Easy Prey

The horror lies within your imagination. Nowhere else. Sleep and you’re easy prey.

Run, run, run, but it’s right there with you. The darkness of being mauled and eaten comes from within because we know what that is.

We do it to every living thing and pretend we don’t. Anything but that. That’s what we say.

Awake and Not

I woke and thought about dying. I didn’t feel right or like I might expire.

There was no pain or discomfort, just a sense of something not working or not wanting to anymore. I changed sides but the feeling remained.

I was just going to end here. Not even a whimper. It was hard to get back to sleep.

Thanks for What?

Leaders never lead. Communicators are never on Communication Committees. If she says, “I am the most loyal person”, you know she isn’t. If he says, “I am wise”, he is the opposite. “My door is always open”, and it never is.

As broad and simple as it sounds, it’s really an ugly thing, the reason for the missiles and executions, the world going to hell all around us. Hope remains the thing. Thanks for nothing.

Malaise or Deep Vein Thrombosis?

I have been anxiety-ridden as of late, much of which is due to writing the final book of my speculative work, The Cx Trilogy. I’ve recently written notes for the outline and even glanced through the first few pages but have mostly been plagued by inertia. Distracted by my literary angst, I packed my toiletries into my luggage for the flight to Greenland, forgetting that I needed my dose of blood-thinner.

I didn’t realize the oversight until boarding and had to accept that I would be fine as long as I walked about on the four-hour flight. I looked down at the continent and then went through the list of the films, stumbling upon Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk starring Meryl Streep as a well-known author named Alice Hughes.

I was pleasantly surprised by the film which featured literary angst, engaging dialogue and a cleverly entwined plot until I was surprised (spoiler alert!!) to see Ms. Hughes suddenly die of Deep Vein Thrombosis. I got up immediately to walk.

Of course there was no real reason for alarm. Ms. Hughes’ case was severe and her writing far more of a success. It was funny, and that was it. Another moment of me thinking the world was about me.

Our Unspoken Selves

Our history is unspoken, a nightmare only the subconscious knows. Human nature is deceit, the oxymoron of how we honestly treat one another and what we pretend for ourselves. From now on, we will sleep no more.

There has never been a record of truth. That was the epiphany of the Nazis. It’s only getting worse now, where the shadows become real, and the nightmare is complete. Because, as horrible as they are, you and I are the very same.

Who I say I think I am

I try to think about who I am and what I know, but I don’t know what any of that means. It’s a thing off in the distance, someplace that I thought I might have been, even convinced myself of that, and have now lost.

I know what I want to be. No, that’s a lie too. Even if I said that I knew what I want, or that I thought that I knew that, I wouldn’t. The more I think that I know the who and what, the more I’m further from it because I think that. It’s a façade.

Confidence is the thing, believing in those lies is what makes you that you in you. The deeper you get, the further you are from the same. A gosh-darned paradox!

And so…something else. Drugs and whores! No confusion there. Or all confusion. Signs of it all gone awry. At least it’s not a façade. Or the façade of facades. Good copy anyway.

Proud as I’m Allowed to Be

I lent her my car and then needed it to go out to the graduation. We drove together and kissed goodbye.

I ended up in a misshapen entourage of graduates as they exited the cathedral and watched them make a mockery of decorum and distancing protocols. They were having fun and the school had to let it all go.

They took me along, and I should have left at my first opportunity, but I’ve always been told it’s a free world, and so I stayed until I had had enough of my mistakes.

The judge accepted all of this, as did my counsel. But not me. I think about what happened and what could have been.

Writing Process: Unconscious Self

I want to write like music. I want to write in a sustained sound. I want to write in a loop that goes around, on and on. I want to write with never-ending tension. I want to write like the opening of a door, the scuffle of feet, the distant sound of something coming soon.

My Bloody Valentine, Hammerstein Ballroom, 2010

I want to write like I dream and see my mother, looking young and sharp, in the car with me to the airport, our bags overflowing out the back, a starship flier picking us up before we even get there, continents vanishing in steam.

View from Crown Mountain, BC

I want to write like it was left unsaid, like eyes see. I want to write in a burrow, like roots to rocks. I want to write words that mean something else in their unconscious self.

Documenta 2017, Kassel, Germany

I want to write like I thought I would.