There is no inverted country

Empathy.

 Life is overwhelmingly, brutally beautiful in so many aspects. Each day is full of experiences that amaze me, and I'm so happy to be alive. 

 It's not exactly e-mail bankruptcy, but something similar, I guess. 

Monday I bought a car, a 1991 Lexus sedan.
Tuesday I drove myself through a flood, then got stranded on the other side of town.
Today's Wednesday. Today's my birthday. I am... apprehensive.

It's May, which I adore.

I have lots of work to do, which is as per usual for this time of year.

I have fresh strawberries & perfect sunny days, which is easily enough. Also, pancake parties & road trips. And this weekend I visited a place I'd never seen before.

I've also developed an obsession with The Fear by Lily Allen. Play it again. And again. And again.

We learn more about ourselves in a moment of heartbreak than we do in a year of happiness. 

And the rest is unavoidable.

Monsters of the mind.
Creatures from nightmares.
Beasts from primal days.
Machines from the id.
Lovers of fantasies.
Cities built from dreams.

I know where they come from, but where have they gone, and where do I look?

I've walked through forests and construction sites, and climbed chainlink fences, and crossed highways.
I've wandered in Brooklyn drunk and confused.
I've slaughtered squawking creatures, tasted blood in the mornings, folded boys' T-shirts, and baked too many pies.
I've boarded buses, I've run through airports, and I've knocked on doors where no one ever answers.
I've drunk sangria, and smoked a cigarette in the tepid August rain, and I've seen the ocean at every time of day and night.
In my dreams I've swallowed bullets, climbed the tower, and uncovered my hair.
There are borders I've crossed and been stripped of all fears.

But I'm still looking. 

& I can't stop walking...

Fantasy exists only as a counterpoint to skepticism. No more. No less. So write only from a position of confusion and ambiguity. Believe in nothing but half-truths and broken promises. Understand that desire is only fleeting, and longing can never be fulfilled for more than a moment. Understand that fantasy is impossible. Know that our desire for utopia underlies all our human efforts: fantasy is politics, fantasy is production, fantasy is art, fantasy is everything. There is no way to tell a story without writing fantasy. There is no way to end a story without repudiating fantasy. Write only from a position of puzzlement. Write only from a position of loss. You will never possess what you desire. You will never touch what you crave. If you admit the truth to yourself, fantasy will break itself the moment you try to use it. But write it anyways. It's dangerous, but it's all there is.

Monochromatics & the Radiant City

Modern life.
Came like a kiss,
left like a curse.

And you know what it brings
 
Washing machines.
Assembly lines.
Chanel No. 5.

Suburbs and forest fires.
Strip malls.
Highways and high wires.
Automobiles.
Interconnections and isolations.

I know, and you know
you've already seen
 
What it leaves?
A shallow city & prison cells.

White mood pills.
Black oil spills.
Tidelines and flood planes,
erasures, departures.
Hurricanes and circumstance. 

A radiant city, cobbled together from desires and dreams. 

Trains once ran
on cold and steam.
Dichotomies drive us forward
Duality is the engine of desire
Duplicity is the force of dreams.

Fantasy is the motor of the future.

You hunger for color,
but there's nothing left to eat
and nothing more to see,

except this city
that i built
for you
and you built
for me.

Not the same visceral awe & spiritual transcendence of the first one, but still the feeling remains -- muted, but it remains.

Why do I love cathedrals so much?  Because the spirituality I find here is my own. Humans didn't build these cathedrals for god, they built them for themselves.  If god was anything like what those builders imagined, He would have no interest at all in these earthly palaces. 

We built these cathedrals for ourselves. Acts of passion, inspiration, desperation and longing, filling each stone.  The awe we feel here is awe at ourselves, our past and our future.  We are all the god we need.

Writing a novel takes a long time.
Rewriting a novel takes a really long time.
I'm trying to do both at the same time.

Not surprisingly, I guess, the work is slow and frustrating. I long for the days of November, lost in the story, words flowing by the thousands. 

After two weeks, I'm 6,000 words into the third draft of the novel.

It's not very much.

But it's something.  

That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Everything exists in opposition to something else.  Our other selves come to us out of the chaos, and ask us to recognize them.

I've been away for a long time. December opens up every year like a black hole, devouring hours. Things go missing, and remain unclaimed: hours, thoughts, ideas. LJ posts. Gone.

Danelle and Brooke came in December. We made vegan food and shopped in antique stores; it was delicious. Matt and I went to south Georgia for Christmas and then to Charlotte. I came home to too much work and finished it in a two-week marathon of long days and nights. Finished. Caught my breath. Somewhere in there we also adopted a cat. Since then I've gotten about two full nights of sleep. I think she gets lonely at night. She's a little crazy, but then again so am I. So I adore her.

I've been thinking a lot about cake. Sometime soon I'm going to try to bake one. Intricate and elaborate. Chocolate and hazelnut. Thin layers of cake and frosting. I've never even tasted a cake like this, but I'm pretty sure it would be amazing. 

In a few days I'll be in Seattle.

Well, this is belated and possibly somewhat redundant, but....

I have a story published in Clarkesworld Magazine -- a speculative fiction magazine that comes out online each month. Clarkesworld is one of my favorite reads, so I'm very excited to have my first published story appear there. There's also a podcast of my story, read by Kate Baker.

Check it out here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/


My next story is coming out in just a couple months.

I made it to the finish line with 50,123 words, just before noon on November 30th.

I still have maybe 15 thousand words left to write before the story itself is finished.

Part of me thinks I should go ahead and do it now while the story is still fresh.  But the other part thinks I should probably take a break from writing fiction for a while, before I achieve utter & absolute failure in every other aspect of my life.

November has been as busy as expected, but I'm actually not failing at Nanowrimo.  So that's a pleasant surprise. 

I'm obsessed with my Nano novel in a way I haven't been obsessed about a story for a couple years.  It's an incredible pleasure to just write.

And so I've discovered something important about my writing process.  All my attempts to "write smarter" by planning and outlining were theoretically sound, but practical failures. 

Beginning with the flimsiest of ideas, and writing with no particular direction at all, turns out to be the fastest way to discover the things I really wanted to say. 

In the end I have no idea if my novel will be publishable or even readable. 

But I'm getting somewhere -- I have a little over 34,000 words as of today.  So that's the first step. 

( What it's 'about'... )