Never was a sports fan. When all the kids went around my elementary school with their Dallas Cowboys t-shirts or their Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirts, I wanted to be like them, to fit in. Problem was, I wasn’t particularly good at it. I wasn’t interested in the games themselves. So, good geekboy that I was, I went with what mattered to me – how cool I thought their mascots were.
I remember liking the Dolphins and the Cowboys (was there a team called the Bengals? I recall liking them, too, since they were tigers, and from Ohio). I wore a Dolphins sweatshirt and people would ask me about Dan Marino and I’d pretend to know what the heck they were talking about. I remember feeling confused and trying really hard to be like the other kids and just not knowing how to do it. How do you pick a favorite team? What were the criteria? I knew that just liking the mascot was totally beside the point, in my heart I knew this, but I couldn’t figure out how it worked.
Being a rather strange child I thought about it fairly deeply (as deeply as a six-year old can think, which is sometimes pretty deep). My thought processes gradually evolved over many years and eventually went like this:
If you are cheering for a sports team, then you must like something about them. but what? It’s not like you’re playing the game with them. You don’t get fired if they lose and you don’t make any money if they win (this was before I became aware that people bet on sports teams, which seems incredibly stupid to me. Joe Montana has a bad day and you lose two hundred dollars. Brilliant. Gambling isn’t a sin because it’s immoral – God just hates stupid people).
Is it because you like the way they play, or you think they’re better athletes? My dad always talked about hating Knicks because he thought they played dirty ball and whined when their opponents played rough back. I thought that was a good reason to dislike a team, and that made a certain amount of sense, but there are plenty of people who liked them for the same reason. And as far as skill goes, there are many athletes of equal or, on some days superior skill on other teams, and even the most skilled team loses some days.
It sort of makes sense if the team you cheer for “the home team” but there are plenty of people who are from, say, Cincinnati, who don’t like the Bengals. Why not? Growing up first in Columbus, Ohio and then in Arizona, neither of which had a professional sports team, I myself was bereft of regional loyalties.
I finally came to the conclusion (and though the arguments are a little more fleshed out above, they existed, in nascent form, in the mind of the six-year old I was) that the choice was entirely arbitrary. I didn’t think of it in those terms, I just remember a feeling of loss. I understood something which confused and hurt me, but which I knew to be true. There was no real reason to like a sports team. You could like any team, for any reason, and it would be the right team, for the right reason. You could have arguments in the schoolyard (and, as we all know, kids did, with all the sophistication of a senate debate: “Cowboys rule!” “Steelers kick ass!” “Dolphins suck!”) until the last bell rang, and you would still never convince anyone of anything, and never prove it to anyone that Staubach or whoever the fuck was a better quarterback. This made me crazy, because now my arguments with my schoolmates lacked all conviction. How could I argue, when I knew that there was no way to argue someone out of an opinion that had no rational criteria?
This started to cause me problems in other ways, too. How do you make a decision about, say, ice cream flavors. What flavor of ice cream do you want? I don’t know – they’re all good. Which do I like more? How should I know? I haven’t tried them all, and anyway, what criteria would I use to say, “Yes, I like Huckleberry Crunch more than Rocky Road”? The question “What’s your favorite kind of ice cream?” could send me into absolute paroxysms of self-doubt and confusion. And then the kids who would try to argue the relative merits of one type of ice cream or another – oy! I had nothing to say. Oh sure, I’d argue, but all the other kids knew my heart wasn’t in it.
Then they’d ask me what I want to be when I grew up. When I was younger, it was easy. Space was cool, drums were cool. I wanted to be an astronaut, or a drummer. Eventually, though, I realized that any choice I made was, once again, entirely arbitrary. You could do anything! So how could you know what you wanted, what you were good at, unless you did it? And you clearly couldn’t do everything, or even most things. And what if you did it and it turned out you didn’t like it? I knew most people didn’t really like their jobs. So I’d pick things. A musician, a rock star (two different things, donchaknow), a marine biologist, a minister (I’ll tell you that story some other time), a writer (that one seems to have stuck, for some reason), a comedian. But my choices, again, lacked conviction, because I knew there was no reason to want any one particular thing, except that I wanted it, and that just didn’t seem like a good enough reason.
Maybe, my religious upbringing suggested, God had a plan for us, and each of us was specifically made to do one particular thing. This was comforting, and made a certain amount of sense. But after reading “Being and Nothingness” at the tender young age of 13 and realizing that even the concept of God was arbitrary, I realized I was well and truly fucked. The fact that a billion people in China didn’t believe in Jesus at all broke my brain.
Looking back, I think my failure to achieve any success or reach anything of real lasting value stems primarily from this. I knew that you could believe anything you wanted, do anything you wanted, eat anything you wanted, even die, if you cared to. So why do anything?
I’m still not sure I know. But I do know this.
Last night, a little after midnight, my toilet clogged and overflowed, sending shitty water all over my bathroom, soaking the rugs. I wanted to go to sleep, but I had to fix the toilet, or deal with the stench and filth in the morning. So I stayed up an hour or so, bailing out the shitty water, unclogging the toilet, mopping up the shitty water soaked floor, wiping down surfaces, hanging up rugs to dry. And I realized something.
Sometimes it’s not arbitrary. Sometimes you really have very little choice. Certain choices become unacceptable, and you know exactly what you have to do. Even if you don’t want to, sometimes you gotta clean up shit.
I pulled on rubber gloves, and behold, I was comforted.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
Rocking the Suburbs (just like William Carlos did)
Read in Rutherford, NJ last night at a series honoring William Carlos Williams. My friend Ray, who was also reading, and I grabbed a bus at the Port Authority and amused each other talking about movies, the sets we were reading, and the Rate my Poo website (which I have yet to check out. Ray tells me it’s truly something to behold, but I guess I’ll have to take his word for it for the time being).
The bus dropped us off at train station, and we walked the main shopping district up to the library, past a mix of small, funky little shops and the usual suburban whatnot. One store was actually a restaurant called Café Eros that billed itself as “funky, underground Greek dining” which I told Ray was actually code for cunnilingus with a Greek woman. We thought it was pretty funny, but in retrospect, probably not. Given that the suburbs are sort of my "hood" (since all suburbs are really the same), I felt right at home.
We walked past an enormous blue house which I later found out was WCW’s house, past an even larger stone Presbyterian Church that sat on a hill above the road and dominated the landscape, crossed the street and went down some stairs to the library meeting room where we were greeted by our friend John Trause.
The reading was small, and sparsely attended, but what people there were there seemed very attentive and glad to be there. An older, stooped gentleman started things off by reading a few golden oldies from the WCW catalog, and then John introduced Ray and me.
He spoke very highly of us, and I found myself almost blushing. It’s nice to be well regarded by people you yourself hold in high esteem. Sort of a mutual admiration society, but still, it’s cool. You get to say all those things that most people find themselves on their deathbeds wishing they’d said – really, how many people are going to wish when they die, “God, I really wish I hadn’t told all those people how much I liked what they do.”
Anyway, I get up, do my poems (including a brand spanking new piece I wrote specifically in honor of the period of WCW’s work I’m most familiar with, his Imagist work. It’s about a coffee mug. The idea was we’d both write a piece, no more than 10 lines, no more than 5 words per line, about something we saw everyday – I picked a coffee mug. Ray picked the pussin’-out-didn’t-write-it, which is OK, too). It was fun, the audience was tuned in, and by the end I really felt like I had them. My funnier, lighter stuff seems to go over better, and in some ways, it’s more fun for me to read. It’s more emotionally moving to me, too, which is sort of a switch. I always thought, maybe just because I’m immature, that pain is more interesting. Truthfully though, pain is boring, especially in poetry. How many more times do I have to hear a fucking poem about (pick one): a. rape, b. love lost, c. murder, d. child abuse, e. drug abuse, f. parent/friend/loved one/cat dying, before I die? More to the point, how many more times do I have to write those poems? I’m sick of it. The poems that have moved me the most over the past year have been triumphs and battle cries, prayers and hymns. Tears streamed down my face in Albuquerque at the National Poetry Slam, when the Washington, DC team did their poem about trees and plants - it was so beautiful that I cried. To all the poets of the world, stop trying to make me cry by showing me your bleeding hands, and show me something beautiful. We’ll cry together.
(/rant OFF) So I did, as my closing poems, Vanilla and the Nokia poem. Crowd pleasers both, and I was close to tears myself a few places in them. I just missed my lady, whom I don’t really see enough, even though I’ve seen her relatively often of late. Our schedules and our lives hardly ever match up, and I’ve been staying up too late reading/watching TV/answering email/surfing the web. I was heckled by a drunk guy, which is a first for me in the poetry world, and I finished up, plugged PARSE, and got the hell off the stage.
Ray did his set, a nicely structured bit of work in which he alternated thematically similar poems from WCW with his own work. The nearest I can get to describing what makes Williams so great is strength and clarity. There is something crystalline about his work that also bespeaks of great tensile strength. His words do not wilt beneath the weight of his vision. Sometimes, you can hear, even in the greatest poets, the vision overreaching the grasp of the writer, and the words sound inadequate and lost amidst the crushing space of what the author wanted to say. WCW never sounds that way. He always seems to be describing exactly what he sees in a way that conveys exactly what he wants us to see (and feel, and understand) about it. The strength and clarity of his work accented wonderful similar qualities in Ray’s work, and since Ray is such a great reader, himself, it was even more of a pleasure. Great work read by a great reader.
There was an open mic, with a few people reading their work. The poems were of, shall we say, varying quality, with John reading off a few great ones, and my drunken heckler getting up to do his thing. There was an amazing moment when he stood behind the podium, and it was as if he suddenly realized he was drunker than shit, and he was ashamed. It was an amazing moment, I never thought I’d say that shame could be beautiful, but it was beautiful seeing a man awaken from a dream, even for only a moment. Beautiful and painful. He read his own work, and a couple of Poe poems (which makes me smile – I wanted to say “Poe’s a New Yorker, my man! Come back with some more NJ poets, and we can talk.”) which he read with such passion and abandon that I was momentarily stunned. His own work wasn’t great but the way he read Poe was really something: tears and fury, rising cadence and
After the reading we wandered back to John’s car, got a ride back to Penn Station, NY. I loved walking through Rutherford, since I am truly a child of the suburbs, and I had a great time just being out of the city, doing a reading with such a great audience, and hanging with friends. Plus, I got to see WCW’s house, which, given that he was one of the first poets I ever “discovered” and read voraciously, put the capper on a great night.
The bus dropped us off at train station, and we walked the main shopping district up to the library, past a mix of small, funky little shops and the usual suburban whatnot. One store was actually a restaurant called Café Eros that billed itself as “funky, underground Greek dining” which I told Ray was actually code for cunnilingus with a Greek woman. We thought it was pretty funny, but in retrospect, probably not. Given that the suburbs are sort of my "hood" (since all suburbs are really the same), I felt right at home.
We walked past an enormous blue house which I later found out was WCW’s house, past an even larger stone Presbyterian Church that sat on a hill above the road and dominated the landscape, crossed the street and went down some stairs to the library meeting room where we were greeted by our friend John Trause.
The reading was small, and sparsely attended, but what people there were there seemed very attentive and glad to be there. An older, stooped gentleman started things off by reading a few golden oldies from the WCW catalog, and then John introduced Ray and me.
He spoke very highly of us, and I found myself almost blushing. It’s nice to be well regarded by people you yourself hold in high esteem. Sort of a mutual admiration society, but still, it’s cool. You get to say all those things that most people find themselves on their deathbeds wishing they’d said – really, how many people are going to wish when they die, “God, I really wish I hadn’t told all those people how much I liked what they do.”
Anyway, I get up, do my poems (including a brand spanking new piece I wrote specifically in honor of the period of WCW’s work I’m most familiar with, his Imagist work. It’s about a coffee mug. The idea was we’d both write a piece, no more than 10 lines, no more than 5 words per line, about something we saw everyday – I picked a coffee mug. Ray picked the pussin’-out-didn’t-write-it, which is OK, too). It was fun, the audience was tuned in, and by the end I really felt like I had them. My funnier, lighter stuff seems to go over better, and in some ways, it’s more fun for me to read. It’s more emotionally moving to me, too, which is sort of a switch. I always thought, maybe just because I’m immature, that pain is more interesting. Truthfully though, pain is boring, especially in poetry. How many more times do I have to hear a fucking poem about (pick one): a. rape, b. love lost, c. murder, d. child abuse, e. drug abuse, f. parent/friend/loved one/cat dying, before I die? More to the point, how many more times do I have to write those poems? I’m sick of it. The poems that have moved me the most over the past year have been triumphs and battle cries, prayers and hymns. Tears streamed down my face in Albuquerque at the National Poetry Slam, when the Washington, DC team did their poem about trees and plants - it was so beautiful that I cried. To all the poets of the world, stop trying to make me cry by showing me your bleeding hands, and show me something beautiful. We’ll cry together.
(/rant OFF) So I did, as my closing poems, Vanilla and the Nokia poem. Crowd pleasers both, and I was close to tears myself a few places in them. I just missed my lady, whom I don’t really see enough, even though I’ve seen her relatively often of late. Our schedules and our lives hardly ever match up, and I’ve been staying up too late reading/watching TV/answering email/surfing the web. I was heckled by a drunk guy, which is a first for me in the poetry world, and I finished up, plugged PARSE, and got the hell off the stage.
Ray did his set, a nicely structured bit of work in which he alternated thematically similar poems from WCW with his own work. The nearest I can get to describing what makes Williams so great is strength and clarity. There is something crystalline about his work that also bespeaks of great tensile strength. His words do not wilt beneath the weight of his vision. Sometimes, you can hear, even in the greatest poets, the vision overreaching the grasp of the writer, and the words sound inadequate and lost amidst the crushing space of what the author wanted to say. WCW never sounds that way. He always seems to be describing exactly what he sees in a way that conveys exactly what he wants us to see (and feel, and understand) about it. The strength and clarity of his work accented wonderful similar qualities in Ray’s work, and since Ray is such a great reader, himself, it was even more of a pleasure. Great work read by a great reader.
There was an open mic, with a few people reading their work. The poems were of, shall we say, varying quality, with John reading off a few great ones, and my drunken heckler getting up to do his thing. There was an amazing moment when he stood behind the podium, and it was as if he suddenly realized he was drunker than shit, and he was ashamed. It was an amazing moment, I never thought I’d say that shame could be beautiful, but it was beautiful seeing a man awaken from a dream, even for only a moment. Beautiful and painful. He read his own work, and a couple of Poe poems (which makes me smile – I wanted to say “Poe’s a New Yorker, my man! Come back with some more NJ poets, and we can talk.”) which he read with such passion and abandon that I was momentarily stunned. His own work wasn’t great but the way he read Poe was really something: tears and fury, rising cadence and
After the reading we wandered back to John’s car, got a ride back to Penn Station, NY. I loved walking through Rutherford, since I am truly a child of the suburbs, and I had a great time just being out of the city, doing a reading with such a great audience, and hanging with friends. Plus, I got to see WCW’s house, which, given that he was one of the first poets I ever “discovered” and read voraciously, put the capper on a great night.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
Stephen King and the Devil
I’m re-reading Stephen King’s On Writing and my suspicions are once again confirmed that King signed a contract, not with Simon & Schuster, but Satan. Now this is a book about writing. A good chunk of it is a style manual. Boring, right?
Wrong. It’s a barn-burner, a page turner. The ideas in it eat away at my brain, and I find myself thinking of them at odd moments during the day, excited for the next time I get to read it. No way does anybody have this sort of effect on folks (and I know I’m not the only one) without some sort of deal with His Infernal Majesty.
Here’s the negotiations on the contract as I imagine them.
“Mr. King, we’re prepared to offer you our standard contract on a lifetime basis. Now, there will be no need to renew or review any of the terms once you’ve signed, as this is a non-revocable contract, not subject to cancellation by either party at any time. As I’m sure you’re aware, the head of our Company is sometimes unfairly characterized as a, well, as a bit of a cheat. Regardless, you’ll be happy to see all the terms laid out here in black and white.”
The board room is tastefully appointed with dark wood paneling and indirect, subdued lighting that glints off discreet brass accents. The giant wood table dominating the center of the room seems to suck the light deep inside it, where it dimly gleams beneath the almost black, glassy surface. The lawyer from “The Company,” wears a simple dark suit. His skin is tan, almost leathery.
“Um, this is great. Just great. But, for the record, what will I get again?”
“Mr. King, let me assure you, no one is more concerned for the success of our clients than The Company. Your success, is, you might say, our success. The greater the rewards in the form of earthly joys and privileges, pleasures of the flesh, as it were, the greater the dividends paid to the head of our Company on fulfillment of the contract.”
“Yeah. Could you just lay it out straight for me there, fella?”
The lawyer laughs a dry, papery laugh. “Mr. King. You are quite the direct one, aren’t you? As we have discussed, upon execution of this contract your writings will become as popular as any author in history.”
“Can you really do that? What, are you gonna round people up and make them buy my books?”
“Oh, Mr. King, there will be nothing coercive about the means which the company uses. There never is.” He paused for a moment, as if amused at some private joke, then continued. “The company prides itself on the fact that all relationships with clients and end-users are completely consensual. In fact,” he says, his voice deepening to almost, but not quite, a growl, “we can’t do business any other way.”
“So how’s it work? Step by step.”
“Well, yes, then. An end-user will voluntarily purchase one of your books, based perhaps on a review or an advertising campaign coordinated by any one of our many operatives in publishing. Once they have opened the book and freely accepted participation in the reading process, we will have an opportunity to be slightly more, shall we say, persuasive. They will not stop reading until they have finished every page.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Well, that is proprietary information, but I can describe the effects of the process for you in a little more detail. At first, the book will be nothing more than a pleasant distraction, something to while away a few hours. With our help, however, that will quickly change. The ideas, the tone, the situations and characters, will begin to echo in the reader’s mind. They will think about reading your book when they are working, or showering. They will read your book deep into the night, dismissing sleep and sex and all but the most rudimentary contact with the outside world.
“Now, this is the most exciting part: once they have finished, we implant a residual energy signature that sets up an emotional resonance whenever they see your name on the cover of a book. It’s a very basic Pavlovian response mechanism, but extremely effective. This creates a ready-made market for additional books, and assures a long life for books already in print.”
Stephen pauses for a moment, staring at his hands. His voice is thick when he speaks again.
“And what do I have to do?”
Again the dusty laugh, like insects scurrying across dry, rotted wood. “Oh, Mr. King! Don’t worry! You have nothing to fear from us. At the appropriate time, we will merely continue the process you yourself have already begun.” Stephen starts a little at this, wipes his nose furtively. “No, by the time the contract comes into force, you will hardly notice any transition at all. Perhaps by that time you will have become so adept with your skills, since, after all, we will merely be amplifying what talents you already have, that you will be able to join our organization in a more…” he pauses, considering his words carefully, “…permanent capacity.”
An idea occurs to Stephen. He waves his hand as if brushing away flies. “Now wait,” he says. “Wait. Now, wait a minute. If you’re just ‘amplifying’ things that I can already do, what do I need you for?”
The lawyer frowns. “Mr. King. We are the foremost representatives of those who wish to be independent and successful. We choose only the most driven, the most talented people to be our clients. If we did not see the potential latent within you, we would never have approached you. You have a formidable gift, Mr. King, there is no question, but natural gifts will only take you so far. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of writers, all of them talented, some of them perhaps even more so than you, who will never reach their full potential. Do you wish to be one of them? Do you wish upon your wife and lovely children a life like the one you had? The poverty, the crushed dreams and deferred ambitions that weigh upon the mind and body like chains? Is this what you want?” The lawyer’s voice seems to acquire a weight that it did not have before. The room grows even more quiet, everything listening to this small, leathery man’s low, urgent words.
He leans in close to Stephen. He is almost whispering, now. “And let me also say, Mr. King, that it would not be wise at this juncture in the proceedings to walk away from the table. No, Mr. King, not wise at all. Our clients include many people in your industry. Many powerful people. It would not do, Mr. King, to acquire a reputation so early in your career of being a difficult person. I do not think that would be wise at all.”
The lawyer leans back, and there is air in the room again. He brushes an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve and smiles brightly. “So Mr. King,” he says, “are there any other questions I might be able to answer while we’re here? I’d like to make sure you’re completely comfortable before we finish our negotiations. I think, if you’ve had your lawyer look over the contract, that he will find it to be,” the smile widens, “completely fair.”
Stephen sits without speaking. The lawyer continues, “I must say, Mr. King, you’re quite the negotiator. Very sharp. I can see why The Company pursued you with such interest. You’ve asked wonderful questions, and really, you’re getting one of the best deals I’ve ever seen.” The lawyer lays a pen on the table parallel with the edge of the contract. “Now, if we’re quite done here, I think we’ll just need your signature to begin our work together.”
Stephen picks up the pen, and it feels incredibly heavy in his hand. The barrel looks like it’s made of the same material as the table, as if it absorbed and held light deep within itself. He stares at it blankly for a few moments, fascinated.
“Mr. King?”
Stephen shakes his head. “Yeah, fair.” he says. He fumbles the cap off the pen, and signs his name at the bottom of the document.
“And sign here, just another copy. Initial here, here, and here. And just one more signature here, your standard indemnity clause. And we’re done!” The lawyer sweeps the pages from the table with one hand and taps them into a tidy stack. Stephen stares at the space where the contract was on the table. Now there is only his reflection staring back at him. The face looks unfamiliar, floating somewhere deep inside the darkness, down there with the light.
The lawyer quickly puts the contract into his briefcase, and snaps it closed. “Alright then, Mr. King? There will be no further need to contact me in the future, but you have my card, nonetheless. It has been a pleasure meeting with you, and I wish you success in all your future endeavors. I’m sure you will be successful. Very sure indeed, Mr. King.”
Stephen continues to stare at his reflection, pale and white far below. Finally, hearing the words, he shakes his head. “Um, yeah. OK.” The lawyer stands, and Stephen stands as well. He still clutches the lawyer’s pen in his hand. He looks at it like he’s holding a snake he is afraid will bite him if he lets go, says, “You want your pen?”
The lawyer shakes Stephen’s hand, smiling a smile somehow wider than the confines of his face, and full of teeth. “Please keep it, Mr. King. With my compliments.”
Wrong. It’s a barn-burner, a page turner. The ideas in it eat away at my brain, and I find myself thinking of them at odd moments during the day, excited for the next time I get to read it. No way does anybody have this sort of effect on folks (and I know I’m not the only one) without some sort of deal with His Infernal Majesty.
Here’s the negotiations on the contract as I imagine them.
“Mr. King, we’re prepared to offer you our standard contract on a lifetime basis. Now, there will be no need to renew or review any of the terms once you’ve signed, as this is a non-revocable contract, not subject to cancellation by either party at any time. As I’m sure you’re aware, the head of our Company is sometimes unfairly characterized as a, well, as a bit of a cheat. Regardless, you’ll be happy to see all the terms laid out here in black and white.”
The board room is tastefully appointed with dark wood paneling and indirect, subdued lighting that glints off discreet brass accents. The giant wood table dominating the center of the room seems to suck the light deep inside it, where it dimly gleams beneath the almost black, glassy surface. The lawyer from “The Company,” wears a simple dark suit. His skin is tan, almost leathery.
“Um, this is great. Just great. But, for the record, what will I get again?”
“Mr. King, let me assure you, no one is more concerned for the success of our clients than The Company. Your success, is, you might say, our success. The greater the rewards in the form of earthly joys and privileges, pleasures of the flesh, as it were, the greater the dividends paid to the head of our Company on fulfillment of the contract.”
“Yeah. Could you just lay it out straight for me there, fella?”
The lawyer laughs a dry, papery laugh. “Mr. King. You are quite the direct one, aren’t you? As we have discussed, upon execution of this contract your writings will become as popular as any author in history.”
“Can you really do that? What, are you gonna round people up and make them buy my books?”
“Oh, Mr. King, there will be nothing coercive about the means which the company uses. There never is.” He paused for a moment, as if amused at some private joke, then continued. “The company prides itself on the fact that all relationships with clients and end-users are completely consensual. In fact,” he says, his voice deepening to almost, but not quite, a growl, “we can’t do business any other way.”
“So how’s it work? Step by step.”
“Well, yes, then. An end-user will voluntarily purchase one of your books, based perhaps on a review or an advertising campaign coordinated by any one of our many operatives in publishing. Once they have opened the book and freely accepted participation in the reading process, we will have an opportunity to be slightly more, shall we say, persuasive. They will not stop reading until they have finished every page.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Well, that is proprietary information, but I can describe the effects of the process for you in a little more detail. At first, the book will be nothing more than a pleasant distraction, something to while away a few hours. With our help, however, that will quickly change. The ideas, the tone, the situations and characters, will begin to echo in the reader’s mind. They will think about reading your book when they are working, or showering. They will read your book deep into the night, dismissing sleep and sex and all but the most rudimentary contact with the outside world.
“Now, this is the most exciting part: once they have finished, we implant a residual energy signature that sets up an emotional resonance whenever they see your name on the cover of a book. It’s a very basic Pavlovian response mechanism, but extremely effective. This creates a ready-made market for additional books, and assures a long life for books already in print.”
Stephen pauses for a moment, staring at his hands. His voice is thick when he speaks again.
“And what do I have to do?”
Again the dusty laugh, like insects scurrying across dry, rotted wood. “Oh, Mr. King! Don’t worry! You have nothing to fear from us. At the appropriate time, we will merely continue the process you yourself have already begun.” Stephen starts a little at this, wipes his nose furtively. “No, by the time the contract comes into force, you will hardly notice any transition at all. Perhaps by that time you will have become so adept with your skills, since, after all, we will merely be amplifying what talents you already have, that you will be able to join our organization in a more…” he pauses, considering his words carefully, “…permanent capacity.”
An idea occurs to Stephen. He waves his hand as if brushing away flies. “Now wait,” he says. “Wait. Now, wait a minute. If you’re just ‘amplifying’ things that I can already do, what do I need you for?”
The lawyer frowns. “Mr. King. We are the foremost representatives of those who wish to be independent and successful. We choose only the most driven, the most talented people to be our clients. If we did not see the potential latent within you, we would never have approached you. You have a formidable gift, Mr. King, there is no question, but natural gifts will only take you so far. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of writers, all of them talented, some of them perhaps even more so than you, who will never reach their full potential. Do you wish to be one of them? Do you wish upon your wife and lovely children a life like the one you had? The poverty, the crushed dreams and deferred ambitions that weigh upon the mind and body like chains? Is this what you want?” The lawyer’s voice seems to acquire a weight that it did not have before. The room grows even more quiet, everything listening to this small, leathery man’s low, urgent words.
He leans in close to Stephen. He is almost whispering, now. “And let me also say, Mr. King, that it would not be wise at this juncture in the proceedings to walk away from the table. No, Mr. King, not wise at all. Our clients include many people in your industry. Many powerful people. It would not do, Mr. King, to acquire a reputation so early in your career of being a difficult person. I do not think that would be wise at all.”
The lawyer leans back, and there is air in the room again. He brushes an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve and smiles brightly. “So Mr. King,” he says, “are there any other questions I might be able to answer while we’re here? I’d like to make sure you’re completely comfortable before we finish our negotiations. I think, if you’ve had your lawyer look over the contract, that he will find it to be,” the smile widens, “completely fair.”
Stephen sits without speaking. The lawyer continues, “I must say, Mr. King, you’re quite the negotiator. Very sharp. I can see why The Company pursued you with such interest. You’ve asked wonderful questions, and really, you’re getting one of the best deals I’ve ever seen.” The lawyer lays a pen on the table parallel with the edge of the contract. “Now, if we’re quite done here, I think we’ll just need your signature to begin our work together.”
Stephen picks up the pen, and it feels incredibly heavy in his hand. The barrel looks like it’s made of the same material as the table, as if it absorbed and held light deep within itself. He stares at it blankly for a few moments, fascinated.
“Mr. King?”
Stephen shakes his head. “Yeah, fair.” he says. He fumbles the cap off the pen, and signs his name at the bottom of the document.
“And sign here, just another copy. Initial here, here, and here. And just one more signature here, your standard indemnity clause. And we’re done!” The lawyer sweeps the pages from the table with one hand and taps them into a tidy stack. Stephen stares at the space where the contract was on the table. Now there is only his reflection staring back at him. The face looks unfamiliar, floating somewhere deep inside the darkness, down there with the light.
The lawyer quickly puts the contract into his briefcase, and snaps it closed. “Alright then, Mr. King? There will be no further need to contact me in the future, but you have my card, nonetheless. It has been a pleasure meeting with you, and I wish you success in all your future endeavors. I’m sure you will be successful. Very sure indeed, Mr. King.”
Stephen continues to stare at his reflection, pale and white far below. Finally, hearing the words, he shakes his head. “Um, yeah. OK.” The lawyer stands, and Stephen stands as well. He still clutches the lawyer’s pen in his hand. He looks at it like he’s holding a snake he is afraid will bite him if he lets go, says, “You want your pen?”
The lawyer shakes Stephen’s hand, smiling a smile somehow wider than the confines of his face, and full of teeth. “Please keep it, Mr. King. With my compliments.”
Friday, January 27, 2006
How to get out of Hell
My good friend Ray gave me a copy of the new Sinead O’Connor album ”Throw Down Your Arms”, and let me tell you folks, it is a masterpiece. She worked with two of the best reggae producers of all time, Sly and Robby, and she makes some beautiful music with them. Reggae music is not an easy sell for most people. Somebody looking like me (white, longish hair, bearded, slightly spacey look in my eyes most of the time) comes up to you, says “Hey man, you gotta check out this new reggae album!” you give them a wide berth. They’re either a wigger, a college student, a stoner, a frat guy, or any combination of those. I can cop to being any one of those at some point in my life, but I do not lie, this is an amazing album. I’ve been a fan of Sinead since Lion and the Cobra, ever since I saw this beautiful bald chick singing about Troy (I think I’ve had a thing for chicks with really short hair since the first Star Trek movie. Long long hair, or really short – either way works for me). Gospel Oak was a really important album to me for a certain period of my life, and I have a feeling this album came along at the right time for another changing time.
Now, reggae’s like the blues, but with more God, less Devil. Plus, any God that’s down with the Rastafarian sacraments is A-OK with me. Like the blues, reggae music is good for when you feel bad – and I’ve been feeling pretty bad, lately. Lots of pressure and stress at work, trying to keep ahead of too many projects in my real life. I don’t know where exactly I’m going with a lot of these projects (and by extension, my life), and the time for decision and consolidation is rapidly approaching. Something’s got to be done. The work thing, in particular, is giving me pain like you wouldn’t believe. So, when I’m feeling victimized (and, no question, a person is a victim only to the extent that they believe themselves to be one) I sometimes entertain revenge fantasies. You know the ones: telling the boss exactly where to stick it, and how deep, screwing the company at exactly the right moment when they depend on you most. Yeah, those fantasies. Not that we’d ever act on them, because we’re far too well trained for that. We’ve got student loans, and spouses in grad school, and health insurance that keeps us in antibiotics when we’re sick. But we still get that slight sickness in our throats, that taste of bile that has just a tinge of blood to it when the boss tells us we need to pick up the slack, and we think these thoughts.
So I’m listening to this new wonderful reggae album, and a song I’ve never heard comes on. The little black-on-grey LCD letters on the Ipod screen tell me it is called “Downpressor Man.” And the lyrics go like this:
Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to
On that day?
If you run to the sea
The sea will be boiling
(x 3)
On that day
If you run to the rocks
The rocks will be melting
(x 3)
On that day
If you make your bed in hell
I will be there.
(x 3)
On that day.
Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
(x 3)
On that day?
Simple. The revenge/justification fantasy of the downtrodden and poorly treated everywhere. “Well, you may be on top now, but one of these days, there’ll be a judgment, there’ll be a reckoning, and you will get what you require.” And like I’m so oppressed, right? Still, everybody thinks, at least once (some people, more like once a day) “Man, I can’t wait till you get yours.”
But then came that line: If you make your bed in hell, I will be there. I heard something quite extraordinary, and I don’t know if it was the writer’s intention or not, but there it was. One of the central tenets of Rastafarianism is “I and I”, that is very similar to “Tat Tvam Asi” or “thou art that." It is the ultimate identification of self and God that comes in the awakened spirit and mind. One understands, at one’s root, that one is not ultimately different from God, and that God lives in one, as one lives in God. Now, this idea has ramifications.
Think about it this way: When you condemn one person, you condemn the God that is in them, and, by extension, the God in you. And since God is in you and you are in God, ipso facto – you are in Hell.
Similarly, if one condemns oneself to Hell, through guilt or a gross misunderstanding of the truth behind all religions, one puts the entire world in Hell.
Thinking this, I suddenly saw the verse that ran, “If you make your bed in Hell, I will be there” not as a promise, i.e. wherever you try to hide, I’ll find you and make you pay, but as a plea. “If you go down to hell, I have to go with you. If you act against what you know to be right, you condemn yourself, and by doing so, you kill us all.” This made the song incredibly sad for me, but also wise.
We almost all of us labor under our guilt, straining at the weight of it. Heavy, brown, turdlike guilt, awkward in its bulk and threatening at any moment to crush us under its smelly burden. Some of it was placed there by others, some of it we picked up along the way, some of it we were born with. When I am particularly down with the guilt, I speak with the voice I like to call “The Critic” (not the cartoon). He is vicious, ruthless, and utterly truthful, and he hates everything, and himself (myself) most particularly. He adds to my guilt with his hatred and rage and then turns it on the people around him. He puts the world in hell and then wonders why the place smells like shit. I’ve discovered, however, that there is a way out of Hell. But it’s not easy.
The only possible release is to accept. Everything. Completely.
Ain’t that a bitch.
The only way out is love, complete and total, unconditional, doggy chewing a bone, baby playing with a soap bubble, Jesus on the cross, Gandhi taking (another) beating, Martin Luther King in a pool of blood love. And I don’t care what anybody says, that is damn near impossible, some days. And the worst of it is, it’s gotta be for everybody, including and especially your stinking, horrid, selfish, unreliable, forgetful, vain, lying, cowardly, weak-willed self. Or else it doesn’t count.
Shit.
Now, reggae’s like the blues, but with more God, less Devil. Plus, any God that’s down with the Rastafarian sacraments is A-OK with me. Like the blues, reggae music is good for when you feel bad – and I’ve been feeling pretty bad, lately. Lots of pressure and stress at work, trying to keep ahead of too many projects in my real life. I don’t know where exactly I’m going with a lot of these projects (and by extension, my life), and the time for decision and consolidation is rapidly approaching. Something’s got to be done. The work thing, in particular, is giving me pain like you wouldn’t believe. So, when I’m feeling victimized (and, no question, a person is a victim only to the extent that they believe themselves to be one) I sometimes entertain revenge fantasies. You know the ones: telling the boss exactly where to stick it, and how deep, screwing the company at exactly the right moment when they depend on you most. Yeah, those fantasies. Not that we’d ever act on them, because we’re far too well trained for that. We’ve got student loans, and spouses in grad school, and health insurance that keeps us in antibiotics when we’re sick. But we still get that slight sickness in our throats, that taste of bile that has just a tinge of blood to it when the boss tells us we need to pick up the slack, and we think these thoughts.
So I’m listening to this new wonderful reggae album, and a song I’ve never heard comes on. The little black-on-grey LCD letters on the Ipod screen tell me it is called “Downpressor Man.” And the lyrics go like this:
Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to
On that day?
If you run to the sea
The sea will be boiling
(x 3)
On that day
If you run to the rocks
The rocks will be melting
(x 3)
On that day
If you make your bed in hell
I will be there.
(x 3)
On that day.
Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
(x 3)
On that day?
Simple. The revenge/justification fantasy of the downtrodden and poorly treated everywhere. “Well, you may be on top now, but one of these days, there’ll be a judgment, there’ll be a reckoning, and you will get what you require.” And like I’m so oppressed, right? Still, everybody thinks, at least once (some people, more like once a day) “Man, I can’t wait till you get yours.”
But then came that line: If you make your bed in hell, I will be there. I heard something quite extraordinary, and I don’t know if it was the writer’s intention or not, but there it was. One of the central tenets of Rastafarianism is “I and I”, that is very similar to “Tat Tvam Asi” or “thou art that." It is the ultimate identification of self and God that comes in the awakened spirit and mind. One understands, at one’s root, that one is not ultimately different from God, and that God lives in one, as one lives in God. Now, this idea has ramifications.
Think about it this way: When you condemn one person, you condemn the God that is in them, and, by extension, the God in you. And since God is in you and you are in God, ipso facto – you are in Hell.
Similarly, if one condemns oneself to Hell, through guilt or a gross misunderstanding of the truth behind all religions, one puts the entire world in Hell.
Thinking this, I suddenly saw the verse that ran, “If you make your bed in Hell, I will be there” not as a promise, i.e. wherever you try to hide, I’ll find you and make you pay, but as a plea. “If you go down to hell, I have to go with you. If you act against what you know to be right, you condemn yourself, and by doing so, you kill us all.” This made the song incredibly sad for me, but also wise.
We almost all of us labor under our guilt, straining at the weight of it. Heavy, brown, turdlike guilt, awkward in its bulk and threatening at any moment to crush us under its smelly burden. Some of it was placed there by others, some of it we picked up along the way, some of it we were born with. When I am particularly down with the guilt, I speak with the voice I like to call “The Critic” (not the cartoon). He is vicious, ruthless, and utterly truthful, and he hates everything, and himself (myself) most particularly. He adds to my guilt with his hatred and rage and then turns it on the people around him. He puts the world in hell and then wonders why the place smells like shit. I’ve discovered, however, that there is a way out of Hell. But it’s not easy.
The only possible release is to accept. Everything. Completely.
Ain’t that a bitch.
The only way out is love, complete and total, unconditional, doggy chewing a bone, baby playing with a soap bubble, Jesus on the cross, Gandhi taking (another) beating, Martin Luther King in a pool of blood love. And I don’t care what anybody says, that is damn near impossible, some days. And the worst of it is, it’s gotta be for everybody, including and especially your stinking, horrid, selfish, unreliable, forgetful, vain, lying, cowardly, weak-willed self. Or else it doesn’t count.
Shit.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
quote for the day
Read at Jonathan Carroll's blog
"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing."
both quotes from E.L. Doctorow
"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing."
both quotes from E.L. Doctorow
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Kids, don't do drugs... or whatever
Michael was a hippy. He played guitar and did Tai Chi. He had long, straight, thin hair that hung down almost to his waist. He liked to smoke pot and do drugs. He was my roommate for several years and I adored him.
He introduced me to psychedelic drugs thusly: when I said I wanted to do LSD, he told me that he would not, absolutely would not get me anything more intoxicating than a saltine cracker unless I read the following books – The Joyous Cosmology by Alan Watts, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce, and Beyond the Brain by Stanislav Grof. He handed me the stack, told me to read them and went back in his room to play guitar.
I learned a lot of crazy crap from that hippy. I also obtained my first (and many subsequent) dose of mushrooms.
My early experiences with mushrooms were lovely. Numinous, heart opening experiences where I saw the true nature of the universe. The world was a living, breathing, loving creation. I was an integral part of this living creation, and the pain of the world was that we never knew how alive and loving it was.
Yeah, that was until my first bad trip.
Now I liked listening to music on shrooms. I found that it helped me to access those deeper levels of emotion and sacredness during the trip. One time though…
I ate the mushrooms, drank my orange juice, and settled in for a nice trip. But what music should I use? Kate Bush was usually a good bet (The Hounds of Love is a particularly good album) or maybe Spacemen 3 (Taking Drugs to make Music to Take Drugs to). No, I’ve done that.
What about the Smiths? Yeah! That sounds like a GREAT idea! The Smiths…!
…the most depressing, whiny, self-absorbed music ever created. Sad-bastard music before they even invented sad-bastard music.
I listened to, I think, Meat is Murder, and got angrier, and angrier, and angrier. I saw myself through this music, through what listening to this music said about me, and I despised it. I was tired of being an effeminate, ineffectual, weak little hippy boy. The girls thought I was gay, the guys didn’t respect me. I hadn’t had sex in months and I was horribly lonely. I didn’t do what I wanted and I didn’t do what I should. I hated myself and this music represented everything I hated. In a second I was off the couch and had launched the tape-player across the room, where it smashed on the wall like a bomb going off (louder than bombs? whatever). I then found myself stalking around the center of the room in a tight circle, my hands clenched into claws, and this sound was coming out of my throat that I did not recognize: inarticulate, mid-way between a scream and a roar, strangled and raw full of hate and rage. An animal sound, a sick, wounded sound.
This continued for several minutes until Michael, hearing the commotion, decided to check on me. Upon seeing an obviously enraged maniac lurching in increasingly tighter circles around his living room he did not, bless him, call the police, or try to restrain said maniac. No, he actually tried to talk me down. “It’s alright,” he said. “Everything’s alright…”
My jaw clenched, barely in control, I growled, “Go back in your room!” He beat a hasty retreat.
The screaming/roaring/choking continued until I finally fell into an uneasy sleep a few hours later. I slept fitfully through the night.
On waking the next day, I wandered around in sort of haze. I remembered clearly what had happened, apologized to my slightly shaken, but none the worse for wear, roommate (who was, I’m sure, making a mental note to get the fuck out as soon as possible), and went out to fix breakfast.
Now, as I may have mentioned, my housekeeping skills left a bit to be desired. The house was usually a sty. Sometimes, there might have been dishes in the sink. From, say, a week ago. With food on them. Or maybe the garbage hadn’t been taken out. In, like a month.
But today, the house REALLY reeked. There was a smell that was something like rotten cabbage at the bottom of the sink, spoiled milk, and something dead. It was foul, and it was everywhere. Even I, with my ability to ignore filth, couldn’t let this pass. I had to clean it up.
But I couldn’t find the stench. The refrigerator was clean. The garbage had been taken out. The dishes were done. Where was that smell coming from?
I mentioned it to Michael, and he looked at me, a little sadly. “You mean you don’t know?” he said.
“No. What is it?”
“It’s you, man. You released all that shit from inside you. That smell is your anger.”
And I knew he was right. We had to air out the house for two days.
He introduced me to psychedelic drugs thusly: when I said I wanted to do LSD, he told me that he would not, absolutely would not get me anything more intoxicating than a saltine cracker unless I read the following books – The Joyous Cosmology by Alan Watts, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce, and Beyond the Brain by Stanislav Grof. He handed me the stack, told me to read them and went back in his room to play guitar.
I learned a lot of crazy crap from that hippy. I also obtained my first (and many subsequent) dose of mushrooms.
My early experiences with mushrooms were lovely. Numinous, heart opening experiences where I saw the true nature of the universe. The world was a living, breathing, loving creation. I was an integral part of this living creation, and the pain of the world was that we never knew how alive and loving it was.
Yeah, that was until my first bad trip.
Now I liked listening to music on shrooms. I found that it helped me to access those deeper levels of emotion and sacredness during the trip. One time though…
I ate the mushrooms, drank my orange juice, and settled in for a nice trip. But what music should I use? Kate Bush was usually a good bet (The Hounds of Love is a particularly good album) or maybe Spacemen 3 (Taking Drugs to make Music to Take Drugs to). No, I’ve done that.
What about the Smiths? Yeah! That sounds like a GREAT idea! The Smiths…!
…the most depressing, whiny, self-absorbed music ever created. Sad-bastard music before they even invented sad-bastard music.
I listened to, I think, Meat is Murder, and got angrier, and angrier, and angrier. I saw myself through this music, through what listening to this music said about me, and I despised it. I was tired of being an effeminate, ineffectual, weak little hippy boy. The girls thought I was gay, the guys didn’t respect me. I hadn’t had sex in months and I was horribly lonely. I didn’t do what I wanted and I didn’t do what I should. I hated myself and this music represented everything I hated. In a second I was off the couch and had launched the tape-player across the room, where it smashed on the wall like a bomb going off (louder than bombs? whatever). I then found myself stalking around the center of the room in a tight circle, my hands clenched into claws, and this sound was coming out of my throat that I did not recognize: inarticulate, mid-way between a scream and a roar, strangled and raw full of hate and rage. An animal sound, a sick, wounded sound.
This continued for several minutes until Michael, hearing the commotion, decided to check on me. Upon seeing an obviously enraged maniac lurching in increasingly tighter circles around his living room he did not, bless him, call the police, or try to restrain said maniac. No, he actually tried to talk me down. “It’s alright,” he said. “Everything’s alright…”
My jaw clenched, barely in control, I growled, “Go back in your room!” He beat a hasty retreat.
The screaming/roaring/choking continued until I finally fell into an uneasy sleep a few hours later. I slept fitfully through the night.
On waking the next day, I wandered around in sort of haze. I remembered clearly what had happened, apologized to my slightly shaken, but none the worse for wear, roommate (who was, I’m sure, making a mental note to get the fuck out as soon as possible), and went out to fix breakfast.
Now, as I may have mentioned, my housekeeping skills left a bit to be desired. The house was usually a sty. Sometimes, there might have been dishes in the sink. From, say, a week ago. With food on them. Or maybe the garbage hadn’t been taken out. In, like a month.
But today, the house REALLY reeked. There was a smell that was something like rotten cabbage at the bottom of the sink, spoiled milk, and something dead. It was foul, and it was everywhere. Even I, with my ability to ignore filth, couldn’t let this pass. I had to clean it up.
But I couldn’t find the stench. The refrigerator was clean. The garbage had been taken out. The dishes were done. Where was that smell coming from?
I mentioned it to Michael, and he looked at me, a little sadly. “You mean you don’t know?” he said.
“No. What is it?”
“It’s you, man. You released all that shit from inside you. That smell is your anger.”
And I knew he was right. We had to air out the house for two days.
Friday, January 6, 2006
So this is the new year, and I actually feel kinda different
It’s the 6th of January, and I’m writing this outside, next to my parent’s pool. The palm trees sway in a gentle breeze, and the birds chuckle and coo to one another.
It is 85 degrees out, blue skies, dry and sunny. I cannot see a cloud in any direction.
When I was growing up, Phoenix was a punchline. An upstart L.A. without any culturally redeeming qualities to recommend it. Phoenix was where you went if you wanted to commit suicide, but didn’t have the guts to get it over with all at once. It might take you years to die in Phoenix, just because it sucked so much.
Times have changed, or maybe just me. I don’t have anyone to hang out with, aside from my lovely wife and my folks, but I have been supremely content. I’ve been in Rivendell…
Aside from a few small, desperate inconveniences. They’re my fault, no doubt, but still, it’s been trying.
So I get the check from my roommate for rent and sundry expenses on New Year’s Eve – no time to put it in the bank, as we’re leaving first thing in the morning, and why rush? There’ll be plenty of time! I’ll deposit the checks in the bank first thing on Tuesday (Monday being a bank holiday) write a check to the landlord, and have done with it. Easy!
Except I forget my checkbook. OK, no problem, I’ll still deposit the check, get a bank check, mail it out, and still be fine.
Did you know that Citibank has not a single branch or ATM in the entire state of Arizona? No, neither did I. After driving all over God’s green earth to fucking Scottsdale of all places, only to discover that the ATM I was directed to by the ever so helpful Citibank website was not, in fact, a Citibank ATM, but only one owned by one of their affiliate networks. Of course I couldn’t deposit the checks there. Of course.
My brief and, understandably, terse conversation with Citibank revealed these facts, along with the helpful advice that I should “buy a money order and send that.” Cocksuckers. With what money should I buy this money order? And will the extra that I pay for this miraculously purchased money order be reimbursed by the gentle benevolent blockheads at Citibank? No it will not.
Keeping myself in check, I decide to go with this dunderheaded new plan, nothing else leaping forward to suggest itself.
Frankly, I’m boring myself, but suffice to say that the money order was purchased, only I had to buy two, and Walmart kept refusing my debit card, and Citibank told me I could only purchase $1,000 per 24 hour period, and every time I tried to call Citibank to discuss it, my cell phone would die and I had to go back and forth to Walmart four times, and Steph and I got in a wicked argument about money, which was made all the worse by the knowledge that it was all my fucking fault, and had I simply brought the fucking checkbook (or better yet, paid the rent before we left) none of this would be happening. Arguments where you know you’re wrong have the tendency to turn into vicious personal attacks, just to keep the focus off of the fact that a) you’re wrong, b) you’re stupidly defending your wrongs and c) you’re just wrong, wrong, wrong. A process that could have taken fifteen minutes and a stamp took 3 days, 4 trips to Walmart, fourteen dollars to express mail the money, an argument with my wife, two hour-long conversations with various fuckwits at Citibank, and the admission to my parents that, in spite of living on my own for well over 15 years now, I’m still an irresponsible twit.
It was as if the ghost of 2005 wanted to get some last licks in before I could really arrive in 2006.
That’s Steph’s interpretation. My thought is that I asked for this.
Through various methods, I have recently asked that the universe provide me with opportunities to increase my “Strength”, that is, my ability to deal with the world effectively and to control my own character flaws. Now, most of my life, I have had the ability to coast by on sheer luck – good karma, good timing, call it what you will. I watched that rug get jerked right out from under me this week, and I think that that is the lesson the universe is trying to teach me. In watching the lives of my friends and loved ones, I have noticed that the kind of convergence of events like the ones I experienced this weekend happens pretty frequently – people get kicked out of their apartments on holidays, simple arguments escalate into trips to the hospital, promised funds don’t come through, trusted equipment fails. But I was always amazed to watch it happen. But now that it’s happened to me, I realized something. I have lived a charmed life up to this point, and there is no guarantee that it will continue to be so charmed. I have asked to become stronger, and the universe has obliged by removing the net, the net I barely recognized was there, but which I now know was essential. That little bit of wiggle room, that space to procrastinate which I always had because “hey, everything always turns out alright in the end” is gone. The training wheels are off, and now I get to play for real.
Looks like it’s going to be an interesting year…
It is 85 degrees out, blue skies, dry and sunny. I cannot see a cloud in any direction.
When I was growing up, Phoenix was a punchline. An upstart L.A. without any culturally redeeming qualities to recommend it. Phoenix was where you went if you wanted to commit suicide, but didn’t have the guts to get it over with all at once. It might take you years to die in Phoenix, just because it sucked so much.
Times have changed, or maybe just me. I don’t have anyone to hang out with, aside from my lovely wife and my folks, but I have been supremely content. I’ve been in Rivendell…
Aside from a few small, desperate inconveniences. They’re my fault, no doubt, but still, it’s been trying.
So I get the check from my roommate for rent and sundry expenses on New Year’s Eve – no time to put it in the bank, as we’re leaving first thing in the morning, and why rush? There’ll be plenty of time! I’ll deposit the checks in the bank first thing on Tuesday (Monday being a bank holiday) write a check to the landlord, and have done with it. Easy!
Except I forget my checkbook. OK, no problem, I’ll still deposit the check, get a bank check, mail it out, and still be fine.
Did you know that Citibank has not a single branch or ATM in the entire state of Arizona? No, neither did I. After driving all over God’s green earth to fucking Scottsdale of all places, only to discover that the ATM I was directed to by the ever so helpful Citibank website was not, in fact, a Citibank ATM, but only one owned by one of their affiliate networks. Of course I couldn’t deposit the checks there. Of course.
My brief and, understandably, terse conversation with Citibank revealed these facts, along with the helpful advice that I should “buy a money order and send that.” Cocksuckers. With what money should I buy this money order? And will the extra that I pay for this miraculously purchased money order be reimbursed by the gentle benevolent blockheads at Citibank? No it will not.
Keeping myself in check, I decide to go with this dunderheaded new plan, nothing else leaping forward to suggest itself.
Frankly, I’m boring myself, but suffice to say that the money order was purchased, only I had to buy two, and Walmart kept refusing my debit card, and Citibank told me I could only purchase $1,000 per 24 hour period, and every time I tried to call Citibank to discuss it, my cell phone would die and I had to go back and forth to Walmart four times, and Steph and I got in a wicked argument about money, which was made all the worse by the knowledge that it was all my fucking fault, and had I simply brought the fucking checkbook (or better yet, paid the rent before we left) none of this would be happening. Arguments where you know you’re wrong have the tendency to turn into vicious personal attacks, just to keep the focus off of the fact that a) you’re wrong, b) you’re stupidly defending your wrongs and c) you’re just wrong, wrong, wrong. A process that could have taken fifteen minutes and a stamp took 3 days, 4 trips to Walmart, fourteen dollars to express mail the money, an argument with my wife, two hour-long conversations with various fuckwits at Citibank, and the admission to my parents that, in spite of living on my own for well over 15 years now, I’m still an irresponsible twit.
It was as if the ghost of 2005 wanted to get some last licks in before I could really arrive in 2006.
That’s Steph’s interpretation. My thought is that I asked for this.
Through various methods, I have recently asked that the universe provide me with opportunities to increase my “Strength”, that is, my ability to deal with the world effectively and to control my own character flaws. Now, most of my life, I have had the ability to coast by on sheer luck – good karma, good timing, call it what you will. I watched that rug get jerked right out from under me this week, and I think that that is the lesson the universe is trying to teach me. In watching the lives of my friends and loved ones, I have noticed that the kind of convergence of events like the ones I experienced this weekend happens pretty frequently – people get kicked out of their apartments on holidays, simple arguments escalate into trips to the hospital, promised funds don’t come through, trusted equipment fails. But I was always amazed to watch it happen. But now that it’s happened to me, I realized something. I have lived a charmed life up to this point, and there is no guarantee that it will continue to be so charmed. I have asked to become stronger, and the universe has obliged by removing the net, the net I barely recognized was there, but which I now know was essential. That little bit of wiggle room, that space to procrastinate which I always had because “hey, everything always turns out alright in the end” is gone. The training wheels are off, and now I get to play for real.
Looks like it’s going to be an interesting year…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)