writing

There Is More To Life Than Writing

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I have no business posting this.

“ A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It’s the shit that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.”

-Quote from The Wire

***

I am of two minds, of two lives—the space in between these worlds, taking the form of a highway truncating South Jersey, acts as the bridge. On one side, the near side, I am Thomas DeMary: middle manager for a global conglomerate, a loving husband and dog owner, a distant son to parents, an acquirer of various and sundry Apple products. On the other hand, farther away, I refer to myself as Mensah. I gave myself the moniker in 1999 because I needed a cool screen name, because I was Afrocentric, and my ex-girlfriend discarded my real name, opting for the pseudonym as my permanent identifier.

She knew, as I knew at age eighteen, I was trying on new skins, donning different colors, because she knew, as I didn’t know, I wanted to transform. The way she doted over me and touched my ego with tiny, black fingers—the way she pressed her breasts against my back as we slept—symbolized her worries for me, although I didn’t know. She did—she just never told me or, more likely, I translated her love poems as signs of romance rather than ominous scripture. She too was depressed: PTSD as a result of childhood horrors. Oh yes, she knew. To transform is to know, in an intimate way, pain akin to stabs, doubt akin to agnosticism.

They say youth is wasted on the young; they also say you are what you eat. I’m still young, though I’ve wasted years in this nebulous duality, that gray area in the middle of the highway: the phantasmic cursive wafting from a lit cigarette. I eat fat; I am fat. I used to be thin. I used to hoop: dribble off the knees, between the legs, stutter-step and drive to the right, push back—fade away. And one. You say “and one” when you think you’ve been fouled, been wronged; you say it every time you shoot in hopes that sooner or later, the other team will shrug and say “fuck it” as you stroll to the free throw line.

I used to feel so young, so idealistic. I am still young, but the world turns, the years descend from the stands and swarm me mid-court. The years smother me, as does the fat; they say it’s darkest before the dawn. I wouldn’t know. I write at night, about the night, and the sun I see is my ex-girlfriend’s touch: a good memory, but a memory nonetheless. She said “and one” every day in our final year. Which leads me to my wife, who touches me better, and so—we move forward. Wiser in life, I hope. Better equipped to translate. My wife presses her breasts against my back; my wife kisses my bald head and traces the O’s around my eyes: she wants her husband. Whole.

Wiser, I hope. Writing is what I do—am I a writer? My power is in language, in getting you to think of crusty adages, hoop dreams and bare breasts, of highways and The Wire. I am that powerful, though still young: youth is wasted like gin sloshed onto a bar or spilled from a careless mouth. I’m not much of a drinker.

I’ve been drunk once; I awoke to my ex-girlfriend riding me. There is no metaphor within this paragraph: my ex and I indulged in sport, drunken and gaussian, and I turned over to vomit onto the hardwood floor. Months earlier, in that same room, I watched The Powerpuff Girls with two women: my ex and my wife. There is no metaphor, but time connects moments, bridges them, blends them into one sound: writing gives me this flexibility. Transformation is not so easy.

I go to therapy to figure out Thomas—officially. Word on the street is: I’m more interested in Mensah. It is because I think Mensah is more interesting, less pragmatic but not completely foolish. I go to therapy to treat depression but not split personality disorder. Mensah is my secret, my scar I’d show to women. He doesn’t drink either, but he gets lost on windy roads in a black Mustang; Radiohead pours out of his car’s open windows; he lights cigarette after cigarette because death is death: peaceful or lungs full of phlegm, it’s the shit that’ll happen in between the penultimate and final moments. He has no use for God until shit hurts.

He is all the things I keep to myself, all the truths I tell myself in benign notebooks. You might think this weird, but I don’t give a fuck. We all have someone we want to become, a secondary figure sliding down & climbing up our spines. We all want to transform: into monsters, into better lovers, into plastic toys and androids, into sexual heroes and sensual empaths. We feel each other’s pain; we have the capacity to connect; we spin solipsistic tales and launch them into the skies. They say UFOs don’t exist, but the multicolors twirl and blink amid a cloudless night, anyway.

There is more to life than writing. I keep telling myself to stop writing about writing. I write about writing because for most of the day, Thomas doesn’t write. Hatred for his job drove him to therapy. Hatred toward people leaves him lonely with O’s around his eyes. Every night, he sits in front of the iMac, waiting for Mensah to step forward. Mensah will save him—writing will save him. I don’t know what I’m writing right now. I meant to write about the juxtaposition of pragmatism and idealism. Presumably, you’re reading this because you write—are you a writer?—and you understand my original theme.

We all want to write and fuck in London and sell books and toke in Amsterdam and blog about our author platforms and clink glasses at AWP and feel beautiful among the land of giants. Meanwhile, we leave behind complicated lovers and scold children and hold contempt for miscreant teenagers and balance our checkbooks and work less than stellar jobs that won’t even afford enough ennui to dream of feeling beautiful while staring at a spreadsheet. Everyday, we attempt a transformation, perhaps dragging updated versions of ourselves from our dreams. Every morning, we wake up and mutter “fuck.”

My ex-girlfriend and I haven’t spoken in ten years. I don’t miss her but I remember our last conversation. Well—really—I only remember her word of advice. “Your hands,” she said to me, “they comfort people. Never stop touching people.” A hell of a thing to say to someone who never kept his hands to himself. They say genius is rare; she always thought of me as a genius and told me so. I wished she hadn’t. It added to my writerly sense of entitlement; it further severed Thomas from Mensah, divorced us from a common ground. There’s nothing genius about writing nonsense and furthermore, if I’m a genius then why can’t I live the life I want?

Which is to say—what do I want out of life? There is more to life than writing and they say geniuses suffer from madness. Transformation is a big word for change and Octavia Butler wrote of a transformative god in a fictional world set aflame by economic disparity, slavery and sexual violence. No metaphor, no connection: I love Octavia Butler. I miss her—genuinely. Her work transformed me into a better writer, but there are no self-help books to aid in personal transformation. Life is suffering, so said The Buddha. As it should if you believe the epigraph way up there.

I thought about quitting my job. Once a day, I think about it—like, “my wife won’t be that mad if I walked out.” Then I read an article about a man. He’s depressed and suicidal and drained of hope because of his unemployment. I have a job. I can pay the bills and buy aluminum toys. I contemplate returning to school full time. I’ve been accepted to three schools: two in a new city. I think about majoring in English—then I switch to journalism—then I switch to business, law, international relations, interpretative dance. I think, “I cannot do this.” I look for ways to comfort myself. “Never stop touching people.” Masturbation doesn’t help.

My depression surfaced in the final days of our honeymoon. The London skyline winked its Eye outside our hotel room. We rotated through the famed Tubes with Brits, the French, Germans and the Portuguese. The Republicans stormed the castle while we were away; I didn’t want to go home. Let’s keep going, keep moving, forgo responsibility and make love, make moments, make literature, make babies and transform. Let’s transform, my eyes suggested to my wife. She kissed my mouth and caressed my wedding band: she too wanted to transform. I found my soulmate. There is more to life than writing.

A raven touches down in unstable lands. I’m being maudlin: I mean to say—revolution surges around the world. I never thought I’d see this. People are tired and fed up. I never thought I’d witness this unleashing of anger, of dissatisfaction. Transformation is never idyllic. I must be mentally ill to believe such a lie. Transformation burns. It tears down. It razes. It finds itself in the crosshairs of what is known—not conformist, but comfortable. A boot to the back of your neck is never comfortable, but neither is a canister of tear gas fired from your army. I will not compare Thomas to a dictator, Mensah to a mob of young stars heaving white heat. I do, however, see the connection.

I do not weep for the revolutionaries. I grit my teeth, I walk around with a tightness in my chest. They stand up to say in unison, “And one.” To fear my own transformation, when compared to revolution, is comedic at best. Shit happens but sometimes, the moments do come. More like the opportunity or, maybe, the final straw. I may be gainfully employed, but I’m already depressed and suicidal—sometimes—and revolution promises nothing but a new tomorrow, either with fertile ground or dead soil. The young is full of hope, so they say. I dribble words off my knees, between my legs, stutter-step and drive to the left—strong to the hole. I don’t know what I want out of life; Rilke was wise. “Live the questions now.” Fair enough.

@thomasdemary. @zerobooks.

Fuck Writing Maxims

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Thanksgiving Eve. It is almost midnight and, rather than sleeping, I’m working on the iPad, attempting to snap out of my writer’s block. Call it Honeymoon Hangover; upon my return from London a few weeks ago, ramping up again has been difficult. The words stumble out; the ideas, if they come at all, are hardly worth chasing.

No going to London.

Colm Taiban

A few minutes ago, I refreshed my Twitter timeline to find a quote concerning the craft of writing. I can’t remember the first sentence and, preferably, I don’t want to dig it up for quote. I closed the program in mid-scan, murmured “enough” under my breath and opened up my blank word document.

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.

Zadie Smith

I’m sick of maxims. I don’t want to hear anymore about what to write, how to write, when to write and why I should follow some truism the originator barely follows, let alone trusts. I’m tired of the compact, convenient, vacuum packaged advice designed, at first glance, to help the beginning writer, even though the advice’s true value, so to speak, is its ability to trigger confusion.

Maxims are scripture from the religion of literature, meant to provide guidance like pseudo North Stars. Because, as you know:

  • you should write in the morning (or night)
  • you should outline (or let it all hang out)
  • you should research (or make it all up…unless it’s nonfiction & you’re you-know-who with the current MFA sweatshop scam).

I’m tired of the Vonnegut quotes, the Zadie Smith musings, the little nuggets pried from Junot Diaz’s life—all in the name to spark a flicker of hope in the hearts of writers who’ll never get published or read. Harsh but—what can I say?—I’m in a I-don’t-give-a-fuck mood right now.

“If you stay positive, it sounds really Pollyanna-ish, but it’s a lot easier to get shit done and get out of that fucking hole.

Junot Diaz

Or perhaps I’m speaking for myself because recently, writing is a joyless, dry-hump experience where I’m looking in the mirror. How can I describe the struggle?

It’s knowing what I want to say and, as I begin to write, the voices rise from some bog located in my brain. It’s a matter of an underdeveloped belief in my own personal writing process. The side effect of looking for an easier way to write; which is to say, mimicking the methodologies of past craft-masters: finding myself so out-of-tune with my way of writing that the work suddenly seems foreign to my eyes and ears. Perhaps the prose works–it might even be publishable–but it isn’t mine. I didn’t do it my way. I didn’t experience the very thing those craft-masters needed to share their advice in the first place: discovery. Rather, I imitated.

Sound like yourself

Kurt Vonnegut

I’m considering Draconian countermeasures: unfriend the writers; defrock the experts; unfollow the alleged conduits between me and the Publishing Dream. Put down the pipe, in other words, and remember the reasons, the motivations that lie dormant inside me, and find the will to adhere to their whims. The closer I am to my motivations, to myself, the sooner the stray notes of my personality will collide into a kaleidoscopic writing process, wholly unique to me, to my ticks and moods.

To that last point, it may not require heavy-handed, anti-social activities. It’s about me. Pawning off my issues to other people, friends and blog usernames alike, is disingenuous and ultimately, counterproductive. That said, it’s not supposed to be like this. Writing shouldn’t become a futile, exacerbating mind-fuck that renders me immobile and unswayed by the piece at hand. So what’s the remedy?

Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make…. They make them for their own protection, and to Hell with them.

William Saroyan

It comes down to a dismissal of the advice, to bid the maxims adieu, to salute and wish them well. In retrospect, they surfaced one truth: famous, published, literary giants are as fucked in the head as I am. The writing advice industry, replete with guidebooks and blogs, exists as a result of our inherent uncertainty in the validity of our works, both what we generate and how we generate them. As for me?

It is Black Friday. Our artificial Christmas tree is to my right, erect and illuminated, hungry for gifts at its feet. Our dog paces the apartment in search of a playmate; my wife sits on the ottoman, hand over mouth, watching a zombie flick. I’m wearing a newsboy cap and Ray Ban eyeglasses, embracing my foray into douchebaghood, as I listen to Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind. I’m at my desk now, working on the iMac, and I’m feeling exposed, that I might want to reel back the personal truths espoused, to swap them for tempered rants written in the third person.

You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn’t hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don’t believe in that at all anymore.

Jamaica Kincaid

Airplane Mode

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Shopping in Oxford Street (file picture)

Third (and final) installment of a micro-series. Parts one and two. Meanwhile, Electric Parade is on a two-week hiatus due to the author getting married. Gone ’til November…

*

“Lately, I’ll sit down with a blank pad and feel like I really have to dig down deep to get my own voice to come out over the “sample choir.” It’s a very strange feeling, like a conductor trying to sing over the orchestra, and is, I believe, a fairly new one for artists.”

-Brian Christian, as quoted by David Shields in Reality Hunger.

**

Throughout the years, I’ve developed a habit of unplugging from the Internet, more so over the last two years. Between the blogs, the tweets and the Facebook updates, coupled with the day-to-day sounds of life outside, I find it difficult to shut out the noise.

Much is made of the authorial voice. When to suppress it, when to let it bellow through the prose, but never how to discover it, or how to recognize it. The prevailing thought is to worry less about how to find your voice. I would contend that voice, amid all ideas mined, is important to a writer’s sanity.

Everyone has an opinion. I’m fortunate to live in a country that doesn’t gun its citizens down for said expression. And yet, somehow, opinion has transformed into obnoxious: the polarized scream-fests on the news, the flame wars on Twitter and in the comments section of my favorite blogs, the pithy beefs aired out on Facebook. Everyone has a voice; some don’t know when to shut up.

The cliche goes, “silence is golden.” In real life, I’m an introvert. I’m used to hearing my own voice in my head. And once upon a time, when I started writing, reaching and listening to my second, deeper voice (the writer in me, perhaps?), was easier. Taken for granted, maybe, like breathing. Like peace and quiet.

***

No gadgets in London. This is no luddite’s manifesto—it is a mere declaration of unplug. A recall of sorts: to remind myself that the matrix is a movie and marriage aside, I am quite alone on Earth.

My thoughts are still under my agency.

Yes, it is the current mode to let it flow, flow, through the wire in byte-sized blurbs. London evokes, however, a chance to reclaim something lost amid the glittering voices scattered across monitors and capacitive screens, each in need to be stars, as celebrities and constellations garner attention and lowly humans, me too, adapt to new ways of being heard.

I want to be alone, as a father surrounded by family still retreats, as a woman takes in a lover and still recedes. I want to know, once again, the voice I’ve come to trust and curse without the choir clawing for something basic, bread or acknowledgement.

I feel it—do you?—in the era of message, where everyone speaks up to sell you something: maybe a self-help product or $199.99 seminar to get you published or address your fears or tell you that yes, you are complete.

Everyone has something to say and for two weeks, I’d like to disengage from the ether and return to the world, dystopian as ever, and remember the sole voice, hear its truths, and feel no need to share them with the world: to be silent and selfish.

****

“¦the iPhone and iPad will attend the journey to London, according to sources close to the matter.

@thomasdemary.  @altruistic bullsh*t.

Touch-Down In London-Town: Morning Sickness

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london-bridge

Part two of a three part micro-series. Part one is here.

II.

Nausea hit me mid-morning. In the middle of a team meeting at work, giving the rundown on the day’s priorities, I place a hand on the wall and prepare to vomit in the presence of co-workers. Out of nowhere, like ambulance sirens, beads of sweat bubble across my bald head and I’m thinking, “Maybe I’m getting the flu.” With nausea and sweat comes a fit of dizziness—not a complete spin of the world, but the sight of the factory, the cubicles, the machines and assemblers tilt on a forty-five degree angle. I make it through the meeting and dart to the side exit of the building, the smoking section, and step outside to the new cold air, a country breeze effusing nicotine, trying to retrieve my bearings, looking for them as if they’re my keys. I sit on a trash can and light a cigarette, freezing as the wind dries my scalp. I chair the meeting every morning, and have done so for at least three months, so “stage fright,” as a malady, is the wrong answer.

I can’t get sick. Not before the wedding, not before our romp through London. My immune system is a cat’s cradle of tripwires: a stomach flu before a Thanksgiving flight to Georgia, Chicken Pox on my seventh birthday (a sleepover, of course), appendicitis three weeks before I started fourth grade (the senior year of elementary school), and bronchitis two weeks before my wedding—my first wedding”—ive years ago. The whole ordeal, my first marriage, was a catastrophe, like a first draft submitted to publication. That I got sick before the celebration wasn’t an omen of things to come—it failed as a predictor to future illness, the one that temporarily halted my sanity, the one that exposed the terminal malignancy in our marriage. But that’s that—this is flu-like symptoms on a October morning three weeks before Marriage: Redux.

I admit on this trash can, square in hand, that the conflation of work, writing, wedding and international travel, in the face of State Department “advisories,” equate to stress. Day-job is the day-job and I’ve already said my peace on it. Writing: a desperate search for the new sound, the new way to say, “I’m so lonely” in the new era where deeper horrors are communicated through the wire via snarky microcosms. The wedding remains a mystery: my fiancee’s dress and the first-night undergarments underneath (yeah). And what of London? I need it to save me, but what if? What if we get there, cameras in hand and guidebooks in our bags, and detach our tourist armor, let it all fall in an American pile by our feet, and find our skins capable of blending in with the masses? What if I return to the States unrecognizable? Will I pull a Madonna and discover a latent British accent?

I take a shortcut and get right to the point, or as close to it as I can. I’m still a man, to quote a favorite Tony Toni Tone song of mine. I’m nervous because I’m gripped by more humanistic fears. A story I want to tell my children one day (or nieces and nephews if childbirth ain’t in the cards) is the moment I knew I was going to marry her. The moment contrasted previous meditations on marriage, old thoughts that considered the act as a necessity to the longevity of a relationship, that I had to do it in order to keep the peace, to play my part in the future commiseration of two. Instead, I laid eyes on a woman I hadn’t seen in seven years in a Charlotte hotel lobby. Nobody saw it, the phantasmic explosion before my eyes, the dispersion of amethyst and azure, a mushroom plume of something unexpected, that took place between our bodies, in a space measured in yards. I saw perfection and heard God in my ear. “Don’t fuck this up, writer-man.”

So far, so good. She still seems inclined to take my last name. And for that, I think about sitting on a dormant plane London-bound, cabin lights slightly dim, and I kiss her on the cheek, lower to the neck, living it up like newlyweds designed to make seasoned couples nauseous at the sight of our carrying-on. Carry on, writer-man—carry that weight, boy-turned-man. Is the love I take equal to the love I make? My ex-wife would say no, that happiness is, without question, a warm gun””to the head, no less. I would agree—probably. But that’s that and this is three weeks before touch-down and take-off into Space, the perfect allegory for love and creativity. Co-pilots in a rocket-ship, Moleskine notebooks in tow. I know nothing of tomorrow and, for now, that’s enough to end the rumbles. My stomach settles. I snuff out my cigarette. I stand and head back in, get back to work, resume time’s march toward—

The Day Job – A Writer's Malady

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I step outside and drag a blade of cold air into my lungs.   5:35 AM.   In two hours, I’ll sit at my desk, wait for my laptop to boot up and stare at the pictures, the papers, the brown ring left behind from last week’s coffee. In two hours, I’ll return to the place where, if I choose, I’ll remain until social security forces me to keep working. And I’ll come back again. Dead man working, empty coffin waiting.

Minutes ago, I feigned sound sleep. Couldn’t get comfortable all night long and, through the black, the clock’s bloody numbers seeped past my peripheral, pooled into my direct line of sight, and the time shimmered with chuckles. The morning guffawed at my restlessness and squealed at the stroke of 5:30 AM. Our dog waited in his crate, ready to get going. My body rose, a long sigh lifted my weight from the bed and, between encrusted blinks, we began the ritual.

The wind pumps life into my nerves, previously dulled by insomnia, shocked and frayed now, electrocuted by this damn cold. Mid-September in south New Jersey. Summer refuses to linger; when it goes, its out and you hope for its return. That and the dark reminds me of Bill Withers as the dog tugs, circles, stops and surveys the scenery, then crouches to urinate.

A field, for any other name eludes me, separates two parking lots. Wind sweeps through the low-cut lawn, mowed seventeen hours earlier. Twenty minutes. I unlock the retractable leash and let him run, sniff grass, eat it and putter around the light pole. I try to remain vigilant, on the lookout for rabbits and squirrels and other woodland creatures that’ll stir his ire.

Before long, I look upward and note the transformative fade from black to purple. I should write about it, I think to myself. And I think about the time. The year. The past. Writers before me. And question if I have anything worthwhile to add to the ubiquitous subject of sunrises. In other words, I wonder if I have something new to say. More to the point, I conspire with self-doubt to sabotage my thought process. Long story short, I psyche myself out and begin the traverse to a new topic.

He sits on command and I stroke his black fur, repeat affirmations in his ear, a good dog indeed. The heaviness settles in for the day. In ninety minutes, I’ll sit at my desk, fumble with my Blackberry to check spam mail and overnight messages one hundred-forty characters deep. I’ll sink into a slipstream and drown in jade-colored timelines where fellow followers bemoan anxiety over dreams turned reality. I’ll remember the walk, the field, the purple smeared parallel to the horizon and vaguely recall the conspiracy, as if it occurred years, not hours, ago.

The usual preparations: food in his bowl, coffee maker percolates, my love’s taillights turn the corner toward Philadelphia, I wash, dress, brush, straighten out, brace. One hour. I open the other laptop and shut off the wireless connection. No browsing. No refreshed reports from the blogosphere. We’re talking words and phrases, serious business, and I have sixty minutes to salvage the rest of my day.

Without a character, a theme or voice, I begin to type. Each meaning behind every word meanders without forethought; my sentences stretch beyond the outskirts of brevity, terseness, get-to-the-fucking-pointedness. Little action, less backstory. The narrative swells, its belly pregnant with equal parts density and emptiness and I, voyeur, keep my eyes on its navel.

Two cigarettes down, ten minutes to go. He sleeps by my feet and whimpers to himself amid the unknowable: a canine’s nightmare. The morning’s silence, less still now that the sun is here, rings in my ears like a far-away chime, a singular note hummed as though a television were left on mute. Sound within no-sound. The unbearable tumidity of sonic vacancy leaves my stream of consciousness in shambles. I mutter an expletive. Fuck. I have an 8 AM meeting with my staff and I cannot arrive late. And if I could, no good would arise from it. And even though I should, since I dare call myself “writer,” I am, at least, on the path to said profession and therefore beholden to a day-job.

Third cigarette lit and I start my car. And sit. A free minute before I have to hit the road. I bring up Bill Withers on the iPod and play “Ain’t No Sunshine.” I switch to “Use Me” because its funkier, it knocks from my speakers and, as I shift into Drive, it seems more fitting.

The Day Job – A Writer’s Malady

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I step outside and drag a blade of cold air into my lungs.   5:35 AM.   In two hours, I’ll sit at my desk, wait for my laptop to boot up and stare at the pictures, the papers, the brown ring left behind from last week’s coffee. In two hours, I’ll return to the place where, if I choose, I’ll remain until social security forces me to keep working. And I’ll come back again. Dead man working, empty coffin waiting.

Minutes ago, I feigned sound sleep. Couldn’t get comfortable all night long and, through the black, the clock’s bloody numbers seeped past my peripheral, pooled into my direct line of sight, and the time shimmered with chuckles. The morning guffawed at my restlessness and squealed at the stroke of 5:30 AM. Our dog waited in his crate, ready to get going. My body rose, a long sigh lifted my weight from the bed and, between encrusted blinks, we began the ritual.

The wind pumps life into my nerves, previously dulled by insomnia, shocked and frayed now, electrocuted by this damn cold. Mid-September in south New Jersey. Summer refuses to linger; when it goes, its out and you hope for its return. That and the dark reminds me of Bill Withers as the dog tugs, circles, stops and surveys the scenery, then crouches to urinate.

A field, for any other name eludes me, separates two parking lots. Wind sweeps through the low-cut lawn, mowed seventeen hours earlier. Twenty minutes. I unlock the retractable leash and let him run, sniff grass, eat it and putter around the light pole. I try to remain vigilant, on the lookout for rabbits and squirrels and other woodland creatures that’ll stir his ire.

Before long, I look upward and note the transformative fade from black to purple. I should write about it, I think to myself. And I think about the time. The year. The past. Writers before me. And question if I have anything worthwhile to add to the ubiquitous subject of sunrises. In other words, I wonder if I have something new to say. More to the point, I conspire with self-doubt to sabotage my thought process. Long story short, I psyche myself out and begin the traverse to a new topic.

He sits on command and I stroke his black fur, repeat affirmations in his ear, a good dog indeed. The heaviness settles in for the day. In ninety minutes, I’ll sit at my desk, fumble with my Blackberry to check spam mail and overnight messages one hundred-forty characters deep. I’ll sink into a slipstream and drown in jade-colored timelines where fellow followers bemoan anxiety over dreams turned reality. I’ll remember the walk, the field, the purple smeared parallel to the horizon and vaguely recall the conspiracy, as if it occurred years, not hours, ago.

The usual preparations: food in his bowl, coffee maker percolates, my love’s taillights turn the corner toward Philadelphia, I wash, dress, brush, straighten out, brace. One hour. I open the other laptop and shut off the wireless connection. No browsing. No refreshed reports from the blogosphere. We’re talking words and phrases, serious business, and I have sixty minutes to salvage the rest of my day.

Without a character, a theme or voice, I begin to type. Each meaning behind every word meanders without forethought; my sentences stretch beyond the outskirts of brevity, terseness, get-to-the-fucking-pointedness. Little action, less backstory. The narrative swells, its belly pregnant with equal parts density and emptiness and I, voyeur, keep my eyes on its navel.

Two cigarettes down, ten minutes to go. He sleeps by my feet and whimpers to himself amid the unknowable: a canine’s nightmare. The morning’s silence, less still now that the sun is here, rings in my ears like a far-away chime, a singular note hummed as though a television were left on mute. Sound within no-sound. The unbearable tumidity of sonic vacancy leaves my stream of consciousness in shambles. I mutter an expletive. Fuck. I have an 8 AM meeting with my staff and I cannot arrive late. And if I could, no good would arise from it. And even though I should, since I dare call myself “writer,” I am, at least, on the path to said profession and therefore beholden to a day-job.

Third cigarette lit and I start my car. And sit. A free minute before I have to hit the road. I bring up Bill Withers on the iPod and play “Ain’t No Sunshine.” I switch to “Use Me” because its funkier, it knocks from my speakers and, as I shift into Drive, it seems more fitting.

Touch Down In London-Town*: A Honeymoon In Three Parts

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london-central

*Title borrowed from Estelle featuring Kanye West “American Boy”

I.

While I continue work on the best writer apps for the iPhone review (dammit, I said it’s coming), I figured it’ll be a good time to start a micro-series. If social media experts and blogging aficionados are to be believed, readers love a good micro-series (“micro” sounds better than “mini,” FYI). Besides, it’ll give me a little something to write about as the days tick down.

That is to say, I’m getting married in four weeks. The apartment is abound with excitement and stress as we wrap up last minute things: marriage license, music for the reception and the ever-changing guest list. We originally planned a large affair with all the frills and lace of a Spring 2011 wedding. Eventually, we found ourselves less enthralled with a big wedding; our focus shifted to wanting to get married and having a nice honeymoon in the process. We settled on an intimate gathering in a chic Philadelphia locale and, soon after, we’re flying out to London for a week. Our first excursion out of the country, the first of many (we hope) international trips, and we’re doing it together: we can’t think of a better way to celebrate our new life as a married couple.

So what we have here is the allure, the romance, of a week in London: doing the whole sightseeing thing, bopping up and down SoHo and Covent Garden, checking out a play at the National Theatre (Fela!) and conducting ourselves in the most respectful, least American manner. And yet (yes, there’s a yet), the writer in me is equally excited for the new smells, the sounds, the sights of buildings older than the US itself. I want to do a travelogue, a blog updated daily on our exploits (rated PG, of course). I want to visit old bookstores and hold first editions in my hand. I want to hear the accents and inject them into future dialogue.

My writing is in a sad, stagnant state these days. Very low output, PANK notwithstanding, and a general malaise toward all of my prose, whether it be fiction or otherwise: I could use a pick-me-up of any kind, from any individual, in any country. Secretly, I place a great burden onto our honeymoon, granting it the responsibility to rekindle something lost over the years. Over this past summer, I’ve paired down my techno collection, now a Spartan toolbox of necessities sans bloatware, in the hopes of finding the right mix to help me write during days where hours escape like steam through fingers. A change of scenery, a change in cell phones: both are synonymous with a deeper search.

I’ve never been a religious man, in spite of my mother’s efforts. I squirmed in pews, hemmed and hawed at testimonials and sermons, quietly promising that I’d avoid all forms of ties and dress pants when I grow up. Whenever the preacher sauntered down the aisles, looking for a suspect to save from damnation, I lowered my eyes, flipped through a bible, read with intensity the back of a handheld fan, as though the advertisement for the local funeral home contained more truth and mysticism than the story of Jesus. I’ve had enough faith to remain sane, but not enough to fret over the looming threat of losing it, of waking up and no longer believing in the wisdom of God, in the goodness of man.

Apparently, people go on spiritual journeys to reclaim that oneness with God, with faith in general. A weekend retreat, maybe, or a year-long excursion through Africa or Asia. I don’t know anything about looking for God in a log cabin lodged betwixt the cleavage of some far-off mountain range, or in the eyes of an hooded Indian girl, as if her starving gaze was placed there for me as a conduit to Heaven. But I do feel bankrupt, straight up robbed of my creativity. Creativity. Creativity. Not the act of writing, or the act of connecting unlike objects to weave a muddled, prosaic tapestry. Creativity is fed, yes. Switching out cell phones and laptops and iGadgets have failed, unsurprisingly, to light my fire.

In the back of my mind, I’m asking London to breath its fog over suffocated embers, to bring back their orange, radiating bloom, pulsing with an energy I’ll undoubtedly fail to capture in my writing, but will appreciate and value nonetheless. I’m afraid of asking London for too much, to expect it to do more than act as a wondrous backdrop to the spark my fiancee and I discovered almost four years ago. I know the burden is great as I wonder with a future-projection, “What if London does nothing for me”? Will I come home, jet-lagged and further entrenched in my malady? I want to leave the writer at home. This is the time for my wife and I; there’s little room for third parties. Yet, I consider what writing utensils I’ll bring with me; whether or not I can leave the journal at home and use my iPhone in its place.

To be continued…

@thomasdemary. @altruistic bullsh*t.

Parable of the iPhone

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I had enough...

What can I say? I had enough...

I’m crouched over a blue plastic bin of spare parts: PVC elbows, steel nuts and bolts, and a large green and white pump made in Japan, meant for usage on a project about ten years ago. I’m doing my part at the day job, sifting through old material on the last day of the week-long annual physical inventory. It’s gray outside and I wrote an acceptable amount of prose earlier in the morning; I’m feeling at ease, as if it’s an hour away from quitting time on Friday. I sit up from my stool and turn down the volume on my iPod Touch; Kanye West makes my ears ring. I lean over and pull out my Motorola Droid to check the weather, Twitter and my email. And there I am, once again, holding a device in each hand amid the age of multipurpose gadgets. I say to myself with a whisper, as if I’m ready to release a secret into the world, “I want an iPhone.”

The next day, my fiancee and I browse the local mall, picking up various items for our honeymoon at the end of October. Whenever Verizon Wireless releases a new phone, I find myself at the kiosk in the mall, tinkering with the new gadget to see if, maybe, it’ll fit my needs. This trip is different. Carrying newly purchased luggage, I see the kiosk and the crowd meandering around it. I’m on a mission to understand my hesitancy over the years. I’m watching the Verizon employees, wearing, for some reason, matching lavender polo shirts, and the archetypical iPhone owner, the one that existed in my head for so long, begins to fade. We all know them: skinny-jean hipsters and hooded teenagers, little women with Ugg boots and pixie hair cuts, wannabe rappers with bent baseball caps and gaudy diamond earrings. My judgements of them, born out of something trite like a cell phone, is nothing more than a judgement of myself, as if the Android phone in my pocket makes me better, smarter or less susceptible to marketing trickery.

A few months ago, I rooted my Droid and felt superior to some unknown, nameless, nonexistent audience; my phone was mine, absent Draconian controls by a Cupertino-based overlord. Rooting my phone afforded me wifi-tethering, custom ROM swapping and processor overclocking: things that added a bit more depth to my gadget experience. And yet, some time later, after I spent two late-night hours at the computer, phone in hand, switching ROMs and reinstalling apps on three separate occasions, I had a revelation of sorts. I should’ve been writing, but I was here at my desk, trying to make my phone better. “This used to be fun,” I said to myself. “This used to be simple.”

Simplicity—in terms of writing, it means get to the point, to tell it straight and to be clear. So here I am, holding the new Samsung Fascinate in my hand. Its cartoony, iOS-like interface bothers me; the shape of the phone, similar to the iPhone 3GS in my opinion, appeals to me, its plastic build notwithstanding. But to get rid of the UI skin, I’d have to root the phone and slap a new launcher on top of it. I’d have to hack away to dispose of the default Microsoft Bing seach functionality—Microsoft’s search engine on a Google-powered phone. I look over to the gargantuanDroid X, ruined by Motorola’s own UI skin and its lockdown of the phone’s bootloader, rendering it near impossible to install a new ROM.

I don’t have time for this shit.

But the Fascinate comes with a Buy One, Get Any Phone Free deal—it’s been a personal mission of mine to get my fiancee away from Blackberry. So I ask an employee about the deal, thinking I’d stomach the Fascinate while my fiancee takes on the Droid X. As the middle-aged white woman, with wrinkly neck and fresh-pressed white shirt, click-clacks on the keyboard, I think to myself, “Here we go again.” From the corner of my eye, I see the AT&T store. Yet, I wait for the employee to finish; she looks up and says, “Your New Every Two upgrade is available in two weeks. You can’t use it now; you’d have to buy the phones at full price. And we would charge an additional $20.”

I can feel the sweat bubbling from my forehead. “Twenty bucks? For what? And why can’t I upgrade at the discounted price, at least?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“If I go online, I won’t get charged twenty bucks AND I can get the phones discounted.”

“That’s not correct, sir.”

I know I’m right. I’m a gadget freak; I know the ins and outs of my cell phone contract, I know the loopholes and I know what I can and can’t do. My fiancee grabs my arm as I turn away from the employee, then begin to turn back to curse her out. My fiancee knows me, knows my ins and outs, and knows when its time to pull me away. As we walk away, I drag my luggage and say to my fiancee, “I’m done.”

I’m done pretending to not want something. I’ve wanted the iPhone since it was released and, given I couldn’t afford one, I drummed up reasons for hating it. Indeed, it is not perfect, but I had enough of making a Blackberry or Android into an iPhone. Later that night, I work out the details with my fiancee—she can have the Verizon account to maintain her number, as well as her sister’s on our family plan, and it’ll be under my name to use my day-job discount. With a call to Verizon, an $80 early termination fee and a trip to the AT&T store, things are simpler now. Just get to the point, do what you want and live with the results.

What Do You Want Your Writing To Be Like?

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One of the best readings I saw at AWP 2010 was the Black Warrior Review/Blue Hour Press event. I spent much of the conference in a drunken haze, and to be brutally honest, I don’t really remember a ton of what I listened to over those four self-destructive days (and nights!) spent in the mountains of Denver. What stands out to me most from the readings five months later is the work of a BWR poet. The gist of Chloe Cooper Jones’ reading involved a long poem where each new line began with “I want my writing to be like…” Then she’d follow that up with something funny, but actually pertinent to writing (for example, she told us how much she wanted her writing to be like the first time you saw Mike Tyson as a child, when you thought this boxer had been sent from above to devour the world).

Something about this exercise, of identifying and naming the aesthetic effect you want your writing to achieve, really stuck with me over these last few months. And that’s especially impressive considering the fact that this reading happened during happy hour AND a Rockies game which meant a lot of frat boys hooting and hollering whenever a “lady poet” spoke the word “penis” into the mic. But I think this is a valuable exercise for all writers, and I thought I’d share with you what I want my writing to be like and then you can share yours in the comments section below. What say you, PANK readers, you down?

Ok. I want my writing to be like Short Round and Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Short Round comes onscreen. He’s light, funny, charming, so full of energy. And although you’re pretty cynical, you find yourself laughing at his antics. Yeah, you think, yeah, this kid is pretty funny. But at the same time you’re slightly uncomfortable. Is it ok to laugh at Short Round? Is this kid just a late-20th century redo of   earlier racist stereotypes? Whatever. You let it slide. You enjoy the moment. Then WHAM! Out of nowhere, here’s Mola Ram and he’s ripping out your fucking heart. You didn’t sign up for this shit. You thought Temple of Doom was going to be all giggles and good times. You did not expect to have your heart ripped out and broken right in front of your eyes. This one-two punch of uncomfortable humor and abject terror/heartbreak, that’s what I want my writing to be like.

This is kind of what Im going for in all my stories.

This is the effect I'm going for in all my stories.

So what about you guys? Do you ever consciously think about your aesthetic and the effects you want your work to have on readers? If so, please share your ideas. If not, why? Are you afraid that actively thinking about the circuitry beneath your writing would be akin to plunging sticky fingers into your chest and ripping the beating black heart of your writing out into the cold natural world (see how I brought that heart shit back)?

Salvatore Pane has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has work published, or forthcoming, in Annalemma, PANK Quick Fiction, Weave and others. He blogs at www.salvatore-pane.com.

When Your Writing Space…Part II (aka Mac Love)

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x_obama2

-Photo by Peter Yang, taken for Rolling Stone Magazine

“Just when I thought I was out”¦they pull me back in.”*

“They,” in this case, refers to the objects that make up my writing space. If you’ll recall, I adjusted my desk”â„¢s layout and, after a couple of weeks, I made another change. A small one: my monitor and printer swapped places. As long as I’ve been in this apartment, and no matter where I’ve had my computer, I always maintained a viewing angle to the TV, even with mere peripheral vision. Three years later and I get the gist. In a one bedroom apartment, facing the wall to write creates a barrier between myself and the televised nonsense behind me. Long story short, I should’ve made this moved years ago.

Now, I’m preparing my space for one more upgrade—the final change, I hope. I’ve mentioned my adoration for the iPad and its ability to possibly, maybe, replace my Macbook. Two weeks ago, when I paired my Bluetooth keyboard to my iPad, overcoming the touchscreen keyboard’s weaknesses, I realized I was wrong. I said that the iPad could be an ideal laptop replacement, but not now, not in its current, first generation iteration. My bad. Upon further review, I think it’s ready now; it just needs some creative thinking on my part. And some purging. And to complete a year-long transition.

I bought my Macbook this time last year; I needed a laptop and the netbook I used began to irritate me with its small keyboard and weak-assed battery life. Apple’s Macintosh line intrigued me and, as a tech lover, I wanted to see if the arguments, if the Mac vs PC commercials, if the douche writers and students at Starbucks, were correct. I talked down a “Buy It Now” price on eBay and within days, I tinkered with a Mac for the first time in almost ten years.

Fast forward one year and now, I’m prepping my writing space and tools for an iMac. My fiancee congratulated me for not waking up and getting the computer before high noon—yeah, it’s that serious. Rather than racing to the store, foaming at the mouth, I spent the day mapping out the change, as well as checking my vitals for signs of mental illness. The iPad is at the epicenter of this change. If I go “all tablet,” then I don’t need my Macbook, which leaves a gaping hole at my desk, one big enough for a 27″ iMac.

No need to get into the Mac vs PC vitriol, no matter its high entertainment value. Fundamentally, a computer is a computer; shove a keyboard in front of a writer and he’ll do his thing—or spend a few hours online “researching” for his next project. But I can’t front: programs like Scrivener and Ecto make the science of writing a little easier to conduct. Enough to switch away from PCs and Windows? It comes down to personal preference. Me? Having used my Macbook to write, blog, edit photos and “research” online, I’m a convert. I”â„¢m blinded by aluminum—sue me.

I’m scaling down a lot of equipment. The Macbook, the Magic Mouse, an Apple wired keyboard, my 21″ LCD monitor and, for kicks, a snazzy laptop backpack I got from the Apple Store: consider all of it an eBay “back to school” special. Completing the transition also means addressing my PC tower; I want to keep it and yet, at the time of this writing, it’s stuck on the manufacturer’s splash screen, not even booting into Windows. I turned on the tower an hour ago. I’m all but done with PCs (certainly crappy ones).

I must admit. I’m a little nervous about this move. Using the iPad as a tertiary gadget for media and writing is cool. Moving it up to second string makes it my primary mobile device. And given that the iPad isn’t a stand-alone device, a system failure in my iMac will cause a tech apocalypse in my household, which is why I want to get this PC running correctly. But, to be honest, what I use to write is almost as important to me as the act itself. I’ve gotten up from my desk and started to write on the iPad—or vice versa. This schizophrenic switching has been a part of my writing process for years now. Besides, the iPad itself isn’t the source of my trepidation. It’s switching from laptop to tablet altogether. I think I’m ready. I’m ready, right?

As for the space itself, the iMac will reduce the clutter and the spiderweb of wires underneath my desk. I estimate a 50% reduction in wire lunacy, at least. Also, I plan to make better use of the desk itself; I’ve tried a number of configurations, but it’s still a mess. I blame the printer. No, I’m not getting rid of it; it’ll get shoved over to the center piece of my L-desk; the goal is to have one of my three tabletops completely empty for reading and handwriting. Having renewed our apartment lease for the final time, I’d like to get this whole writing space thing right and, more importantly, get out of my ongoing writing funk. Of course, all of this is a prelude to next summer, when I’ll have an entire room to convert into an office. I’m sure I’ll see a 85% drop in writing productivity when we move. Oh joy–

*Al Pacino, The Godfather Part III
**Note from the author: you probably didn’t notice, but i’m now posting under my real name. It’s a long story, but don’t be alarmed. And if you’re not alarmed…well…that’s good.