Reading Writers

There is a distinct sense of time distortion when reading Proust. His sentences stretch outlandishly, almost to the point of incoherence. The pages swell with a literary elasticity that tests the patience and perseverance of the mind. Every sentence is a complete thought. His ability to delve into a feeling, paint a scene, or depict an idea is that of a deep sea diver. He seldom needs to come up for air, leaving the reader to drown in the deep of his words. Once the lungs fill with water though, the sensation becomes pleasant; a unity with his world is achieved. Floating there, underwater, having lost the desire to breathe, the landscape takes on a different light. Plankton and coral seem to shimmer, little legless seahorses gallop past, schools of bubbles swirl triumphantly from dee-sea jets, each ocean creature becomes an oddity deserving its own reverence; the sharpness of the swordfish, the swarthiness of an eel, the inky mystery of a giant squid, the toothy menace of a great white shark.

Why is it that some writers have the capacity for greatness and some do not? Where does that difference arise? It's unlikely that everyone possesses the skill to write well, but, of those that do, why is there such a diversity of ability? If it's true that we are more alike than we are different, and that we all share the same basic frameworks for sense perception, shouldn't each of us be familiar with the range of feelings life has to offer? The answer is: no. We all have the capacity to feel, sure, but what we feel is determined by experience, by the things we are exposed to. Last night I spoke with a friend who said he's never felt heartbreak his entire life. He's in his late thirties. It seemed completely inconceivable to me and I pressed him for more information. After much interrogation I was satisfied he was telling the truth.

We experience unique, personalized spectrums of feeling; of varying depths and intensities. This is why some authors are more relatable than others. It would seem, then, that the authors most suited for success are the ones who have the most thoroughly common experiences and can relay them most clearly. But by most standards, authors are very uncommon people. So this answer also seems incomplete, even wrong.

Maybe writers, the ones who are great, are just the best seers. Perhaps this is what disturbed Borges most about his loss of sight - the symbolism of it all. The most important skill for a writer, the one that above all others makes him adept, is his skill as a reader.

Encephervescence

If there is one thing I've learned in life, it's that, champagne, when drank in such a way that there is always at least one glass in each of your hands, will produce a rather unpleasant effect on the skull the subsequent day. If consumed in this fashion, and rapidly, before the bubbles burst, the drink will make you dance lewdly in public. It will make your tongue soft, causing your words to stumble off your teeth and roll ludicrously off your lips in a half graceful, idiotic sort of drawl.

As the sweet citrus effervescence surges through your bloodstream, throwing fistfuls of little white flowers, singing and skipping, something happens to you after the first glass is gone. A whirling lightness and levity seize you as something sugary spills over the smooth grey grooves in your brain. Wonder and magic. Now, in this moment, pleasantly anesthetized, the world becomes a colorful carousel. Worries fill with helium and float away. The mouth becomes tractable, bending itself into a smile against gravity. Everything is suddenly amenable to a youthful idyllic whimsy. There is the feeling of being in fortune's favor, of having fallen into the gaze of a supremely magnanimous set of eyes.

It's all illusory of course, you're just drunk, the world hasn't actually been transformed. But for you it has. And if the only thing that you can ever really know is what exists just behind your forehead, then, does it matter that the world hasn't changed? You have.

Something French

Lately I have been too much surrounded by things French; French women, French literature, French thinkers and poets, bars named after famous French places. I've even been eating French foods and drinking French wines. Somewhere in my throat I fear an accent may be hatching free from the cocoon where it hides, deep in the caverns of my tonsils, hanging upside down like a bat from my epiglottis, spreading its flowery wings and tickling my tongue, curling it up at the back of my mouth, creating something distinctly French.

Still, despite this sudden and unintentional immersion in French culture, I find myself craving more. The poetry of Verlaine and Baudelaire beckon me, though I know nothing about them. They are names that spring up again and again. Just now I even considered resurrecting my dear friend Proust, whom I'd left so long ago, in the middle of Swann's Way. Earlier today I finished Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers. A lovely book he wrote about relishing the scent of his dirty prison farts. In between masturbating beneath lice-ridden bed sheets and cupping the scent of fetid flatulence to his nose, Genet regales us with graphic tales of homoerotic love and lust. It's fun for the whole family, really. He achieves something that is both incredibly unique and repulsively intimate. There's nothing I can say about it that Sartre hasn't already said, and better.

I just ate a bag of cookies. I wonder if they are from France. Nope, they are American. Perhaps I will learn French and write a sordid little tale about eating cookies and farting. Of course an arrest will have to be made, so that I can write it from a dreadfully dull and unforgiving prison cell, but that is no matter. I will call it Monstre de Biscuit. It's already deliciously euphemistic, serving as a double entendre without any additional effort on my part. Even the phrase double entendre is French! Can you see my predicament dear readers? My fate is sealed.

My French interest, she is back in France for the time being. She will return soon enough though and we will embark on a wild journey, the kind you might read about in a dirty French novel. We will ride gallantly into the glowing orange horizon, in pursuit of the setting sun, until we are greeted by fast falling liquid twilight. There, under the dark azure of swirling night, which gives birth to dim and distant stars, we will approach a remote yet tastefully adorned dwelling, to perfume fine sheets with the fragrant sweated scent of our love. Burning passion will line the sky in luminous streaks, screaming overheard, across an invisible atmosphere full of cold comets arcing, leaping over the earth like skipping stones. Our pleasure will be dizzying and deep. Celestial secrets will be told to us by the thin, pale circle of a solar eclipse, which, whispering in hushed tones of soft light, will illuminate a yellow disc, a sun for our hearts to move around in smooth circles. The gentle warmth humming all around us will seem to us the glimmering wings of numerous, imperceptibly small, yellow hummingbirds. The four walls where we roll ourselves into and over one another will be as thick, as gaseous, and as vast as great budding nebulas, smelling of farts and sex and semen and musk; of sweet, smitten, loamy humanity. Oui.

Oui.

Sounds like wee wee. Which is slang for penis. What would I name my penis? Something French. Something small.

Napoleon!

Maybe it's Multitudes

Almost everything was accomplished yesterday. The Profuser's birthday, pleasant conversation, sunshine, laughter, The Jesus and Mary Chain. I met Q for what I thought would be a quick sit down sandwich, but instead become something closer to a drive by luncheon. We survived with only minor injuries; the car sustaining a few baguette sized bullet holes, and Rhy's shirt dappled with dollops of creamy tomato soup. The three of us, Q, Rhys and I, made our way to Golden Gate Park to find where the Profuser's party was. We nearly crashed three different parties in search of the one we intended to intrude upon. Everyone drinking in San Francisco looks the same. The gathering was a success: everyone was in good spirits, there was enough food and drink for all and the weather smiled kindly on us. At one point there was a rabbit on a leash. Rhys had more energy than a little burning sun and he chose me as the one to unleash it on. So we chased each other around and uprooted innocent dandelions, he giggled and roared and tried to knock me down while I tickled the laughter from his ribs. Interestingly, the women of our group were somehow impressed by my actions. They made remarks like, "Wow, I didn't know you were good with kids," or "look at you, who would have known?" I wondered what I'd ever done in the past to suggest I didn't like kids. Maybe it's the beard and tattoos and generally bashful disposition that gave them that idea. Maybe it's Maybelline.

I had some lovely conversation with a mutual friend whom I don't often see. We waxed philosophical and got deep. Then I changed course and began talking about fleshlights shaped like Richard Simmon's anus. I even suggested that the lubricant provided with the purchase is made from the oily secretions of his skin. My friend commented that what he liked most about me is my ability to exist in a cerebral, very literary, highly philosophical state, and then spin on a dime into the crudest, most vile baseness he's ever seen.

I took it as a compliment. I contain multitudes. They are all in my balls.

P.S.

The Jesus and Mary Chain were terrific. They achieved redemption for their past performance at the Fillmore two years ago, which was so poor it bordered on offensive. Last night was magic. Even without the aid of alcohol or marijuana, I had a moon-sized smile spread across my face for most of the show. I'll write more about this, but I don't have the time. Perhaps tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.

The Sensation of my Sinuses

Sick days are remarkably rejuvinatize for the soul. Yesterday I read an entire novel, discovered several new bands, uncovered the secret to a few of life's mysteries, and still had time to play my guitar. I'm trying to learn some hillbilly fingerpicking styles. They are hard. It requires your fingers to perform two very different functions at the same time. With your thumb you must stroke the bass notes that make up the rhythm portion of the song, and with your remaining fingers you must play the melody, which often requires careful syncopation. Explained this way it sounds easy enough, but the mind stumbles and repeatedly trips on one or the other, sometimes both. What's puzzling about it, to me, is that I don't understand why it's different than playing rhythm chords while singing a melody. In that case, your mind must separate out the rhythm and the melody and simultaneously synchronize it to produce the song. I guess what's different with fingerpicking is that the mind can direct two different functions to two different parts of the body - the vocal chords and fingers - but it is not so good at having the same body part perform two different motions at the same time.

Practice. Practice will get me there. The thing that's strange about practice is that it's just repetition. It turns Einstein's old advice on its head: you keep performing the exact same steps that led you to failure, over and over again, expecting to, at some point, achieve a different outcome. Until eventually, you do. It is madness. There is a kind of absurdity to it that almost borders on religious fervor. Without hope, or faith - that your efforts will be rewarded, that you will eventually produce the desired outcome - practice seems as silly as prayer. When we practice we are counting the beads of an invisible rosary clenched tightly in the desperate fist of our imagination. Practice is a prayer to the god of self transcendence.

Today is the Profuser's birthday. I think he told me he is 420 years old. There will be a party in the park. And tonight is The Jesus and Mary Chain. And tomorrow is a music festival in Sonoma. I wish I weren't sick. All of these would be much more enjoyable. Perhaps I can learn how to embrace the sensation of my sinuses and relish in the lightness of my hot air balloon head. I might enjoy that sweet, swelling, vacuous expansion of my nasal passage, the oozing mucus membrane, the sandpaper scratch of my cat tongue throat, that pleasant pressure pressing the inside of my head against the bend of my skull. I'm getting wet just thinking about it, really. Well, my nose is, I mean. I just need to find a nostril-sized cock and all will be well.

I wonder if the Profuser would let me borrow his, to use as a sort of Q-Tip; a snot pocket for his little red rocket.

A Pleasure

(Shoe grazers)

I'm fallen prey to the charm of a new album. Not new; new to me. It's called Pleasure by Pure X. The band name and the title are a perfect marriage. It's slow, shoegazey psych rock with a slight sprinkling of pop, just enough to get the heart carbonated. Straight from the opener the band lets you know they are going to lull you into the fuzziest, most blissfully sedate dream state you can imagine. After the brief opener, which sounds like a liquid echo transformed into rising vapor coming up off of steamy, candlelit bathwater, they launch into a Jesus and Mary Chain-esque opiate groove that makes you want to stare at a ceiling while coming down off of good ecstasy with a beautiful, naked girl on your arm. Believe me - it's a feeling I know. The song is called "Dream Over" for fuck's sake; what do you think it's about?

There's an oddly indifferent quality to the album which creates a tone that is so cool it's almost bashful. The vocals often hide shyly behind such thick walls of sound that the listener has to strain to hear them. This is most beautifully represented by the track "Easy." "Surface," the longest song on the album, has a smooth, sexy, droning sound that borders on hypnotic. Near the end of the song high pitched keys squeal, they warble and bend out from the speakers in ribbons and tickle the tired synapses in your mind. It is perhaps the song which most embodies the soft listlessness this album produces, even more than the title track, "Pleasure." 

It's a great listen, start to finish; a pleasure.

I was home sick today and had it on repeat while I bored through Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It took me many more months than it should have, but I finally finished it today. Now I'm free to move onto the finer things, like Nabokov.

My skin stinks of disuse, and of fevers. It smells like warm bedsheets and stale air. Something about this is enjoyable, though. It smells real.

Dog Would

I am tired. My mouth is dry and something inside me is twisted and confused. I feel like an abused dog would. I got home late and drank many more beers than the zero I wanted to have. Today will be busy, an important day at work. After, I will meet a friend who is traveling north to greet me. We will go to a restaurant and get caught up with our affairs. It will be nice to see her. Then I will be granted the thing I want most from this day.

Sleep.

I, Doge

Flickering memories of a weekend flashing.
Drunken lightning leaping, skipping through my mind.
A flurry of droplets fall
from full, swollen clouds.
The rain gently erases dry patches of dead ground,
cools scorched footprints along the spines of sprawling dunes,
makes sand smooth.
A colorful bow bends between tall mountains
encased in cold mist;
her frozen smile
smeared across my sky.

A shower of sun drowns the dark.

From the wet earth grows a green vine,
her lips wrapping around mine.
Flowers bloom.
Liquid light spills from small pollen irises,
drifting delicately down
the bent petals of her lashes,
sad and tender.

Her laughter perfumes the open air.

Winds rejoice.

I breathe her in.
She is a puddle I lap at like a dog.
Rushing through her wet fields, panting,
rolling myself in her mossy secret,
barking with my tail wagging,
my dumb dog-eared heart beats for her beauty.

Penance

Heartburn and sleep paralysis. Too much beer. A drinking game. A bag of potato chips. Flirtatious women are matadors for foolish decisions. Little sleep. Now, as penance, I will go sweat the India Pale Ale from my veins. The vodka Kool-Aid, too.

Relatives

There's an orange, window-shaped light pressing itself against the wall across from me. Though they are white, the walls appear soft blue. This color too has stolen in through the window. It is the color of the last blue in the sky, before it turns to ink. As a moment it is brief. Already it is nearly gone. The orange will remain and appear to intensify as the ambient light fades. It's a strong illusion, relative brightness. Our eyes feel it most when coming out of a movie theater or dark aquarium, in the foglights of a passing car. Relativity, as a concept, governs our lives more than perhaps anything else. Not relativity in a scientific sense. I mean, as one thing relative to something else. When we are happy it is because we feel better relative to our baseline. When we are tired it is because we have less energy relative to our norm. Things that are interesting are more fascinating due to their relative uniqueness compared to something else. All of this is just comparison. But comparison is how we ascribe value, worth, meaning. It is a process of interrogative observation used to discover difference and degree. For some things it is more difficult to make an assessment about relativity. Which love was your favorite? Deepest? Most memorable? Passionate? Is maternal love stronger than romantic love? Is young love more intense than mature love? Which is better?

What are the limitations of comparison though? Realistically our sample size is handicapped by space and time. We can only compare things to other things which we know about and can see and measure. We are limited to that which is observable. Which is a lot, certainly. But it is not everything. How much of what we see is influenced by what we cannot see? How much of what we cannot see is concealed by what we see? A well known picture intended to illustrate this point comes to mind. When a child looks at this drawing they see dolphins. When an adult looks at the same picture they see a man and a woman in an intimate embrace. Our perception is colored by the frameworks and complex mental scaffolding erected by time. It's not just time though, it's the literal physical makeup of our bodies, our brains. Consider that there are concepts so alien to us that we cannot even think them. Our thinking is practically Pavlovian, conditioned by our condition.

There is no true precision, no perfect circle. Isn't it strange to think that every thing is ever so slightly imperfect. In a way, it makes ugliness seem beautiful.

I'm not even drunk or high and this still doesn't make sense. I've been writing for too long while doing other things. Distraction is death to a cogent idea.

I'm tired.

Flagpole

There is a waxing moon on high. Below it a city is sleeping. Cool wind rides the air. Leaves blow. Inside a house on an darkened street, a light comes on. A woman crosses the window. On the windowsill a sleeping cat purrs listlessly. A cold traffic light changes colors for invisible cars. Red, yellow, green. Down the road, in front of the elementary school, an empty soda can rolls over pavement. Quiet. Footsteps are heard. Bouncing off the brick walls they echo obliquely. A flag waves. Near the bleachers there is hushed laughter. Smiles. The sound of mischievous youth. A girl. A boy. They leave arm in arm, drunk on discovery. A charmed curiosity keeps the night caffeinated. Enchantment bustles about them. All the world feels different, magical. Their bodies hum like singing bowls. The moon seems closer now, like they might reach out and touch it.

A Danger

Ugh. My head is throbbing. I have not known a hangover yet this year. Nearly five months. I'd forgotten about that sweet, swelling feeling of withdrawal. I am like the tide.

It was worth it though. Much fun was had. A thing that was necessary. A door was opened. Whether or not I should enter is a different story. Am I still drunk? Why am I writing like this? All of these sentences are too short. On top of it all I am sunburned.

I don't remember leaving her last night. Well, kind of. I remember being completely drunk and realizing I should go. So, I did. I remember being in a strange part of town and not knowing how I got there. Perhaps I rode the bus too long and fell asleep? That sounds right, actually. I smell her perfume. It is intoxicating. I have to meet a friend for brunch. She's driving from Cupertino. I will need an extra large mimosa to battle this feeling.

Alcohol is evil. It's allure is irresistible. Like a dangerous woman.

I'm going to go eat a banana and see if I puke.

Glutenberg

Despite having had three beers and the skin of a knee last night, I still woke up before 7:00. Sleep took me early, probably by 10:30, so I guess that's a decent night's sleep, right? There was the intention to go to the gym, or to do yoga, but those goals are waning now. I'll decide once I finish this post. The weather today is purported to be cloudy. It looks it. Yesterday I had some photos printed. I picked them up after work. Because it was the first time I had ever printed anything, I made a few mistakes. I didn't adequately brighten the photos before handing them over to the printer, so some of them are a bit darker than I would have liked. When the ink soaks into the paper it takes on a darker tone than it does on a backlit computer screen. Go figure. My choices of paper yielded interesting results, too. Some photos are too textured, others have too strong a sheen. This was experimental, mainly, and I've already learned a few things from the process. Soon I will be a powerhouse - a proud printing press painting up the flat faces of dead trees. It is the closest I will come to being a cosmetologist. I will demand to be called Glutenberg; not just due to my association with the printing press, but because of all the iceberg lettuce I eat, and my killer glute workout. I will be strictly gluten free as well, to appeal to certain digestively impaired women.

After I picked up the photos I stopped off at a bar across from the printshop, to have a beer before returning home. Have you ever gone somewhere and had a creeping feeling you'd run into someone you knew? Just after my beer arrived, my friend Christine walked in. We chatted for a few minutes about our days and I showed her the photos. She enjoyed them but was supportive of my disdain.

"You're an artist," she said, "you need to think everything you do is terrible."