Part 2

Sorry for that. Recently I’ve had a little bit too much time to think. I got fired from my job at a corporate firm for defiance.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Right now I’m on my way to meet an old friend at a bar. I decided to walk because it was nice out. One of those early October nights just before the leaves started to fall. The trees in the park were trimmed with gold and rubies. A light fog and crisp air demanded a light flannel.

My flannel was actually made of cotton. I don’t know if that still counts. The black and purple pattern would have been more appropriate for winter but I’ve always thought that my blue eyes clashed with the burnt orange of fall. I felt like one of those pretentious New York hipsters going to show off his “rugged” look in a Starbuck’s. I’d need a gray wool scarf, black coffee and MacBook in a messenger bag to complete the asinine look.

Maybe my flannel would actually have to be flannel too. Wool, at least.

I guess it’s unfair for me to criticize the hipsters. Sub out the coffee shop for a bar and the MacBook for a first draft of my new book and I don’t look so different.

I turned left onto Main Street and the sound of parties filled the air, each club with its tones and beats slightly out of rhythm with one another. The dissonance reminded me that it really was a little bit colder than my clothes allowed. Shivers filled my body and I paced a little more quickly towards the bar where I was supposed to meet my friend.

I quickly scampered up through a few maze-like alleyways to the bar named “Scrivener.” I punched the ten digit code into the keypad and yanked open the heavy bar door to egg-shell white walls and spotted pitch-black décor. The room was mostly empty. The only people listening to the Charlie Parker jazz were me and three indie-celebrity couples pretending to hide their faces. This was not the kind of place with a bouncer. If you were not welcome, disapproving looks would burn holes through your soul until you left.

 I sat down and ordered a dark and stormy. I looked turned my wrist and looked down.

11:48. I was twelve minutes early. I wanted to avoid the disrespect of being late. This is hardly a spot I’d ever get in myself and I certainly didn’t want to be the foreigner who offended some cultural norm.

Anyways, I always thought that it was important to be on time. There’s something very precious about time. I used to joke that time was the only commodity that became more valuable the wealthier someone is. My jokes aren’t very funny. When someone shows up to an interview or a lunch date late it means he doesn’t respect that time. It means he doesn’t respect me.

As far as I’m convinced, there only reason to be late is an emergency. If you live on the other side of town, plan for it. If there’s going to be traffic, plan for it. If parking is going to be hard, plan for it. Unless someone T-Bone’s your car in an intersection, you should show up on time. If someone gives me any other excuse the only thing I hear is “I don’t care.”

I ordered a dark and stormy. I like how the bubbles feel on my tongue.

11:53. I actually like being alone. Don’t get me wrong, I like spending time with friends as well. It’s just that friends have expectations. The explicit expectations might even be easier: help me out if I ask you for a favor,  go shopping, hang out with them on weekends, get drunk, chase after chicks. I could say no to these. I hated being expected to laugh at their jokes, or smile when I see them or just be a “decent” human being for hours on end. I don’t mean to sound like a terrible person. It’s not as if I don’t smile when I see my friends and it’s not as if I go around picking my nose or eat with absurd table manners. I just don’t like the expectation. My thoughts don’t expect anything from me. I don’t need to have any logic or conform to any preconceived notion as to how I should think or what I should think about. My thoughts just exist.

 Yes, I sometimes let my thoughts get away from me. I obsess over the little things. I enjoy letting my thoughts get away from me. That’s where I get the ideas for my writing. I take crazy, isolating ideas to their extreme. Sometimes I get political or religious but I usually like to overanalyze the simplest decisions simply for the hilarity of it:

Should I have a banana or a sandwich for breakfast? A banana is certainly more stereotypical breakfast food. Banana has more potassium and antioxidants and while relatively light, is certainly the most filling fruit I can have for breakfast. At the same time, I struggle to conform to traditional notions of masculinity with a banana. Firstly, the phallic shape may kill the deal right there. Secondly, all of the health benefits of a banana suggest I am trying to “keep slim” and care about my general well-being: a surprisingly feminine concept. Yet the sandwich suffers from the other side of that same coin. The sandwich is a tool of the patriarchy. “Make me a sandwich!” I might yell to my girlfriend, had I one to yell it to. Most essential to the entire conversation is that the banana is stuck in the primate age of human evolution. Bread exemplifies man’s intellectual triumph over wheat.

If I go through on day of meals like that I have a short story.

I guess that’s what gets me it trouble. Sometimes I stop conversations in the middle and just stare at the wall to think, even about these most mundane topics. If something actually interesting pops into my head I’ll pull out a moleskin notebook wherever I am and scribble away furiously. It’s hard to focus on doing one task at a time when I can think about twenty different stories at once. Reality is just too limiting.

I ordered a dark and stormy. The piercing ginger flavor still coated my mouth from my last sip.

12:04. No respect.

I check the news on my phone: “Terrorist cell beheads French couple claiming to be campers.”

I’ve got to appreciate the irony in an anti-western group beheading the French. I chuckle a little to myself.

I shouldn’t be laughing. I guess I struggle to sympathize. It’s not as if those were actually campers. Who the hell goes camping in the mountains of Nigeria? No, I think if you’re going to sign up to betray the sovereignty of a nation filled with state-sponsored militants you’re signing up to get shot. At least shot at. The beheading might have been a bit much.

I ordered a dark and stormy. The fog sets in.

12:15. I thought I might leave, until a tall, slim, figure passed through the door. My thoughts evaporate. 

All the World (Part 1)

For the first time since starting this blog I've actually gone a full year without posting on it. I think that is a mistake. I've decided I'm going to write a little story while I'm studying abroad this term. I know (or at least hope) that no one is actually reading this anymore. I'm not convinced that anyone actually knows blogger even still exists. But that's exactly the point. I've found writing to be an effective way to work out complicated thoughts stuck in my head. This is as close as you can get to a black hole on the internet and I like having a place to look back on some old thoughts.

Finally I'm a bit older and I'd like to try my hand at something a little longer. I may not be a better writer but at least I have a little bit more life to talk about. I'll be posting a story (I don't know yet if it will end up being 10 pages or 100) about 2 pages at a time every few days until it's done. I might even put in some interludes. If anyone actually ends up reading this, I'd appreciate some feedback. If not, I'm completely ok with it. =)

All the World

Chapter 1

All the world’s a stage – or a novel, a movie, a TV screen, a textbook, a vinyl record. I guess it doesn't really matter. Certainly, though, the men and women are its players. Shakespeare lies. The roles are not infancy, whining schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, old age and incapacity. These are far too limited and linear. There isn't just a “soldier.” There is the heroic soldier from Ride of the Valkyries and the cowardly soldier from the Red Badge of Courage.

Obviously I’m talking about the first half.

Indeed these limitations cloud the point. It is not that all men and women play out the story of one life but rather that we perceive lives as stories have already been played. We see each moment of our lives and the lives of others as scripts. It is our job to read the part well. We take these moments like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that don’t quite fit. We squish the pieces together because it is much easier to bend cardboard than to look through the other ten-thousand pieces of blue sky. I don’t think the differences really matter anyways. It’s just a little cloud. The pieces fit.

Narrative. Everything is Narrative.

The news is on. I watch the Presidential candidates debate.

Debate. The closest French word is debattre, from battre: to hit, to batter.

John Doe was born in Idaho. He got a public school education and worked in his father’s steel mill for two years. He went off to war and flew a beautiful, jet black, B-52 bomber in the air force until the war ended. He murdered thousands of men in only a dozen months, so he won a very shiny medal. John Doe went back to work at his father’s mill for another five years when a teenager shot his dad in the back of the head outside of a drug store. It was a stray bullet from a drug deal gone wrong. The teenager and the father aimed to buy different kinds of drugs. Maybe the teenager wasn't buying drugs. I think he dropped the gun while buying a candle for his mother’s birthday. I forget. That wasn't an important part of the story. Either way, he didn't win any shiny medals.

John took up the steel mill and ran it successfully. He paid everyone a fair wage and good hours before unions required such things. His company started to build railroads and hospitals and it grew to be one of the biggest steel mills in the country. He started twelve new factories in seven states and helped bring the country out of a recession. John never stopped living in Idaho the entire time. When John sold his father’s company he ran for mayor of the small town he was born. When he ran for Governor six years later he won in a landslide.

John is wearing a worn gray wool suit and an unassuming tie. He has a light, charming accent that makes him sound like he could be my uncle, or that old friend I haven’t spoken to since it stopped snowing. He smiles and laughs a lot. Never too much. He speaks plain English and has common sense ideas for domestic policy. John thinks that grown people deserve their freedom. Hardworking people deserve to be paid enough to live on. The hardworking people shouldn't have to pay for the people who don’t work as hard. John Doe was “honest.” That was John Doe’s Narrative.

No, that isn't his real name.

Jane Doe wore a black suit. It was tailored for her when she worked in Hong Kong as the CEO of an international investment banking firm. She hasn't lived in Hong Kong for fifteen years but her body hasn't changed a bit. She’s almost sixty now. She runs at least five miles every day. When she has interns, she makes the interns run at least five miles every day. I think Sandra Day O'Connor used to do that. O'Connor wasn't Jane Doe. I don’t think so anyways. I can’t remember.

Jane’s family was a successful family. Her father was a lawyer at a corporate firm. He would take money from rich people so that they could keep being rich. Her mother was a professor of economics at the best University in New York. She would take money from rich people so that they could keep being rich.

Jane was astonishingly smart.  She went to a prestigious college when she was only seventeen. No one but her cares which one, but she did well. She double majored in math and political science and finished a year early. She became the youngest person to work at the venture capital firm that she started out. It was the best one in the country. Fifteen years later she was a branch manager in the same firm. The company got so big that the government had to break it up into different parts to prevent a monopoly. That’s when she moved to the Hong Kong firm that dealt in investment banking.

Jane didn't join the army. I don’t think her dad was shot in the head. At least if he was I don’t think it was because of a stray bullet.

When she came back to the United States she worked for the Federal Reserve for three years. She was extremely successful but quit to run for a position in the senate. She was a senator for twelve years before she decided to run for President. Her hair is jet black like Joe’s bomber. Her haircut cost about as much as Joe’s suit. She speaks slowly and with precision that makes me feel like there’s not a thing in the world that she doesn't know. I think my feeling was right. Jane Doe was “experienced.”

That’s not her real name either.

Jane has three young children who love her. That wasn't part of her Narrative. I forget that Jane has children. I don’t think it matters.

I forget how this story ends. I think the people demonize and exclude Dr. Stockmann. No, I think Hiccup learns to ride the Night Fury. At the very least we can be confident that sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

CNN says David beat Goliath. I think that’s a little bit of a cliché. They could have done better. Like Shakespeare, they lie. I lie too. I just put a little more time and effort into making the lies pretty.

In reality, of course, David didn't beat Goliath. We wanted David to beat Goliath. Instead, Jane misspoke. She said that the Spanish-American War was the War of 1812. Jane was “experienced” and John was “honest” so Jane became Goliath and John became David. Neither of them truly resembled David or Goliath. It may have even been rude to suggest that Jane was Goliath, considering the time she put in to keep fit at her age. What about the weapons? I think Malcolm Gladwell said that David actually had a better weapon than Goliath. I don’t think that’s important.

Debate. To hit. To batter.

Why is David a better President than Goliath? Because he can throw a rock from a sling? I pull the lever for David, or John, or Sandra Day O'Connor. I forget. It doesn't really matter. I don’t think so anyways.

Narrative. Everything is Narrative.

Heart/Mind

In ancient Daoist texts they used to use a word called Xin. Literally speaking the Xin is the heart. But in these books the Xin was where the thoughts came from. The heart was where we all decided how we were going to act and do and feel.

Man were the Chinese so fucking wrong about that.

And I'm not talking about the axons, neurons, oligodendrocytes that fill this all too thick jumble of bone precariously perched on this too long neck of mine. All I'm saying is that if my heart could think, if my heart could make choices and decisions and feel the way I told it to then it might be a little less heavy.

You see my heart is more like a stomach. He hungers and wants for those sugary sweets and fatty burgers I always told him would not be good for his health. I tell him that he is not allowed to indulge in what he wants. It will only hurt him in the end. People won't accept him when they see how different he is.

But you see my heart is heavy and my heart does want for those forbidden sweets. Right now I've got him locked up behind an all too thick cage of bone precariously perched under this too long neck of mine.

He'll get out when some boy finds the key.

Looking Back

I looked back over what I've written over the last few years. It was kind of depressing to see how many of them are about me being unhappy or just dissatisfied. I like to think I'm a generally happy person nowadays. 

Maybe I only feel like writing when I'm feeling sad. If I'm feeling happy I'll go hang out with my friends and talk and party but I won't write it down. So everything in the blog looks sad but that's just because I don't write down the happy stuff. I think there's a statistics thing about that... That makes sense. I'm actually happy.

I know that sometimes the posts can get a little graphic. It sounds like I don't want to be alive or my life is going crappy but it's not. I mean there's shitty stuff that happens. And maybe I find myself crying myself to sleep more often than laughing myself to sleep. That's just how it goes. I know that I used to suffer from depression but I'm over that now. Things just suck sometimes and temporary sadness is just the normal response.

But I'm happy. I'm happy. I just have to keep telling myself that I'm happy.

Open Letter, RE: Fire

I am drowning.

I have no air. The time to breath or think or feel escapes me as I fall in and out of the rapids of my life. I slip out of the water only long enough to glaze on a smile and hiccup a laugh so that I can return to the water undisturbed. If I could just fall down long enough maybe I would worry so much about the air.

The heat is always there. It is an existential crisis waiting to erupt. Who what when where why is life? When each hour presses harder and harder on my lungs I can feel the ribs of my morals cracking. I fake tears to feel the warmth on my face; these are by far the most innocuous of my lies. These to You are only the seepage from overflowing dishonesty infecting the valley of my faintly beating heart.

I am the fuel. Lying. Waiting.

Come at me life. I've fought you down every day since before I was born. Maybe it's your turn.

My Bed

I sleep on the top bunk of a crummy single dorm bed. There are about 3 feet between my mattress and the ceiling, and about the same between the wall and the edge.
I have three pillows at the head of my bed, sheets, a comforter, and an extra comforter for the winter crammed to the side on a warm summer night.

Yet I stare through my closed eyelids at the day before we leave, the chains linking and unlinking in a haphazard net of frustration: emotional, physical, spiritual.

Never has my bed felt so empty.

Jenga

My life is like a game of Jenga

  Every brick stuck together like each tick of the clock
  inextricably linked yet so easily taken apart

  Sometimes
    I wish I could I could pull out those moments like a brick in Jenga
    take each dirty, embarrassing, humiliating mark from the tower
    as I watch the tower lean
                                    twist
                                    turn
                                    but not fall.

    I want to take out every brick in the tower
    Every brick until one more would topple the whole thing over

    I want to see the tower fall in my mind's eye
      just to know that I know
        what each brick means
        and wince and cringe and Feel
      as the tower becomes unrecognizable before my eyes
      only to laugh when the tower stands oh so precariously.

  But I let it stand because I know that it is beautiful.
  It was always beautiful.

  Other times
    I wish I would pull one more.

I never was good at Jenga.