v-day

"HAPPY VD!" as they say on Cake Wrecks.

There are three camps, as we know. Which are you? Like, dislike, or don't give a rip? We're talking about Valentine's Day, not STDs now.

As for me... gosh darn it, I like it. I've always liked it. Even on years when I haven't had a particular someone, I still liked exchanging token gifts with friends and seeing happy couples around (PDA rocks, I don't care what people say. MOAR MAKING OUT PLEASE.). And I think it's important for people's mental health that we have a few shared cultural traditions. It's not a bad idea to put on a smile and celebrate a little, now and then--even when things mostly suck, even if at first it feels forced.

I don't believe in love.

I mean, I do and I don't. As The Vile Scribbler wrote earlier today, "Step back far enough, and absolutely nothing matters because it's all just supernovas and black holes."

Interiorly, I am often way out there with the black holes, as you may have noticed. Not necessarily feeling nihilistic per se... just observing, holding within me knowledge that isn't quite compatible with full immersion in the day-to-day goings on of my animal half nor with the fairy tales of our milieu. Yet, other than those fairy tales--by that I mean our morals, our values, our sense of wonder and inspiration, our decisions, our idealistic visions, our connections with other people and the sometimes-not-precisely-accurate constructs we create to describe various types of interpersonal phenomena, and possibly the so-called user illusion itself--what else is there to make life meaningful? God is dead and we are meat.

(God is dead, I know... but I am not.)

So we're big on "I love you" around here, in spite of being a family headed by a pair of brooding-eyed unbelievers. All of us are forever gazing at each other adoringly and saying those words. Not really forever. But 20 times a day. We smile and laugh a lot, and we play. Some would find us nauseating.

And I cannot guess what we'll discover
When we turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels
But I know our filthy hands can wash one another’s
And not one speck will remain

Optimistic and realistic at once. This was our song for a while. I still like it.

Pairing off long-term is hard work. Or it was for us. Especially the first couple of years. In the beginning (I mean after the pure magic bit) it was difficult to parse everything. My inner noise and someone else's, mixed together, and so much stimulation to muddy the signals. Perhaps it isn't this way for everybody, but for me it was a puzzle figuring out where it all originated--what is going on here? who is bringing which aspects of it? and does it even matter? Am I ill at ease because of the other, or because of what's inside of me already? (Spoiler: it's always the way your edges and the other person's meet, never just one or the other.) Will I ever feel comfortable bringing my other foot inside the door or will I always need to be crouched down and ready to bolt?

I love where we're at now but I don't think either one of us misses the journey.

I think we all wonder sometimes if the pain of coming together with jagged edges is even worth enduring. I won't say that it is. It turned out to be worthwhile for me in this particular time and space, with this particular person. So what? Sometimes it isn't.

NaNoWriMo update #5

Something about this last NaNoWriMo update twists my stomach. I've always found it hard to talk about work in progress. Do I tell you about the plot? No... I hate summaries. Do I tell you my objectives? How gauche. Do I tell you how pretty I think my book will turn out? My arrogance will jinx me; I'll burn the cake for sure.

I didn't win. There's that. That's easy to say.

But what from there? I wrote this entry twice already and didn't like it the first time or the second. Both attempts were dull and analytical. And defensive. And I kept talking up my work up and then catching myself talking it up and not wanting to, and doing it again. I erased them. Truthfully, I can't care right now about NaNoWriMo 2012 or what I could do better the next hypothetical time I attempt the contest. I can't make myself care even a tiny bit. And I want to keep my half-done project clutched close to my chest. So I will ramble rather than deconstruct my experience in any methodical way.

At one point, early in November, I read an article by a famous author who says that he just sits down and writes manuscripts from beginning to end, without visualizing or writing down any ideas, outlines, or characters beforehand. He just goes. Like a rabbit down a race track. Straight as an arrow, all in chronological order. That killed me.

Wouldn't I like to be the kind of genius who just wakes up one day, walks the dogs (I have no dogs), and sits down to write a completely coherent novel?

I thought so. I spent the first week and a half of November finding out that I am not that guy.

Naw, I lied again. I probably kind of knew already. But I was not okay with it. Maybe still not. It's inconvenient.

How it works for me is this: I imagine up some people, one by one. I study them until I know them better than I know anybody. I set them a stage and invite them on board. Then I draw back the curtain and wait to hear the whispers of their goings on. If what happens doesn't move me, I fiddle with some elements and let it go again. I write nothing. I dream, think, play, work with my hands, listen to music, live life with my family, wait for the fire. And then I record whatever demands to be recorded.

It's not something I ever want to try to squeeze into a month's time again. Or any timeline at all. It cost me a lot to do so.

But... it was good for me. I cannot touch it again yet, but I have a strong feeling that I will finish this novel in the not-too-distant future and that I will be sickeningly proud of it when I am done.

Around the end of the month I was reading some Philip K. Dick:

I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind. Not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I'm out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality.

I think I'll yield to reality a little more than he did. But, still. Yes. I want to write about people I love. Hopefully people you love, too. There is too damn much in this world of everything else.

back and such

I'm back.

I've been gone so long, I had time to break my toe, heal it up, and get back to daily running again. Guess who pranced--most dorkfully and barefooted and completely oblivious--straight into a 20 lb kettlebell left lying around in the hallway? Oh, guess...

Let's talk some more about this boring subject for a moment. It was my first genuine broken bone, after all. At first I felt really stupid. Then I felt like a badass muthafucka because I got to tape myself up. I don't know. I get a kick out of this stuff. I mean, I now know the nauseating pain of bone breakage and I got to fix it all by myself. And, as a further boon, I will probably never be kidnapped by foot fetishists. I would rate the experience a 7 on a scale of 1-10.

Ok. Thank you for indulging me. Now I can depart Planet Alienfjords-is-having-a-vainglorious-butch-fantasy and get back to Earth.

First thing, I owe a past-due NaNoWriMo update. I'm not too keen on writing it because I burnt myself out on the whole business. But I'll do it, just because 1) I don't like letting loose ends hang out forever and 2) I already broke my word on the timeline and would prefer not to be even more undependable than I already have been. So that will be upcoming.

Secondly, I have only checked emails and PMs so far and have a lot of catching up to do with blog reading. And I'm looking forward to it. =)

Third, as you've likely noticed, we are rapidly entering into now clearly living in a dystopian surveillance state that is analogous to many evil empires (fictional and otherwise) that I could name and--aside from a few incoherent and/or violent outbursts on the part of people who did not fill their Haldol prescriptions on time--we appear to be mostly taking it like good Germans. (With an extra helping of circus to replace that serving of bread that went missing in 2008.)

The general situation has been going on for a long time, but the urgency of the problem seems to have been kicked up quite a lot in recent months. Perhaps it's due to the bewildering speed with which the last few vestiges of our privacy are departing. Or the rate at which we are making advances in the field of flying killer robots. Or the fact that the people foisting these changes on us seem drunker than ever on power and advancement. Or maybe it's just me, still tumbling down the rabbit hole after three years, having lost my very last scant pocketful of naivete.

This is a matter that rarely leaves my mind. I'd like to write more on it. I'd also like not to be escorted away to the little white room for further questioning before my next plane flight. But we cannot have everything we want, can we?