There Is A Light

I'm rushing headlong to the end of my thirties, and as much as I tell myself to love what I love, that I know what I want and not let anything else bother me, I'm not exactly in a place to get everything that I want. On the one hand, my moral social code is more in line with those of my friends who already have kids, established careers, mortgages, monogamy and what not. On the other, my aesthetics are still geared toward ironic tees, jeans, sitting with knees up with hipster tunes blaring through $300 headphones while searching for Japanese watches at 3am in the morning. And sure, it's possible that there's some cute alt-chick with a small nosering, big blue anime eyes who gets just excited about covers of 80s alt tunes who isn't a porn star and isn't two decades younger than me, but let's be honest, the intersection of the Venn diagram of my moral social code and my aesthetics probably is probably populated by a single inhabitant.

But fuck it. I'm not sure I would be happy, at least in this point of my life, with 5am wakeups, heading to bed by 9, with someone I can't at least laugh with, much less have a conversation over 15 minutes, who's leisure reading is solely informed by the New York Times bestseller lists.

Dialogue

"I'm having a little problem with incentive." Dirk nodded at the stripper with the blond hooker wig finishing her set, handed her a single, and continued. "I mean, inspiration is all fine and good, but it's not enough."
"How so, my friend?"
"Well, I've been trying to figure out what to write . . ."
"Write or don't write, there is no try," Trasker interrupted. He lifted up an empty Heineken bottle and motioned to the waitress for a refill.
". . . Whatever, and so I've been paying attention to images that come through my head, memories, smells, anything that evokes a strong emotional resonance."
"You should be paying attention to Cindi up there, that should be evoking some sort of resonance."
"Eh, she doesn't look like a Cindi. Bit too ethnic for my taste. Anyway, so yeah, I got these images, solitary figures in long halls or wide open spaces, nights on highways lit by orange sodium lamps, which would be great if I were a cinematographer."
"Well, what's the problem. Sounds like you have a decent springboard to write something."
"The problem is that those solitary figures aren't doing anything, except maybe thinking. And thinking alone does not a story make. Oh fuck, I knew at some point they'd play Nine Inch Nail's 'Closer' here, it's like a strip club law or something."
"At least they haven't played any Motley Crew yet. Anyway, what's wrong with people thinking? You're not writing a screenplay so you don't have to worry about 120 minutes of some guy in deep contemplation. Fuck, it's prose, right? I mean the difference is that not only can you get into a person's head, it's one of the main reasons to read fiction. Hell, Proust wrote a ten novel series about some dude's wicked flashback from the taste of lemon cake. And the guy was a pussyhound to boot."
"Really?"
"Fuck if I know."
"I dunno, I just can't bring myself to write whole paragraphs describing the way dust motes drift in sunlight or some shit like that. That's what I mean when I say I have a problem with incentive."
"But at least you'd have something written, mon frere."
"Well, you might be right about having something written. Jeezus, I wonder if she's able to crack walnuts with a pair like those?"
The waitress picked up the empty bottle from the table and handed Trasker his beer. "Thanks doll, keep the change. To Proust the Pussyhound!"
"Here here! Oh fuck, you spoke too soon about Motley Crew."

Fragment

Three days after the dramatic denouement, he found himself in the midnight air beside the gunnery placements overlooking Ville du Coeur. Centuries ago, blood red thaumaturgical lines would have encircled the city during times of war, with the lights of the city streets serving as the intricate symbols casting the protective seal. Ville du Coeur would have beat a deep crimson in the cold night. There was no way to stem a feeling of romanticism and nostalgia in viewing the old daguerrotypes of the lost days.

Now, the thaumaturges worked their craft underground with particle accelarators. The old lines of faults, salt and blood were no defense to probability weapons, atomic leviathans and stealth dragons. Ville du Coeur during modern wartime was black and cold, the crenalations of Le Coeur, the cold-steel and glass skyscrapers, only illuminated if one wore night-vision goggles or during the fast and furious times when the anti-ballistic harpies were let loose against incoming MIRV missiles.

He was senior enough to walk the emplacements without answering to anyone first, much to the consternation of his staff. He didn't bother to take off his commandant livery--if there were any sniper able to get this close to Le Coeur, then she would deserve her target. And if Carcassone's slealth dragons were able to get past the basilisks and anti-aircraft artillery, then there's was nothing much anyone could do to save themselves.

He, as well as the regional commanders of the Northern Avalon Treaty Alliance, and the remaining battalions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Expeditionary Forces not engaged in protecting the Government-in-Exile, were now simply waiting three days after Le Coeur had been evacuated of the civilian population.

It had been his duty to ensure that those who were not necessary to the war effort had left quickly, whether they wanted to or not. He had led preliminary Expeditionary Forces months before to chart out the safest route, and to eliminate any Carcassone submarines or krakens that might attack the retreating population. He had overseen the production of Class 3 Leviathans that could serve as civilian shelters if Nova Avalon were not readied, or if the convoy fell through a probability shift. And, three days ago, Alice had found him to say her farewell. Yes, he had ensured her and her husband a secure berth among the floating leviathan H.M.S. Abaresque, but he had not wanted to see her. But she had still found him at the airyards at Mt. St. Michel.

She had said, "I don't want you to think that I'm not grateful, or that I don't care about you anymore. I do. Please, I am worried about you. You've done enough. Certainly they can see that."

In return, he said, "If I don't come back, then I can stop loving you." And then he turned away from her.

That would have been a fitting end to a story, he thought. But here he was, in a deserted city, waiting for, what, his doom? An epiphany? Still breathing, feeling boredom at times, sadness mostly. And waiting for something, anything, to come over the horizon.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

When you wrote, "I miss you," I'm not sure how you wanted me to respond. After all, the next day, you would go to work, see the guy you're dating, snd all suddenly all thoughts about me would be gone.

Maybe it's in those quiet times, when he's not around and all that's left around you are your thoughts and small dust motes floating in the afternoon sun when you think about all the attention I gave you over the last year. Maybe that's when you think how comfortable we were together, on those long hikes that we would both look forward to, the day ending in scratches, exhaustion, a feeling of contentment ending with a nice, long meal. Or those daily, random e-mails, little snippets of warmth that we would look forward to, easing each other through the day. But really, when you say, "I miss you," it isn't enough.

When you talk about love, you talk about a fling that lasted, when you place the days back to back, a total of a month. You become devastated at relationships that end with the passing of a season. You talk about how you wish you can follow your thoughts instead of your emotions. You talk about the excitement of men who will treat you badly.

And when I talk about love, true love and not that on rush of giddiness and excitement of a school boy crush, but that feeling when time seems to stand still and the warm moments that are a sepia-toned instant captured in amber, I talk about months of getting to know you, of being close to you and being there for you. I talk about the years since we've known each other, and that feeling of contentment and excitement.

You can say that you can't help what you feel. And I can't blame you for that. But I can't help what I feel either. And I feel anger, and I feel betrayed. That your heart would pass me over for someone you knew for a season, while, in your own words, I became the person you shared most of your life with for this last year. I can't help being laid low, devastated, taking it personally. If you want me to accept that you can't help but feel the way you feel, you have to accept that I can never forgive you for how you made me feel.

Because, when you say, "I miss you," I know you only mean you'll miss me during those occasional quiet times when he's not around. And soon enough, when he encompasses your life, you will mean "I miss you" only in fleeting thoughts as months pass by. If it doesn't last, then in your heart of hearts, you'll want him back more that you'll miss me. And soon, I'll only be a sad, occasional thought.

And when I say, "I miss you too," I mean that you're the first thought I have in the morning, and the last thought I have before I sleep. It is this disparity that makes me sad and angry, and it is this I can never forgive you for.

Fragment

"With all the shit that's going down in my life, I can't imagine what the fuck I'll be doing when I'm 45."

"I can -- crystal meth."

I'm Gonna Tell You My Secrets

So this is what you do.

At some point, you crunch the figures in that office of yours. Perhaps the office is in the back corner, away from all the machines, where the lighting above the door flickers erratically, a small closet of a space with yellowed walls and a cheap gun metal desk. Or perhaps its a bright corner office with two floor to ceiling windows for walls overlooking the ocean, a spartan, cold, rich affair. Whatever it is, at some point, you crunch the figures, on your old calculator, on the spreadsheet over two LCD monitors, and at some point, the accounts payable outweigh the accounts receivables. It began as a trickle, a little bead of drop from a cut, but now, you've let it continue for too long, hoping maybe it would heal, scab over.

And so you feel that weight, and really, you've been around, and you know that at this point, despite the scenarios that run in your head, that voice that tells you what you really need is more modern equipement, a better qualified staff, an influx of capital, you know it's simply time to shut the business down.

And so, you begin the process. You wind up the affairs, let the staff go and face their recriminations, deal with creditors and repossessions and auctions. You bury yourself in the minutiae of winding down. And as the days and weeks past, it's that last day.

And so, as you pass through the empty space of the warehouse in some industrial zone, on the quiet office in the commercial district of prefabricated white buildings, watching the shafts of yellow light create their own illusory floor plan, you remember the first day of the venture just as it was yesterday. You let yourself feel the bitterness and the sadness that wells up, but you've felt if before. And right now, you're just too tired to do anything but walk out the door, turn off the lights.

And so, the world continues, cars pass you by, people move on, not knowing you, nor caring. There is nothing to contemplate at this point. There is no decision to be made, no lessons to be learned just yet. It is too soon.

And so, you just walk away.

A Return

It is far better to be alone than to be lonely.
It is far better to be lonely than to be vulnerable.

May Day

"I ebb and you flow
It's uh, a bit screwed
But you can't catch my love" -- "May Day", UNKLE feat. Duke Spirit

Because naming gives you power over the enemy, even if that enemy is a piece of self-indulgent shite voice in your head no different in content from that wannabe goth chick submitting bad poetry about void and pain and eternity and whatnot, that voice that has made you act on every self-destructive impulse which has cost you friends and hours and takes you away from what makes you you, I hereby allow you to vent so bring you out into the light and fucking choke you until you sleep until the next time--

Because yeah, people do suck, and they will forget all the times you stuck up for them, despite the promises to yourself that you will not get involved because you can never solve their problems, only just become one of them;

Because yeah, the good will oft interred with their bones, while the evil will be met with "Well, since I know you want to hear this upfront, I don't appreciate you entering into conversations you were never in to begin with, and why are you trying to make people like you in the first place?";

Because yeah, maybe that voice you hear in your head that, "You know, there's a reason why you're thirty-four and your still not married, I hope to God I'm not you when I'm your age," has a reasonable basis;

Because yeah, the reason why she called you is because she knew you would pick up, and not because she missed you;

Because the only logical conclusion is that you aren't the good guy you think you are, you dumb prick, and maybe forced sterilization is too good for you;

So bring it all on, I admit I'm not perfect, but bring it all on. I haven't walked over the ledge before, and I'm not scared of it. So go ahead, show yourself. Whatever you fucking say, we're all stardust in the end.

Vertical Desert

So if we're going to view the creative process as a scrapbook, gathering that patchwork of images and emotions until a coherent narrative presents itself, the last few months have unfortunately not yielded a depth of content. Instead, there are repeated images, repeated themes that fill page after page.

The first seems to be an extension of prior narratives about the loner and the desert. It begins with a ground-level tracking shot, the wheels of some old 70s car stopping. The door opens, and the black shoes that appear stamp the dust, caking the shine of the shoes and the crisp black pants with yellow. It is somewhere in Imperial County, near all the empty houses of the property boom that never appeared. I can feel the starch in the collar, the too cold of the car's AC, the spent freon on one side, and that bone-dry heat on the other. It's gone past not wanting to be here, and more into apathy. It is what it is.

Whereas the first image is bleached of color, harsh, white, the second image is night, dark, cold, damp. It begins in a spartan office at night, moonlight streaming in through the window. The city lights have gone stacatto, flickering. The figure in the office takes his cell phone out of his pocket. The phone flickers with the same pattern of the city lights. A slow smile on his face. The world goes slo mo.

So I stride out into the city. Slowly, the asphalt begins to crack underneath my feet. And the pieces start rising, floating next to me. Small explosions from buildings, and the shrapnel of windows, brick fly out and then slow around me. The white light from the street lamps keep flickering, and just deepen the shadows around me.

A group of men turn around the corner, with bats, with bricks, grin when they see me. The start running, swinging, and I grin back, dodging, twisting. I feel the impact of the back against my ribs, a sharp rabbit punch to the kidneys, but I also feel the satisfying crunch of nose cartilage against my knuckles, the wrenching of someone else's arm from its socket. And eventually, I have the bat in my hands, my tie askew, blood on my lips, but my body isn't the on the ground.

And so I continue this walkabout. And as the streetlamps go off behind me, there's someone walking towards me, grinning too through grime, bruises, dirt, her business suit and pearls askew. Her cell phone is going off in the same stacatto. And as the lights finally go out, we both lean into each other.

And then there are the repeated themes in my dreams. Crossing many bridges. Getting lost. More bridges.

I do get that urge to reconnect, and sometimes my unwillingness to just suffer through a night of clubbing and empty conversation makes me sad. So I try to reconnect with myself instead, put away any thoughts of the law, listen to some Chris Whitley, remind myself of who I am.

I try to tell myself that the river moves forward, and so should I. I think back to one night in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, and actually seeing the Milky Way, or arriving at Yosemite near midnight with the silhouette of El Capitan standing ominous and eternal over the valley. And I pull back, seeing the Earth, further out, past the Kuiper belt, past the Western Spiral Arm, further and further, past the this local supercluster, beyond. This would make most people feel insignificant, but for some reason, it calms me.

It still doesn't calm me enough to stop that feeling though. I can tell myself it's just neurochemicals, or the product of that million year old reptilian part of my brain that the 10,000 year old neo-cortex is losing to. And I still see smiles, faces, memories. And it's tough to simply let it be.

So, tomorrow I'll continue my routine of reading the paper, getting some breakfast, watching a movie. And then I'll start the day after drinking my six cups of coffee, and pound through the week, trying not to let that reptilian part of my brain get away. And sometimes I'll slip, and I'll hear her laugh at quiet times, feel sad.

It is what it is.

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

Usually, this is where the story would end. Martin Stark had left the Westside Riders without a demo made, less than a handful of gigs, and even less than a handful of songs fully written despite claiming to be a committed artist. Instead, he shuffled back to a life as a consultant in Deloitte & Touche LLP, assisting companies in their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts. And like many former so-called committed artists in Los Angeles, Martin Stark was on his path to the mundane, work-a-day life, looking forward to business casual Fridays, solid financial planning, and engaging in the occasional minor sexual harassment. His settled friends viewed this change with some sense of relief, the man-child finally putting away his childhood things. And as for his artistic friends, although the official version is that Martin Stark walked away from the Westside Riders because he wanted more stability in his life, they would have viewed his decision with resignation if it weren't for the rumored mental implosion that precipated the breakup.

Of course, this article wouldn't have been written if that's where the story ended. Unbeknownst to his former artist friends and his suited co-workers, Martin Stark with all his new disposable income started buying high end mixing software and hardware, stocking up on old punk and motown vinyls. The margins of his legal pads from work were filled with quickfire lyrics in addition to the intricacies of securitites compliance. And so, there was a disconnect when "Riders on the Storm -- The Ian Curtis Remix" started filtering from diverse clubs as The Standard, Rage and The Falcon and onto local alternative radio station 103.1. One of the DJs said he received the mp3 from his promoter, who in turn said he received it from a friend at a record label, who in turn received it from someone he knew in legal.

It was only after the third single,"Last Goodbye from Motown," from this suit who knew someone in legal who knew the talent exec who knew Stanley's hairdresser ad nausuem started getting national airplay that Martin Stark reluctantly acknowledged that he was the man who crafted "Riders on the Storm -- The Ian Curtis Remix," "Debonair Gentlemen," and "Last Goodbye from Motown."

So, two years after the breakup of that barely remembered local band Westside Riders, it turns out that Martin Stark wasn't content to toil away in Willy Loman-like purgatory. In fact, in his original compositions, he had honed his lyricism--cutting out his overwrought maudlin excesses--which in turn accentuated the emotions behind the songs. With his mashups, something that was not in his repetiore with the Westside Riders, he crafted compositions that went beyond pure kitsch and that was better than ninety percent of original singles.

Neither Martin Stark nor the other former members of the Westside Riders granted interviews for this article. (Though Martin was incredibly polite despite my admitted exhuberant insistence.) Thus, this article begins at a disadvantage--though one thing can be said--maybe his decision to return to the office wasn't such a bad idea at all.

Do It Again

I've officially rejoined the ranks of the full-timers, the lawyers, the six-figurers, of never ending pissing contests they call litigation, of being able to afford everything I want but not enough time to pursue everything I need. And the first day will be like the last day, four cups of coffee before noon, three diet cokes before I go home, a couple of drinks to bring me down. But again, that paycheck makes everything warm and fine just for a bit.

And as I go back, I go back to the heart that has stopped wandering, but stopped at a station that is closed, the trains too late or too early, with a wee bit of hope that if I stay long enough, I'll reach that destination. But for now, I'll take some solace in hearing whistles over the horizon.
And I wonder, is this a change or a return?

"Standing in the middle of nowhere,
Wondering how to begin.
Lost between tomorrow and yesterday,
Between now and then.

And now were back where we started,
Here we go round again.
Day after day I get up and I say
I better do it again.

Where are all the people going?
Round and round till we reach the end.
One day leading to another,
Get up, go out, do it again.

Then its back where you started,
Here we go round again.
Back where you started,
Come on do it again.

And you think today is going to be better,
Change the world and do it again.
Give it all up and start all over,
You say you will but you dont know when.
Then its back where you started,
Here we go round again.
Day after day I get up and I say
Come on do it again.

The days go by and you wish you were a different guy,
Different friends and a new set of clothes.
You make alterations and affect a new pose,
A new house, a new car, a new job, a new nose.
But its superficial and its only skin deep,
Because the voices in your head keep shouting in your sleep.
Get back, get back.

Back where you started,
here we go round again,
Back where you started,
come on do it again.

Back where you started,
here we go round again,
Day after day I get up and I say,
do it again.
Do it again.
Day after day I get up and I say,
come on do it again." --The Kinks, "Do It Again"

Why my writing group will hate me . . .

Yet another quote from one of my favorite writers, M. John Harrison:

"Ambiguities excite me mysteriously. I like any book or film or group of images that stacks them up then walks away. I'm overly stimulated by that, & indeed disappointed when an argument comes too far into focus. I don't want to be guided to conclusions, they're so often indifferent & boring. I want meaning lodged somewhere I can see it but not quite get at it, the way it is in a dream."

Dirtbag (Psycraft Remix)

"You've seem to mistaken me for someone who cares,I'm just a dirtbag under the weather . . ." Brad Sucks, "Dirtbag"

I'd been avoiding the fever clubs for the last couple of months, ever since the self-proclaimed contagion fashionistas dubbed H5N1 variants de rigeur. "Don't you know, darling, it's the Chinese Century, Chinois, c'est tres du monde, c'est tres chic." Fucking dilettantes, treating viruses as accessories. There's nothing sexy about the Asian Bird Flu or any of its variants, no fire, no heat, no beautiful dreams and visions. But hey, if mucus fetishism is your kink, liberte, man, liberte.

Me, I was riding some Rift Valley Fever. I had been burning and hard and righteous. I had the jones for some infection vectoring, that feel of fevered breath on fevered breath, the commingling of soft bodies on soft bodies feeding each other at 105 degrees. But no joy, no joy as all the infection kitties and pretties I knew were partying on the Bird Flu. But that's OK. James Watson unlocked the key of life by seeing the double helix in a dream, DNA as two intertwined serpents, and he had a baseline immune system with no infection. Rift Valley Fever provides such wonderful dreams with its burning.

I was content with my solitude and delirium, hearing the voices of the Seraphim while attending to the centrifuges, the electron microscopes, the bloodlines and gas chromatography. I was creating new strains by candlelight, the harsh whites of the computer screens and the dim orange flickers illuminating the lab. In the fever, even the antiseptic smell of disinfectants held a heightened meaning of promise and progress. I was going to see the face of God through the single-celled and spread his Gospel through RNA replication.

And when you do seek enlightment, the universe eventually provides.

I was examining a petri dish of agar and the white blooms of virus when Rose Choi called, all petulant and breathy. "Jack, I just had a marrow upgrade and feel all bruised and needy. C'mon Jack, come see about me."

Out came the feral grin, and I drove to L'Hopital Verte on Sunset and Vine. I was at the height of infection as I walked from the parking lot to the fever club, truly burning and righteous, an alternate Delacroix's angel with a fiery sword come back to let Adam and Lilim return to Eden.
Rose "la petite belle" Choi was standing under the green neon cross of the club's sign. She had kept her pink candy floss colored hair, those bangs in a jagged angle over green cat eyes. She was wearing a dark, schoolgirl jacket with a Union Jack at the lapel over a white t-shirt that read "Real Sluts Don't Brag" in red, a plaid mini-skirt and black knee high boots. Rose was Betty Page as remixed by a Hentai artist.

"Hey Fever Fucker," Rose said.

"Infection Slut."

"Sickie Molester."

"Contagion Whore."

Rose took her hand and held it an inch from my forehead. "My God, I can feel you from here." Then she purred, grabbed the back of head and leaned in for the kiss. I exhaled and she took it all.

When she broke off the kiss, she looked at me, saying "C'mon Jack, let's spread the disease."

Dirtbag

If you ever read single author short story anthologies, there's always a section, either the preface or at the end, containing little blurbs about anecdotes about each story--how the story came about, revisions, alternate versions, etc. Most of the time it's the author's navel gazing, but once in a while, it's kinda cool to see the thought processes behind a story. Given that I haven't been published yet, it's a bit presumptuous for me to start entertaining ideas of writing one of those little blurbs, especially for something that may not make it into a story at all. But fuck it. So the following are the bits and pieces, the sketches, the flotsam that's been percolating in my head that have formed the bit of writing you've read above (given that this blog is set in backwards chron order).

A little over two years ago, I was waking up in the middle of the night hyperventilating from task dreams (you know the dreams, where your mind decides to focus on one thought or task--if I press the green button I will sleep, if I finish this memo I will sleep--so you press the green button in your dream or you try to type of this memo and your mind goes round and round and round). I was vomiting blood. I was out of breath after walking up half a flight of steps. I literally could not relax. It turned out that I had what is medically known as malignant hypertension. For you and me, that's incredibly fucking high blood pressure--a healthy blood pressure should be 120/80, and mine turned out to be 250/180. There was a good chance that I would be dead by now if I didn't go to ICU.

But also at that time, I had a steady, well-paying (if thoroughly mundane) contract gig. I had a woman who could (and who even still now, if I think about her too much) drive me to tears, but who, as we fell asleep listening to each other's breathing slow, would tell me "Come here baby. You have no idea how much I love you."

Now, well, after all the medication, my blood pressure is artificially low, too low often. I was at 90/50 a couple of hours ago. I'm light-headed, and if I stand up too quickly, I feel weightless. Instead of being unable to relax, my body has been jarring my mind awake--it's akin to that shock-like shudder when you're trying not to doze off while driving at 3am in the morning and your head, hell, your whole body snaps to keep you conscious until you can get to that rest stop. Those shudders have been happening to me all day, every few minutes. I still can't fall asleep, but when I do, I get wonderful, terrifying hyperreal dreams in crisp details, deep colors and such lovely, horrible, emotions.

And at this time, the contract gigs are dry. I have no one in my life who can either turn me tears or brighten my life with a single word, and yet my emotional health has never been better.

My new found mental stability comes through a conscious, deliberate effort to cut drama out of my life, to at most be a spectator instead of a participant in emotional toil. Being the type of person who is incredibly receptive to his emotions, a characteristic that, if left unchecked, can lead to irrational and self-destructive behavior, this attempt to lessen drama has meant taking a hiatus from looking for relationships. I need to make sure that I can maintain this newfound stability and control before I dive back into emotional entanglements.

But of course, the mind and the body is a dynamic system that also seeks equilibrium. Cut down on one impulse, and the body is going to shove back. And so the baser needs are getting stronger and stronger. So I'm feeding kink and the deviant by listening to the darker and sexier--Massive Attack, Recoil, Twilight Singers; by rereading the weird and the sensual--novels by Richard Calder and Steve Erickson; and of course, there's always porn.
So yeah, now you have the flotsam and jetsam that is feeding into a new character, a new scenario that I have in my head. I'm not sure if it's going to lead anywhere, but it's all about the journey, isn't it?

Nietzche on the Beach

"Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there."
J. G. Ballard

Recently, life was becoming metafictional again. It was bound to happen given the pile of read and reread novels steadily growing on my bedroom floor.

During the afternoons, I had taken to drinking steadily increasing amounts of coffee. I would be light-headed and slightly delirious by three o'clock in a state that I would imagine schizophrenics would suffer in the first day off of their medication. It was in this state that I would either reread novels that I had read ten years ago, or read new ones written by authors whose work I had read in twenty years ago in high school. This literary nostalgia was an attempt to break the ennui to which I had succumbed, which hampered any attempt at creativity recently.

I had begun reading one of the only novels by J. G. Ballard I found in Borders. The first time I had read his work was in high school. At that time, I had only read either cannons of literature assigned by an English teacher who blanched as my mention that "nunnery" in Hamlet was also a slang for whorehouse or straightforward genre fiction leaning toward space operas. I had not experienced life or literature enough to be able to explain why Ballard's works hit me so. Only later in life would I be able to explain the confluence of his simple, sharp language that served an unnerving view of modern society.

Two-thirds into the current novel, the protagonist had just been beaten by a group of men he recognized from the business park in which resided. "Entombed all day in their glass palaces, they relished the chance to break the heads of a few pimps and transvestites and impose the rule of the new corporate puritanism." Shortly thereafter, he witnessed the same men commit a violent breaking and entering in another neighborhood.

There is a fissure between the protagonist, who by no means is a saint, and the behavior he witnesses as he attempts to investigate the mass murder that had been committed by the previous resident of his home. A debauchery underneath the glittering modern houses of Cannes.

This is not to say that I have been ensconsed in any neighborhood intrigues, thrill assaults, or therapeutic sociopathy. Instead, I have begun to realize that there is a fissure between who I am and the daily wants of others. As I step back and examine my own motivations, I realized that much of tension in my own life springs from forcing myself to observe the debauchery of others, or perhaps more accurately, the underlying nihilism behind it. And yet, without these actions, life simply becomes the act empty act of killing second after second.

There There (Boney King of Nowhere)

"[O]xytocin is closely related to endorphins -- opiate-like brain chemicals -- and the agitation typically felt by lovers when they are separated from ones they adore may in part be due to their desire to push up their oxytocin level. Countless psychological studies have shown that people in the throes of this hormonal storm are more than usually divorced from reality[.] They are famously blind to the other's faults and often wildly over-optomistic about the future of the relationship. Looked at coldly, romantic love is a chemically induced form of madness[.]" Rita Carter, Mapping the Mind (76).

"Just 'cuz you feel it doesn't mean it's there." Radiohead, "There There (Boney King of Nowhere)

"It's all just fookin' chemicals." Begbie, Trainspotting

At the risk of sounding really L.A., I'll start out with a question my therapist has posed to me several times: What exactly is unrequited love?

Now, having been truly in love just once, I can replace "love" with "infatuation," "crush," "lust," or any other variant of affection/attraction, and it'll still be a valid question given that rejection sucks in any form. (And from my own perspective, it seems like a lot of people conflate those above concepts with love, but let's save that for another entry.)

At first, the question seems like a tautology--unrequited love is love that isn't requited. Duh. But if the question were so easily answered, there wouldn't be all those songs and books about lovelorn, and the amount of bloggers would probably drop by 80%. Why do humans sit there and pine away after folks who have, in no uncertain terms, say, "fuck off, I'm not interested"? Why do we inflict upon ourselves and others that wailing and gnashing, the self-pity, the crappy emo songs?

In any event, after being put in the spectator's seat for a while, and after getting some distance from the "Green-Eyed Debacle," I think I've come up with an answer. What is unrequited love? It's a neurosis.

One clinical definition of neurosis is the "poor ability to adapt to one's environment, an inability to change one's life patterns." Bit on the nose, isn't it? I mean, all that effort that goes into chasing and crying and sleepness nights even after you've been told "it ain't gonna happen" sure sounds like an inability to adapt to one's environment.

After being in the spectator's seat, and my dad's clumsy attempts to set me up on blind dates, I've come to see that unless there is some reciprocity, that search for attachment is like stapling your thumb, painful and rather pointless.

I know, this might be a long-winded way of saying, "There's more fish in the sea." But obviously, those cliches aren't that effective--you have to be rational for those cliches to work, and as oxytocin makes you anything but rational, cliches aren't of much use.

But when you realize that unrequited love comes down to a chemical imbalance, and when you're not the person currently experiencing it, you can put things in perspective. Well, at least I can, for now.

Call it passion, intense, or being just plain bugfuck, but I used to wear my emotions like a badge of honor. "Look at me, I'm a deep guy with deep emotions and something to say! Oh if they could only know the depth of my feelings, if only the universe were governed by the laws of desire!" Which is all fine and good if you're trying to write a drama, but kinda sucks in terms of living one.

Even when I knew the potential neurophsyiological underpinnings, I used to excuse it by the facile analogy to an alcoholic surgeon--he knows through his medical training that the alcohol has its effects by being able to cross the blood brain barrier, knows the damage it does to his liver, his mind, and yet it still doesn't stop him from shaking as he holds the scalpel or wanting another drink. It's a compulsion. And so, I knew all about the flood of oxytocin, the decrease in serotonin when it all went sour, and still I told myself if had meaning just to get me to the next bad choice.

But that analogy, other than being forced, is still flawed--that surgeon could get help and fucking stay away from the alcohol. And as for myself, I've come to realize that unrequited emotions have gotten me fuck all. With that realization, I cut those emotions--that skip in the heartbeat, that warm feeling from small things--as simply irrelevant if they aren't returned. That urge when looking in her eyes to lean in and believe that everything will be all right shall be severed and discarded unless she leans in too. It's all fookin' chemicals.

This isn't meant to be a bummer of a realization. Seriously, it's a step forward.

Anyway, if we're gonna run with at alcoholic surgeon analogy, I gotta go into detox, get my wits about me, and cleanse the system. This isn't a white flag, just a break. No looking unless looked at. No chasing unless chased. Ain't looking for anything more than friendship for now.

"There's always a siren
Singing you to shipwreck
(Don't reach out, don't reach out
Don't reach out, don't reach out)

Steer away from these rocks
We'd be a walking disaster
(Don't reach out, don't reach out
Don't reach out, don't reach out)"
--Radiohead, "There There (Boney King of Nowhere)"

On Writing

Many writers, such as Stephen King, advise that you should have a set time for writing--writing should be treated no differently than office work, with a time to punch in and a quota of pages for the day. And though there is certainly wisdom in that for many writers, for the creation of something from nothing takes a tremendous amount of discipline which often times can only be gained through a strict daily quota, the disadvantage for me at least is that the writing I do on such a schedule feels forced. It's the literary equivalent of pushing the square peg through the round hole.

So when I came across this piece by one of my favorite writers, M. John Harrison, a very naturalistic writer who is able to turn the details of the mundane and turn them into the surreal, the transcendent, or the disturbing, I felt relieved to see that one can be a successful writer while being guided by impulse rather than routine.

How I Write by M. John Harrison

Because I have no memory I’m forced to collect the things that interest me--landscapes, scenes out of other people’s lives, bits of overheard dialogue--in a notebook. I used to pride myself on using any notebook that came to hand, especially if it had a nice puppy or some flowers on the cover. But you end up like everyone else, using the Moleskines with the little squares despite the enduring shame.

Everything goes into the computer. It spends several years inside, like a character from Nova Swing, shifting location, attempting escape, undergoing recombination, transformation, cannibalism, verdigris, duplication, interrogation, prolapse. I rake through the files most days, looking for connections. Eventually even the gnarliest and most idiolectic bits and pieces give up what they know. Light, written in 2001, begins with a barely-modified note, including verbatim quotes, scribbled down in 1994 during an academic dinner in Leicester.

The notebook stage is the last time anything of mine sees paper until publication. I like to do lots of operations. Fountain pens and refurbished 1930 Underwood portables don’t cut it; digital management is the appropriate choice. Have you ever noticed how every male novelist you meet at a literary festival wears a linen jacket and is called Tim ? Tim prefers an antique Watermans, maybe his dad owned it. It keeps him pure and returns him to the sinewy prose of the giants who came before us all.

I don’t have any writing pattern. I hate being professional. I don’t write according to a schedule or an output plan; I don’t begin at the beginning and write to the end. Or rather: if I do any of those things I usually have to bin the results. Writing should be fun--absorbing, transporting, intense, whatever. It should ambush you. It should be up there with sex, drugs and irresponsible driving. It shouldn’t have anything to do with research or require a degree in finding out about lipstick colours in 1943. I can’t do it if I’m bored or depressed or feeling unconfident. Once it’s working, I can write anywhere--I’ve done stuff while hanging off an abseil rope on a sea cliff or a highrise building--but not under any conditions. If I’m sitting at my desk I hate to be cold, I hate anyone’s noise except my own. But I like working on a train.

I write to find out why I’m writing what I’m writing. I like to write from life, as in Climbers, but I like imaginative fiction too. Imagination is nonlinear, dynamical, not subject to reduction. I could never pitch an idea to Hollywood--if you can write it as a synoptic sentence why bother to write it as anything else ? Neither am I impressed by the myth of a prose transparent to some meaning which exists independent of it. However much of a record it pretends to be, what goes into my notebooks is already a fabrication. Good thing too.

Copyright Time Out 2006

4:35 AM

A feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with this life had kept me awake. I had attempted to fall asleep, but ended up just lying in bed with my eyes closed and that restlessness in my heart. And so, unlike many of the past nights, I turned on a lamp at 4:30 in the morning, took a long shower, and decided to go out.

I drove down to Westwood and went to the only place that was open this late or this early, a mediocre chain deli that, in the emptiness of the streets, was lit like home.

Walking the block from my car to the deli, I could see my breath. The sky was still a deep black and the streets were still awash in the orange glow of streetlights, and the world was silent just for a while. This would be a good photograph, I thought to myself, a solitary figure in leather jacket, jeans, hunched in the cold, hands in pockets framed by the night and streetlights.

A tired, young waitress showed me to my table and asked if I wanted coffee. I smiled at her, both of us recognizing how tired we were, and held the look for a while. I said yes in that smokey morning voice, and within seconds, got my coffee.

There were about seven other customers in the deli. The four sitting behind me were young men who looked like they had been out clubbing, but were earnestly discussing the change of film and technology. A couple of booths further back, a lone man in his late forties with a shag of a hairstyle and a sweatshirt too young for him sat with an unassuming grin. I realized that it was the actor who played Cameron in Ferris Bueller's day off.

The man sitting in the booth next to me was in his late fifties, with a lean, haggard face full of grey stubble, wearing cheap glasses. He had a notepad that I caught a glimpse of, full of strange, hand drawn diagrams. The other customer also gave off that feeling of quiet madness, grey hair in a moptop, dingy t-shirt over sweats.

I ordered a meal that was too filling, and took me time between bites and reading a magazine that was two weeks outdated. And so I took it all in, the earnestness, the madmen, the insomniacs.

And I thought about you, though I don't know who you are. I may not have met you yet, and there you are, slumbering by yourself, or with someone else, our paths not having crossed yet. Or maybe I have met you already, neither of us realizing the full significance of the things we have said and the looks that we've shared. I thought about waking up next to you, both of us unable to sleep, our hearts restless not because there was fundamentally wrong with this life but because everything was right with it. And so we would go down to mediocre chain deli that, in the emptiness of the streets, was lit like home. We would walk down the early morning street, arm in arm, hunched over, leaning on each other, looking like the companion piece to "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" album cover. We would sit across from each other, smile, talk in our smokey morning voices.

By the time I finished my meal, the facade of the stores across the street had turned from the orange of streetlamps to the faded blue-white of the morning. I walked out, and saw my breath. This would be a good photograph, I thought to myself, the back of a solitary figure in leather jacket, jeans, hunched in the cold, hands in pockets framed by the grey morning light.

And I drove home, and now the day has fully broken. My heart is still restless, but I am calm for now. And I will sleep for a little bit, and wonder when our paths will cross.

"Driving so slow
Streets are empty as we go
Back over the canal
We've all had a long day and we're going home

We all got big tears in our sides
And the city salt doesn't help
But it sure cleans them out

In little coffee shops
And litte sidewalk cops
We're the only ones awake
We're the only ones that can't stop

Driving,so slow
Streets are empty as we go " -- Gemma Hayes, "4:35 AM"

Arc D'X

Let's call this an homage to Steve Erickson without reading too much more into this, shall we?

"If Etcher inherited both his father's brooding fatalism and kindness of heart, he resisted the lessons of life that teach one to be harder. In some ways Etcher taught himself to be softer. And in defiance of life's lessons that teach one to dim the light in oneself and fight the dark, Etcher intended to do neither. He hated the resignation that life insisted on." Steve Erickson, Arc D'X

And Jack says, what has kept me away from her is not a sense of awkwardness, but a sense of violation.

I will admit that I saw significance in the smallest of things, the direction of seagulls riding the thermals, or the confluence of a breeze and song playing distantly from a radio. I have sought significance in the smallest of things to fight against a rising nihilism. The intensity of my sight and of my gaze and of my heart, if given direction toward that nihilism, that void, would consume me. And so I set that intensity upon finding meaning where perhaps there is no meaning at all.

I have kept this silent from my friends, the import of Audrey's gaze on a random night. There is as much significance in her look as the breeze and the song, they would say, which is to say none at all. And knowing what they know of me, they would be secure in their certainty that they were right.

Had I only my own observations to rely upon, untrustworthy as they are, I would agree. But there was a precedent, another witness at another time, as binding to the heart as it was to reality.

Three years ago, during an unusually hot May Sunday, the heat arriving so quickly it struck Los Angeles into a stupor, there was a woman named Rose. Her eyes were as a warm brown as Audrey's were sea green. We had known each other for a year, became close friends. And after an afternoon at the Grove, we had retreated to my flat and its weak air conditioner.

We had lain facing each other, letting conversation slip away until there was just the hum of the refrigerator and the air conditioner, just looking at each other. As time passed and nothing more was said, the import of our mutual gaze became heavy and tangible. There was no significance to be had, no meaning to be found in any words that we had said previously. The only significance were her eyes and my eyes as reflections of everything unspoken. The night would end with tangled sheets and legs.

There would be later betrayals that would throw us apart and that would render whatever meaning we had created into nothing. Time would pass, and I would keep that nihilism at bay with the distractions of relationships that would have no meaning so that I would not spend my energy looking for one.

And then I met Audrey. She was nothing like Rose. Her eyes were sea green as Rose's were a warm brown. She was younger but at the same time was more mature. A friendship grew. I have no explanation as to why I had begun to seek meaning again, and yet I was. I had stumbled in the beginning, and it had begun to feel as if I were trying to prop a door open for the next three months.

On a cool winter's night, during a gathering of friends, I had decided to find out whether I should enter through the door or slam it shut. I had quietly broken her away from the the group, and awkwardly and sincerely expressed what I had been feeling. And had her words carried the only meaning, it would have ended there.

But yet, there is significance in silence and in the gaze, as precedent proves. After Audrey said that there was someone else in her heart, though she was disappointed that he did not show up, we stood facing each other, letting conversation slip away until there was just the din of the convesations of others, just looking at each other. As time passed and nothing more was said, the import of our mutual gaze became heavy and tangible. I had a shock of realization that Audrey's gaze was the same one as Rose's.

The night did not end in a tangle of sheets and legs. Instead, the next night, I received a message from Audrey requesting me to respect the relationship she had with someone who had made the minor betrayal of being absent last night, of attributing the night to inebriation. She had ended the message with what was meant to be a reassurance, that there was no awkwardness on her side.

I had responded by assuring her that I would respect her relationship, but through no fault of her own, I would feel awkward. To feel how I did, to know that gaze, it was impossible for me not to, although this latter remain unwritten. This was a farewell.

Afterwards, I realized that awkward was an inapt term. The mutuality of that gaze, the reflection of each other's desire, was heavy and tangible. It was not the breeze and the song. And for something so laden with import to be tossed aside, or even worse, to be truly temporary, as transient as a breeze, felt like a betrayal. The betrayal was not Audrey's, but of reality. It felt like a violation.

And now that intensity, that mutually recognized desire, exists solely in me, and ignored in Audrey, given direction toward that nihilism.

Want

"Happiness is a dark thing to pursue . . . and the pursuit itself is a dark thing as well." Arc D'X, Steve Erickson

"I want to reach my hand into the dark and feel what reaches back." "Want," Recoil

An observer looking in at 9:30 p.m. on a certain weekday night at the random Los Angeles bar would have seen a man and a woman, slightly apart from a gathering, at their own table, gazing intently at each other. The lighting is a dim yellow that will make any memories of this scene sepia-toned and amber-like.

The man and the woman have been staring at each other, not saying a word, for longer than should be comfortable for casual acquintances. As nothing is said and more time passes, there is a palpable feeling that something is changing. It's akin to that sudden drop in pressure, the wind rising just before a storm. By all accounts, the observer would have every right to believe that something is happening, a shift in the relationship between the two.

There should be an import to this scene. There should be a significance.

There should, but there isn't.

We shift perspective. The man knows this gaze. He knows this gaze because he has seen this gaze before, and it comes as a shock. He has seen this gaze because, a long time ago, a woman he loved gave him this gaze at the beginning of the relationship. That old love has gone. The same gaze is here with this woman. He had nearly given up on this woman.

If the world did not move on, perhaps there would be some significance. But the world does move on. Context and sobriety fill in the day. The next day, the woman will tell the man he is mistaken. There is no import.

There are the usual platitudes that the man will tell himself. These platitudes will not stop the insomnia. They will not stop the sense of disappointment so palpable it leaves him physically stunned.

The night will come, and then the false dawn. It will be a long passage.