Writing Process: Out of the Muck

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I had a dream about a broken-down electric dog, its wiring hanging out, paneling split open, trying to climb out of a muddy hole, pawing and digging and getting nowhere. I didn’t like it.

As much as I might tend to deflect and joke about my current malaise, it’s what depression might be, realizing how pointless everything is. It’s a dark fucking cloud, not knowing what to do, which direction to turn, to carry on or not, giving up and admitting the failure. Drinking to that. It isn’t a good feeling. It’s shit.

And then it’s not. It’s something else. The light. A sound. A thought. Something to do. Not phone games or social media, but the work, things that need to be done. First things first: stuff the wiring back in and get up out of the muck.

McGahern Knew His Dead Animals

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Irish author, John McGahern, known for his simplicity of prose, writes the following in his 1990 acclaimed novel Amongst Women: The cut field looked completely empty and clean. As Rose and the girls were crossing the grass to the tractor, they almost stumbled over a hen pheasant sitting on her nest. They were startled that she didn’t fly until they saw the feathers on the cut grass. The legs had been cut clean from her while she sat.

Not a pheasant nor missing legs…but on its way out

Her eyes were shining and alive, a taut stillness over the neck and body, petrified in her instinct. “The poor thing,” Rose said. “Still sitting there.” Neither could bring themselves to look again. All that was left of the hen the next morning was a little scattering of down and feathers on the drying grass. “A fox or a cat or a grey crow. Who knows?”

Truth as a Sitcom

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If there is truth in a contrived show with a laugh-track, then what? It’s just drinks from there on. Isn’t it? Or am I wrong?

Ali has a hard time saying goodbye

Or to be more opaque, the rich are always looking for discount deals. And they don’t need them. That’s the point of being rich. And if anything, they’re greedier for the deals than anyone else. Or am I wrong?

Venice canals

As far as I understand it, we have only two options: a. Have nothing and dream of having something OR b. Have everything and dream of having something else. Or am I wrong?

Graffiti art outside Brooklyn prison

Malaise or Deep Vein Thrombosis?

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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.

Living in Fear

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I’ve made a lot of decisions as of late – or they have been made for me – that have brought me to here. And so I now live in fear. Not so much of the world and death and all of that but of the person I have become and what I am to do now.

Angoraphobia is the fear of open spaces and crowds – the Italian author Alessandro Manzoni famously suffered from this – and that is what I feel like I have, not of a physical space but what is now in my head.

I have sought to find something that means something outside of sex and booze and have put myself on a quixotic quest of words to make sense of that. There are no editors, agents or publishers out there as of yet that see my prose as anything beyond sophomoric and unsellable. And that is hard. And I guess the point.

And so I will fly to Copenhagen from here (JFK, if you haven’t guessed) and on to Ilulissat where I either affirm my sophomoric drunken self or write something of worth. Or both. It is to be the end of the trilogy, a book that has been sitting in wait for some years, the arrival to another place. Not here.

This is where my mind is most often. Not here, this godforsaken place where we’ve plunged into the digital wasteland, where words and thought mean no more, but out there, another place, where others have gathered to start the experiment again and find what the hell is so precious about a species fucking hell-bent on self-destruction.

And so, yeah, I live in fear. That is, when I bother to think.

Our Unspoken Selves

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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.

Ari Aster’s Mommy Issues

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Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid tries to be Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche but ends up more Darren Aronofsky’s Mother, an exhausting and unintelligible portrayal of deep psychological damage. There is some very good stuff, including then many 180-degree pans, the match-cut transitions, the blue paint overdose scene and the fantastic animated sequence.

But there is much more of the very bad stuff – countless scenes tediously rendered – and very stupid stuff too, including the inane finale and, yes, the penis monster.

After the stellar work of Hereditary ($10 million budget) and Midsommar ($9 million), this is what Aster does with $25 million? Yikes. What’s next? Courtside seats for the Knicks?

Top and Bottom Five Coen Brothers Films

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Maybe I’m doing this blog out of spite. Against whom, I don’t know. Not the Coens. Why would they care? More likely against the peons who profess their love for The Big Lebowski, which isn’t a good film at all. The Bottom Five Coen Films: Intolerable Cruelty, The Lady Killers, Hail Caesar, True Grit, and, yes, The Big Lebowski.

How is it possible that these films were made by the same guys who made (Top Five): No Country For Old Men, Raising Arizona, Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo and O Brother Where Art Thou? And by the way, why do people capitalize the ‘b’ in Coen brothers? That’s wrong too.

I Have An Expiration Date Too

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I’ve been hearing the rabbits screaming at night. Have you been hearing that? I was told that it’s just the dogs killing them.

As soon as the veil goes down, that’s when I thought I would know something. But then it wasn’t that. I was just pretending, and that was it.

I’m here. I think I know that. I mean, I look back and remember most things. But I remember who I thought I would be. And I’m good. Almost.

We Have an Expiration Date

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I have blogged on my concerns for the future as of late, a dread that worsens daily. Henri Charriere concludes his opus of astonishing escapes, Papillon, with the following thought: We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life easier and better.

The craving for every scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding and nobility. It leaves no time for caring what happens to other people.

Charriere wrote those words in 1970, 53 years ago. And how much worse is it now? And how much worse is it going to get? (HInt: Much fucking worse.)