Where I Am

Here's a quick synopsis, folks.

I quit my job.

I quit my theater company.

It's time to face me, and give me all I got.

I'm writing a screenplay set in the future. Not distant, maybe ten years out. It's bleak by all accounts, but if it works--if what I see in it now, if what I envision can translate onto the page--it's not depressing at all. It's about beauty in grey places. It's about hearts on dirty sleeves.

I'm studying for the GRE (more in theory right now than practice) and plan to win the battle, not the war.

I've been doing a lot of thinking, and this is how it goes: We're not dead yet.

Fending Off Common Diseases

waterloo (WOT-uhr-loo) noun

A crushing or final defeat.

Sometimes life seems like a series of dodged defeats, a long string of minor rejections that, if adequately screened as they filter in, fizzle as plot points instead of epilogues. Regardless, even in the best of environments, tension mounts. And I am the grimacing face of frustration, shaking my fist in the air--half at the gods, half at myself--hoping for change.

But am I pushing for it?

Time. Time is always the issue. So much devoted to this, devoted to that, a responsibility here, a should do, an ought to do, a want to do. Money. (Here it's green for a reason.) Money for rent, for food, for drink, for gas, for internet, for everything. I don't want my life to read as an anecdote to complacence, as someone with a heart that drained simply to stay afloat.

But how do you initiate change? What do you sacrifice? What do you trust?

"Never work. Only fools work. To degrade oneself with labor..."

Shytown, 6 PM

indurate (IN-doo-rayt, -dyoo-) verb tr.

1. To make hardy, inured, accustomed.

2. To make callous or unfeeling.

verb intr.

1. To make hard.

2. To become established.

adjective (IN-doo-rit, -dyoo-)

Hardened; callous; obstinate.

Trains on the el track beams
keep above, stalled in three beeps
(glad it ain't me)

An ambulance
weaves through a one-way
past a blue bus stopped behind
a blue bus--
all full, windows bulging,
people cooking in awful overcoated heat
(glad it ain't me)

All it is:
I walk, see
a shoulderbag-toting trooper
deadright
on my view of life
straight ahead
eyes-glued just past the
shoes and
those blue buses, the ambo sirens shout--
fuck, man, is that a
firetruck
too?--
over mumbles and averting glances
crossing on time with white light
words, routine advances--where,
where is the fire, that emergency
where do they all go in such a hurry?--
(glad it ain't me)

Do you know?
Do you know?

City living's like shit-fearing flies
If you believe all you're told
then all you know is lies

Logging In/Out

pusillanimous (pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muhs) adjective

Lacking courage; timid.

If you stop, if you just stop for two seconds and close your eyes, you will hear the ghostly buzzes and whirs of our machinery as it ticks and percolates through time. This constant current running to plastic-cased hardware--low-level high-rises, condos full of data memory--pierces the air like phantom whistles. You, your body, responds: this listening to the purrs, the sudden changes of tone and pitch, the fabricated background music of existence, forces a physical, alien, conversation between the hidden eyes of these machines and our over-worked fingertips.

Somehow, during this whole unspoken discussion, a new taste emerges. Your tongue, its tip, soaking in an unknown development--a wetness, a dryness, a familiar consistency--that doubles with each pulse. First: not enough to know. Then: too much to stop. Is it blood? Are you cut? Is it batteries? A leak? Is it metals, or is it cells?

Remember, there's no murder in shutting down.

Another Blog? Seriously?

For the handful of people that check this blog--and handful might be a little over-zealous--I would like to invite you to check out my new blogging endeavor. I'm not ending this blog, merely taking an announced hiatus (as opposed to the myriad of unannounced pauses between posts that exist normally) to focus on rehearsals for Lipstick Traces, an ambitious play Pavement Group (my theatre company) is producing next month.

Too Early to Cause Alarm

I woke up this morning at six AM--two hours before my alarm--and layed there with my eyes shut, feigning the opposite. Clinging, in a bleary-eyed morning daze, to a faith that my body and mind would fall back asleep if I could just overwhelm myself with hope. Sadly, the old rehabbed wooden windows that rattled me awake in the first place continued their arrhythmic drumming and, in a wind of sighs, I eventually whipped off my covers and stormed to the shower in defeat.

This happens from time to time to everyone, I assume, whenever your body awakens before "it's supposed to". Meaning, of course, that the fine-tuned morning regiment of obeying one's alarm occasionally fails in the most unexpected manner: preemptively. There's nothing surprising about sleeping through the calming drone of NPR or, for the true logs among us, even the robotic stomp of the beeps and buzzers. When someone receives more sleep than they apportioned for, that's viewed as a symptom of necessity. But waking up before that preset switch in bedroom volume? Before the weather and traffic together? That's no regular occurrence. That's just purely divine defiance, losing the bet before the deal. No one bolts out of bed early and shrugs, "Well, guess I only needed five hours of sleep last night! What a life!" No way, we all act just as I did and suggest, by mental and/or physical force, that we continue to lay shrouded in our cave of covers until the appropriate pronouncement, until the very right moment when we should--when we normally do--rise from our hibernatory state and get up.

Such a stubborn refusal to accept the morning's arrival only serves as punishment for an immutable, unchangeable course of events. Ultimately, no amount of base-level self-trickery will reverse the early day. I guess such occasions act as reminders that the "it's supposed to"-ness of life follows a lead unhindered by the human invention of calculated time. It's just too bad we can't all take naps at work.

Unplugging the Virtual Torture Machine

blimey (BLY-mee) interjection

An expression of surprise, dismay, etc.

[Contraction of "blind me" or "blame me", from "God blind/blame me";
sometimes heard in the form gorblimey or corblimey.]

It's increasingly difficult to maintain a sense of humor about this waiting game. At this point, based on a fairly recent (probably ill-advised) email correspondence, I'm certain the committee held many sessions of interviews; I simply attended the first round. That being said, I must now begin to accept rejection. From this day forward, I will no longer check the website for an official rebuke, but, in its stead, assume it. If they choose me, I will receive a packet by mail and that--that ghost--would arrive just days after an online decision.

Now I must find a new job before it elicits a psychotic break.

Wait, Wait, PLEASE tell me!

Q: If I meet the required deadlines, when can I expect to receive a decision?

A: Programs have different application review schedules. Some programs wait and rank all of their applications against each other; others make individual determinations on a case-by-case basis. Program decisions are rendered from early January all the way through the middle of April. To reduce your wait time, The Graduate School communicates admission decisions via the online application portal rather than through mail. You may access the online application as many times as you wish to check if a decision has been rendered on your file. If a decision has been rendered on your file a "View Decision" link will appear. If no decision has been rendered, no link will be present.

I had my interview two weeks ago. My twenty minute conversation with three important people in the program (we talked mostly about my past, my travels, my experiences, my writing, all in the broadest of senses). I was nice, they were nice. It was a nice twenty minutes.

Too nice? Forgettable? Not nice enough?

My brain's melting with anxiousness; I check each night when I get home. It interferes with otherwise relaxed moments. "What should I eat for lunch? Grad School."

What will they say? Am I fit to pay them in high-priced loans and my creative soul? Or just, well, nice?

So now I wait. Possibly until May.

Another Bank Holiday

mlk day
on the train
coffee smells
wet jeans and
salt stains

no one speaks
just the track creaks
earbuds buzz
and the reshift of
bags on empty seats

don't look though, just peek
what's yours is yours
and mine is mine
keep all eyes outside
on the floor or
on the time

mlk day, sure
some thirty years since
change occurred
and here we are still
going to work

yes, sir

standing by
duty bound, in line
less for more
unless you're poor
then just survive

but don't worry
there's no racial divide
we've all got the same, basic
human rights

on the train
this mlk day
year of our lord
2008

With One Cheek on the Concrete

anthropomorphize (an-thruh-puh-MOR-fyz) verb tr., intr.

To attribute human qualities to things not human.

Suddenly, swiftly, the gun-cock unclicks and I collapse to the floor in a clump of relief. The cloaked assassin exits--who was he? how did he find me?--and the door thuds in his wake. A manifestation of his already wooden punctuation.

I curl, nearly touch my knees. Nothing so cold as now, nothing so sweet as soon. My eyes burn, open or closed, and each breath grasps for itself, never reaching. I feel, with the damp tip of my tongue, each new crease in my lips like stitches on a baseball. I sweat. I gurgle inquiries from innards and come up empty.

But even half awake, a witness to my own life in tilted sepia tone, I still see my shadow. I still block some light from view. I still encompass some measurable form, still hold weight. I do, I still do.

I exist.

Partly Cloudy, Awaiting Snow

shank's mare (SHANGKS mare) noun

One's own legs. Also known as shank's pony.

I'm standing in a thick tub of Almost Finished. I'm close to finalizing my application, I'm close to leaving for the holidays, I'm close to two or three projects in January.

I just accepted an invitation to join a theater company and making that experience its own blog for the New Year.

Overall, today, with Built to Spill rhythms chugging from home-stolen-for-workplace speakers, I am excited about all my endeavors. I suddenly feel...achieving. The creative aches never dissipate, but that makes me me. It's not a noble thing, it's not about the greater good, or good at all. Occasionally, I just get flashes of who I really am, and where I find joy. That's all it really is. Following my mostly invisible eponymous avenue.

This is a gear shift.

Don't give in to the Bitter Culture Machine, the consuming strain of cultivating sensibility through the fictions of dollar signs and their ever-present depictions of wealth and possibility. We are our own creations, we are our own connections. There are, too, etched-in names and carved reliefs on the inside of prison walls.

A Prayer for the Okay But Wanting

El Dorado (el duh-RAH-doh) noun

A place offering fabulous wealth or opportunity.

In this blog, in various ways, I think I always speak of change. Soon now, I hope, I anticipate, its awaited arrival. My strength wanes--how long is too long to wait?--in the face of constant pushing.

My job. My career. My age. Reconciling each of these takes a lifetime. Yes, I'm writing more, that's good. Applying to school, fantastic. Interviewing for different positions, wonderful. I am in a room of lit fuses, yet each bomb may never go off. From where do I muster that extra lodge of patience, of optimism, of shining hope?

I am tired, scared of the unknown. And with that fear, I feel shame in my weakness. Please God, or Fate, or angels in my wake, lead me to a place where I shed these civilized stresses and breathe again the cool air of self-contentment.

Trunk Show

I watched a designer run through of Elephant Man today in the rehearsal space across the street. I'd previously seen the black-and-white David Lynch version many years ago and harbored certain reservations about a secondary experience (not in terms of story quality, but rather redundancy). The hour passed swiftly and, as often happens during workday experiences that vary from the regular clicks and mumbles, I found myself engrossed and even moved to scratch down a line posed by the titled character himself:

What happens to dreams when they cannot get out?

If ever the chance occurs that I get to determine a writing topic for a class, that question would serve as my first assignment. I may, in the near future, simply assign it to myself.

When the Sidewalk Ends

gravamen (gra-VAY-muhn) noun [plural gravamens or gravamina (-VAM-uh-nuh)]

The essence or the most serious part of an accusation.

It's hard to think that it's all a trick. That the way we live our lives--the kinds of choices we make, the kinds of opportunities that present themselves--was all staged years ago by elite chess players interested in owning the board. It's hard to believe--it's quite amazing--just how true it is. Ownership is our legacy. We claim ourselves and then we claim our objects, all our precious humanly things. And that marks our legacy. We claim each paved step, each tissue, each dried letter of a word, each chemical in our body. We claim and we own and we sell and we profit and we die. We--who invent symbols from our own inventions--who kill not for survival but for luxury, for the opportunity to surround ourselves with our own symbols and inventions--rectify the very systems that snag us each on the labyrinth of valued success. If anything is deemed doomed by our own doing, by our own mazes, it's us. We shall kill ourselves with our created, owned systems.

Ask yourself this: when did you last walk on a surface unfit for wheels?

Mixing for a Good Time

moliminous (mo-LIM-in-uhs) adjective

Massive; laborious.

I finally finished a mix CD I'm giving to my soon-to-be-married friend. Who knows how long I actually spent on it; I tend to get absorbed in mixing. The whole process totally consumes me when I finally sit down to do the tracking. Usually it pieces itself together over the course of about a week, or, when the schedule permits, I might devote an entire afternoon or evening. Regardless, I spend the majority of time scrolling through songs, testing transitions, teasing out the tone, trying to find the right fit for whatever occasion or person inspired me in the first place. Sometimes I'll listen to an entire album by an artist and ultimately decide against its inclusion. My mind's musical conception of the subject matter tends to eek out slowly as I choose a couple hours worth of songs, then delete and rearrange...

I rarely set out to make mixes for myself, but, thanks to modern technology, I get to keep each one on my computer and, yes, I do play them. Probably more than whoever receives them, really. At least, that's how I imagine it now, in the age dominated by mp3 players and iShuffles and thirty-second samples, a clunky CD with a compiled set of songs that don't magically appear when inserted into a computer simply doesn't fit modern specifications.

Not that I truly consider myself a modern man.

Surrounded by Palms

I am not old
but older
I am not wise
but wiser
I am not complete
but aware

Life holds nothing in its hands
for its fingers will not bend
to just one thing

A Soldier's Fortune

hessian (HESH-uhn) adjective

1. A mercenary soldier or a ruffian.

2. Burlap.

The hardest lesson one can learn about writing is that no rules exist. Every time I feel stagnant with a premise, or bored with some dialogue, I seem to come across a book or play that's based in some alternate reality, or fuses dream-like images, or simply creates a world so different and interesting, I wonder if anyone else could have imagined it. What makes it a "hard" lesson, however, is not simply that it's difficult to locate or takes years to fully comprehend, but instead that writing without limits broadens the scope of general human existence to such a grand degree, fathoming the next step almost surely scratches the very action itself. Yes, there's the infamous "box" that separates all ideas into new and used, but my God, once outside the box, it's a frighteningly infinite universe.

I think a writer knows when they're writing something new and interesting--it's that moment when arm hairs tingle and the scribbling or typing stops and one thinks, "What in the hell just happened?" Sure, the next sentence might be total shit. But what you wrote before that: worth more than oil made from gold.

Fashionable Quotation

Here's a quote my friend emailed me that I really enjoyed. Apparently, it's from an interview with a famous fashion designer who became so agitated by the tenants of branding, he decided to resign his lucrative and oft-sought position as creative director. I find the last sentence particularly striking.

Because dimension is total, it is increasingly necessary to be vigilant on the direction. The direction, the idea, and engagement first of all. I am very skeptic on the tools of marketing. One does not advance while looking in a rear view mirror, unless being a follower. The idea initially, marketing then. Marketing can only support adhesion, and not replace creation. The formatting is not the performance; the performance, it is to know to think differently. I think of YouTube, but the examples are legion. One needs the intuition, before the reason. The insanity can also be powerful.

Watermarks

artesian (ahr-TEE-zhuhn) adjective

Pertaining to a well that has water rising to the surface under natural
pressure, without the need of a pump.

(I am dissatisfied with my daytime commitments and tired of complaining. My bitterness no longer serves as entertainment and when I encounter old friends--the best friends, the ones that know me best--I seem littered with sullen valleys.)

Change, strong personal change, can only occur after recognition. Before one can open a door, he must first see it.

No one sits in a room without exit.

(I am not proud of what I do here at the theater; it is not unique or interesting. And I should be proud. And I should participate only in interesting things.)

At the bottom of a pyramid, you are stifled by its weight and succumb to its pressure. At the top, you are too high to see the foundation and disillusioned with power. We are each blinded by where we could be. And that is civilization's ultimate flaw. Yet where we are--entrenched in the pyramid--was created by us. It is not what man makes that should define him, but instead why he chooses to make it.

Sometimes we are beings concerned more with the fountain than its water.

Yeah, well. Darwin's dead.

bombast (BOM-bast) noun

Pompous speech or writing.

I finished reading a book today--for the first time in months--and the first thing I thought was, "What a story says and what a story means may not always be different things."

When I finish my play, or flesh out any of the many parts of other things I write, I hope, when someone else reads it, they're moved to think the same way.

As a side note, if you ever (or more appropriately, never) question the human races' existence on this planet, I urge you to read Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. I am now convinced that these "big brains" of ours instead represent an alien-like defect, and not the tools of infinite progress and created wealth. Sure, the possibilities of what we can do and accomplish in our lifetimes grows exponentially each day--all but one having been defined and refined within the limited scope of our self-constructed systems.

Ah, but I've said too much...