people are people too, duh." i do think i'm drawing on my unconscious a lot in writing this story; it's just that i am not sure if it's really articulate or not. there's a lot of hate in me. and i think the story is about the temptation of that hate. of course, in normal brotherhoods, we sort of brush things under; that's the way it is. brothers are like that. but i wanted to explore pushing things to the hilt, where, if you could, would you murder your brother for the abuses committed? or would you save his life? and would you be content with that, especially knowing that things would always return to the ambiguity of before, of always being consigned to shadows and obscurity?

lately, my brother has been making cameo appearances in my dreams. i don't know if it means anything. there's this awkwardness around him. it's like seeing some sort of rare fish pop up in a tide pool or something...

in any case... i keep thinking of my story, my play. should i cut shit? like, right now, i'm strapped in to writing about the trial of swords, of water, of fire, of shadows. that's a lot. and i automatically dread it, because to pull readers/audience through FOUR events like that, seems somewhat- unnecessary? a drag? i mean, what is it i'm really trying to say? also, it seems i've kind of committed to a sequence as well. and i've been trying to relate these abstract concepts, like fire- to the little vignettes in my memory. there really is a poverty of actual events, actual turning points, in my relationship with my brother. and i feel that i really shouldn't modify things to much (i mean the actual biographical details) because that's the blood of it all. but writers do what writers have to. in service to the narrative... so we'll see.

oh well. i guess i should get ready for my distance learners. even sick, i feel i have to service them. so see ya!

1/18/2021

i think mainly what my story is about is vengeance vs forgiveness. and about how forgiveness isn't just this passive state between on and off, it is an active choice, demanding a kind of commitment... flesh in the game, so to speak. you can't just say, "no, i won't kill him." you have to actually go into the water and save him. maybe that's what i want to say. or maybe it's because writing a story that doesn't demand a kind of investment of risk and blood just turns boring. and the character just becomes ambiguous and muddled. muddy.

i do get consumed by hatred for my brother. at the same time, i have this curiosity about him. i feel sympathy for him at times, in an abstract sort of way. and yes, there is a begrudging admiration for him, when i think of the things he did when he was young, the enormity of the pressures placed upon him. but if i were to see him on the street- well, i'd probably cross the street. i'm kind of a coward that way. yes, i'll admit it. i mean, what would i say? and how would i take it, to be snubbed yet again? the thing i always hated so much about my brother is that when i would try to say something important to him, he would just turn the channel to fox news... or to some sports shit... like what i had to say couldn't be more important than the latest obama bashing shit. and before long, what i had to say WASN'T important...

i guess that's what i hate. and maybe this relates to the writing, to EVERYTHING. the fact that, in this world, if things aren't presented, packaged, then it's almost as though they don't exist. EVEN, or ESPECIALLY, in those cases where a person's voice, a person's personhood, is so fractured and frayed that there isn't a voice left. as the white supremacists said of george floyd, "if you can say 'i can't breathe,' then you're breathing." maybe it's the same here. the people who often have the most important things to say, the people who probably have the most insight with regards to the power dynamics, etc. often are the ones who cannot articulate themselves, for whatever reason... they have no effective voice.

the reason i bring this up is this: my brother is a pretty package. and when he talks everything is clear, brilliant. clear edges. clear shapes. vital feelings. even i get caught up in it all. but it isn't the truth. and it's taken me so long to determine that what he says is not the truth, is not the only truth. this, coming from me, who takes so many sides that he cannot really determine what his side is... but i say, what he says, what the world recognizes, isn't the only truth. and i wanted to make that clear. that's what i want to say in this story.

it's not about pity. i don't want it to be about pity. i don't want it to be about how my brother abused me, boo hoo hoo. i want there to be some sort of redemption for my way of being, for the way of the second brother, the one who cannot take the main path, because his roadhog brother is there... the way of someone who must by nature be indirect, vague. and whether it is possible for that to be a position in and of itself. and whether that position is positive, has some redeeming quality about it. because that's what i really want.

and the gamble of this story is... if it's unconvincing, then perhaps i am as well. and perhaps everything i've staked my existence on is not convincing as well. and then we get a repeat of my relationship to my brother... turn the channel to fox. oh, you said something?

*****

mamet said something about how you have to write from the unconscious. the only problem is that the unconscious doesn't appreciate structure, and will rebel against it. and narrative, whether we like it or not, has a structure. it is in its dna. so the writer's work is always a negotiation. or rather, a preparation, not unlike cooking. taking something that was once alive, hopefully fresh, and then cooking and seasoning it just right so that it is palatable. relatable. whatever...

*****

mamet also said... and he seemed to be paraphrasing hemingway? that the best way to write was to sit at the typewriter and bleed. he also said something like "get out of the boat and swim like the rest of us." in other words, there is no shortcut. there is no easy way out. just dive in and struggle. so i guess that's what i've been avoiding, and it's what i have to get back to.

dream: 1/16/2021

 at one point in this dream, there was this lame-o party. if it can even be called such. some stupid music playing on someone's shitty radio. and i'm just wandering around alone amidst people- mostly grungy white boys with untamed beards (i think of spin doctors lead singer types, with those weird jester-type yarn hats- and when i say white boys, i'm not being racist; that literally was the primary demographic at my college). there are hardly any women. there is the feeling of abandonment, of chronic lameness. a party is supposed to be escapist, an amnesia of sorts, but this is just a repetition of a trap. so i'm just walking back and forth- it seems we are on the first floor, so it's possible to go outside. i recall looking up at some second floor dorm window, and it seems i see the silhouette of a couple having sex. dim outline through white plastic sheets... but there is no one here. no one i am interested in, no one who would be interested in me. then there is this black girl who i see every now and then, but who i just don't even register (in the dream) as anything significant, who somehow makes a comment about some bracelet i'm wearing (bracelet?) and suddenly, yes, i am wearing this weird bracelet with fishnet and cardboard tubing, and i'm wondering when/where/why i have it on. and my project for the next however long is to try to remove it. it's only afterwards (maybe even into waking) that i have this thought that maybe that girl had come down to talk to me- in fact, maybe she placed it on me (because i seem to recall that she had worn something similar) - maybe she placed it on me when i was sleeping/drunk. and i am suddenly left with this feeling that if i weren't so down on myself and my environment then i might have just talked to her or something. i guess i always bemoaned the fact that i was alone in a lonely world, when there may have been other eyes and other minds wandering the wasteland as well... and that we might have transformed everything if we'd only talked with each other... but.

also something about food. about making only one type of food. and laying it out on the shingles of a slanted roof to dry off in the moonlight???

anyways. i woke up with my mouth super dry. almost like waking up with a hangover, dehydrated... my eyes felt as though they had burnt pathways on the underside of my eyelids, after having grinded so much.

1/11/2021

crazy week... in retrospect, i can't believe we've only come 11 days into the new year. it seems like so much has happened. first, i remember the excitement of watching the georgia run-offs, in which the fate of the senate (and by extension, the entire nation) was decided. it was so close! i remember turning the news on and off, with half hour breaks in between, and oscillating between hope and despair, depending upon how close things were, and who happened to be winning... it was only at about midnight or so (as i recall) that i started feeling hopeful. warnock's race had been called a while ago, but at that time, ossoff had just pulled into a narrow lead, and it looked like the remaining votes to be counted would mainly skew democratic...

so there was that. only, it was overshadowed the very next day by the riot at the capitol. i didn't even realize it was happening until i started checking my facebook feed over my phone during one of the rare breaks i had while i was teaching my sped students... only later did i actually have the time to digest the enormity of what had happened. news kept flashing in intermittently, but it was the images, the damnable images, that kept searing themselves into my mind and into my heart. i think that whole day (and, for that matter, the entire rest of the week, into today), i have been sharing and reposting stuff on facebook like mad... i don't know why. i know the "friends" who disagree with me have long ago hidden my posts from their feeds... and even those who happen to agree with my political leanings, well, they probably don't have as avid an appetite for that news, and they probably have hidden me as well... i don't care. i think i just wanted to convey the honest outrage i felt... and each new little snippet of news that appeared set off a conflagration within me... in particular, i wanted the trump supporters (and there are still a lot of them out there, immune to sense and reason and hypocrisy) to be painted full with the "shit brush." this was all on them. and if they weren't going to speak out loudly to condemn this, then i was going to make sure the stink stayed on them... in perpetuity.

... i think i have since calmed down a bit. it's still an outrage, but... if you haven't convinced the maga-ts after 4 years of this shit-show, you aren't going to change anyone's minds (or lack thereof) now.

*****

in other news... well, school's started up again. the start of this quarter has actually been pleasant. for some reason, the students are relatively compliant, and we are able to get a fair amount of work done every day. i'm proud of the progress of a lot of them (though i always wish for more)...

we had a bonus writing workshop class yesterday. it was wonderful. i do wish that i had selected something more- i don't know- evocative- to represent myself. i know it was just like a showcase, and we could only showcase a tiny snippet of our work... but, as i mentioned to the leader of the workshop, i was seriously reworking the story, and i didn't have much confidence in it as it was now. it was sort of like a shoddy construction site... there were still broken walls and sawdust and cut lengths of wood lying around on the floor... i wanted, instead, to use another story ("backwards carp"), which, in retrospect, had a more consistent structure to it...

but i used "kappa noodle," the very first page. and due to time constraints, the selection i had made had to be parsed even further, so after reading it, absolutely nothing significant happens. the humdrum dialogue just plods along, and then it was over... oh well.

the other people in the class all seemed so interesting... i suppose it is a community. i don't think i would be comfortable "plain" socializing with any of them. i always need the armor of a context or something. here, the context was the writing... and as long as i clothed my statements in references to the texts, things were fine. i often wonder why that is, why i can't represent myself as a human being. it is something like a lack of faith in humanity in general. not in them, necessarily, but rather in myself. i feel like a tissue paper drum, with hollow fragile words... people can see through me. and see through my statements... even (and especially) when i am dead serious, hopelessly sincere. i often think that other people occupy a rarefied space. they can breathe a different air... i'm just a frog in their world, and i don't belong... except in experiments where i bare my still-beating heart.

*****

i just listened to david mamet, and i heard more of the same... cut cut cut. efficiency. remove obligatory scenes... just get to the point. i also liked how he said each scene answers three questions... i'm paraphrasing, but the 3 questions are: "who wants what from who?" "what happens if they don't get it?" and "why now?" i would like to pare down my writing to that level of efficiency...

*****

i also just finished "olive kitteredge," which i thought was beautiful, if depressing. the ending in particular was poignant... how olive "falls in love" a second time, and that it is definitely not what she would have ever chosen for herself, but by that point, it becomes a matter of choosing the love that is granted to us, or choosing death. and life always seeks love... it is reminiscent of the earlier story i may have mentioned, called "starving," about an older gentleman who seeks an extramarital affair because it is the only glimmer of life and hope and love that exists for him...

i often wonder about that, with me. i myself am such a sleepy, settling kind of guy. i hate disruption and disturbance. that's why i seek to quell everything with routines... i don't think i have "fallen in love" (in the infatuation sense, or even otherwise) since a certain point in my life. i mean, i have fallen for my wife, of course, but it wasn't the same sort of "fall"; it was more of a gradual and natural surrender into something that felt inevitable and right. but i've never pursued lust (which is the most apt way to characterize that other sort of blind, rushing feeling). i've never pursued it because i don't think i could ever take it seriously enough to have someone else take it seriously... i've always wanted too much for someone to open up and accept me- and no one is or was willing to do that, to take the first step... or maybe every step.

i think it's true. nothing's decided until it's decided. and who decides anything? sometimes the very constellations in the sky are unfixed... and if you decide to steer off the edge of the world, and if everything is in your favor, the very stars will move to guide you true...

i don't know why i'm rambling about that.

sometimes i wish i were young again. sometimes i wish there were still possibilities for me. but then again.

but then again.

1/5/2021

i've been pretty tired lately.

*****

i oscillate between hope and despair. with regards to my writing... on the one hand, i have followed glimmers of hope in trying to crevice sunlight through this block of darkness. i have separated the storyline into a couple of parallel pathways, and then sought to intertwine them (difficult).,.

but then: i just listened to david mamet, and his discussion on narrative and exposition. to paraphrase: cut, cut, cut. and i agree, but... it's ironic. i speak to my daughter about this all the time. i tell her to just be direct in her writing. get to the point, i say. but then, i struggle with exactly the same thing here. as mamet says, muddled writing comes from muddled thinking. and i will say, with complete honesty, that i have a lot of muddled thinking right now. i want to clarify, but... i have an addiction to ambiguity.

so i need to return to it all with new eyes. cut cut cut. find the heart. find the heart. find the heart. stab the heart.

make it bleed. make it hurt. kill.

*****

right now, my dog is lying down on his side next to me. he makes his presence known through contact. he doesn't like to get close to anyone, especially me, but on odd moments, like when i am down on the ground typing on my laptop, he will appear there...

*****

i don't really know what else i want to say tonight... i guess i will just get down to writing.

1/2/2021

i have been attempting to incorporate a parallel storyline into what i've already written. as i may have mentioned, i decided to separate the two stuffed animals (owlie and dd) from the main character, and have them go on their own journey to reunite themselves with him. initially, it seemed an easy thing; simply create obstacles for the two characters to somehow offset the stagnancy of the main storyline, which did "not move" in the overt sense. however, the choice of the nature of those obstacles... in fact, even little things, like the dialogue... it was, and is, necessary to think them through carefully, down to the timing of the switches between the two storylines, in order to make them intertwine, if not overtly, than through the suggestion of images and situations...

one thing i've come to realize... and this is an insight i intend to incorporate into the story... is the way i work. when it comes to creative, expressive endeavors... or even other things that aren't considered "creative," but are only dependent upon me, and only have myself to answer for... well, i am wary of being too decisive about these things. and i think it directly relates to my experiences with my brother. because of my brother, the direct path has always been obstructed. he dominates everything, and i had learned from experience that it was useless to assert myself or compete against him. in fact, i think it is largely due to this that my general psychology with relation to people in general has been to distrust them, or rather, to trust their disdain of me far more than anything else... and yet, i don't avoid the disdain. because, again, due to my brother, that disdain was inevitable and inescapable... the bottom line is this: i never take the direct path. if i do so, then this feeling of self-hatred and self-loathing inevitably creeps in and destroys me and shames me. it's not a matter of enduring it; the very thing i'm creating becomes affected, riddled with ugliness and inconsistency... so instead, i take the more meandering path, the path of least resistance. i do free association. i do sketches. in no way do i express myself directly or forcefully- because, again, my brother occupies that path, and there has never been enough room for me on it... in other words, i have made my own way. and by its very nature, my way has always been the secret path, the shadow path, the path of increments, the path of harmony...

perhaps some of my latent "regret" is simply due to the fact that i don't think i have ever walked the path that my brother walks, the one of force and assurance. i distrust it. in fact, i despise it. and any scent of assuredness, of the too-consistent, of overly confident voices, or of arrogance- it is something i cannot abide with. it reeks to me... maybe that's why i go for the low voices. that's why i teach special education children. that's why i relate to children better than adults. it is because, by my nature, i have been consigned to the shadows, to tend to the forgotten...

anyway, that's the insight i came to as i considered how to write the parallel storyline. i now intend to have the obstacles be "impossible" for the characters to overcome directly- and this to be an intentional message for how the main character must learn to be in dealing with his brother, and perhaps (fatally) in dealing with life.

*****

i understand now, a bit. how i had looked upon the eyes of women as salvific. for if i always walked the meandering shadow path, unable to hold my feelings up to the light- then the only way they would ever be seen would be if someone was actively looking for them. for me, "romance" always equated to a subterfuge. a subterfuge, not only with the other person, but a subterfuge within myself, struggling to countenance the feelings that i had. i have always looked upon the "sunlight" relationships with a certain envy, but i couldn't- i absolutely could not- place myself in such situations. everything, everything, must go the shadow path.

underneath, i think i am a kind, caring person (but again, is this only because that is how i have to be? is this because i never allow myself to be cruel and selfish, as my brother was and is?). but i am, of necessity, cloaked in shadow and indirectness; the left-handed, sinister path.

*****

the eye is never totalizing. vision is always fragmented. and if i have my way with it, it will always, always have a blind spot. hidden within that, and in the peripheries, are the vagabonds, who, like me, were exiled to not be seen- if only to survive.

12/30/2020

it's a day later. it's cold. the air sits on my back. and i can hear the rain punctuating the silence outside.

i hate myself, i hate my writing. i think what i've done is a terrible thing. i have no idea where i've been going with my story. i thought that if i wrote it incrementally, that somehow it would amount to something, but no. it just feels like an ingrown toenail, turning in on itself, and wounding the foot in the process... something wrong. i have been thinking that it reflects me, that there is something wrong about me. that i am not interested in the same things as other people. i think about some of the ideas i have had for stories. they don't arise necessarily from the richness of experience. they are usually just coincident things, things that i find make some sort of interesting connection. but there's no heart, and no blood, in such things. what is the point?

maybe that's all i am. an interest in these connections, these blurs, these overlaps. it is like a snapshot taken of a deep ocean, and how the alignment of the sunlight, and the water, and the fish beneath, maybe give some sort of impression of depth. but so what?

i am a terrible father. i just read another chapter in "girl in the shape of a cloud," and by gods, how depressing it is. olive kitteredge was also depressing, about an inescapable and impossible life... i am thinking about my son, in particular. and how, i don't do anything to form him. i feel, at this point, that he is his own person. but i am also worrying, in the background, that he isn't driven, and he isn't particularly heading to any known, good trajectories. and why am i not doing something about it? i suppose i want him to be happy, but i am not providing him with the tools necessary to make a happy life. in the present, i am just giving him free reign... i am so laissez faire with things. is that right? is that wrong? i am so uncertain about things in my own life, how could i define a trajectory for my son?

*****

my dialogue is wretched. part of the issue is: i don't know what anyone wants. it is all just "figuring itself out." maybe it is because what is wanted, what i want, i cannot say. so i am constantly muddling about. i want to kill my brother. no i don't no i don't no i don't. i just want to- maim him. (this reminds me of dobby from harry potter or something: dobby didn't want to kill harry potter. only maim or seriously injure). or maybe i just want his respect. or maybe i just want to be like him, to steal something of his, and claim it as my own. it is all these things. how can i distill it into one thing? why is everything i write so wrought with ambiguity? i hate myself for that.

*****

why do we do the things that we do? is it out of feeling, or compunction? or blind routine? a pattern established, decided upon... and followed religiously? why do i do these things that i do, in this order? what would i feel if i didn't follow this path? i would feel lost, cast off. and the self-hatred would leap into me like a - what were those dinosaurs called? with their bird-like talons? the hook-shaped claws? they would stab into me and disembowel me instantly... i know that that hatred pursues me. it pursued me from ever so long ago. it is my shadow, inevitable. i cast it off only through distraction and routine. distraction and routine.

and concern for what i should be concerned about.

*****

the rain is coming down harder, pelting the earth now. and my skin is chilled. i hear the distance in the rain. the curtains of it coming down.

*****

i wish people listened to me, and found a heart in anything that i was saying. instead, i always am left with the impression that there was something off about me, something lacking. and people won't say it out loud, won't mention it politely... but they fold back into other narratives, because whatever i say only leaves them with a feeling of discomfort. like a glimpse of a gallery of misshapen, hideous artwork. or a symphony played off-tune...

that's me.