Tag Archives: writing process

Numb and Weird: The Joys of Contentment

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It’s a compelling thing to save a fat jolly cartoon king from a dragon. Or not save him and watch his disappointed expression. Or be crushed by molten lava. That was another one. All I had to do was match the little green clovers, yellow crowns, blue shields and red suitcases or blow them up with canons, bombs and spinning magic balls. It was just like Fishdom, the game I had played in the pandemic days.

I made it through thirty rounds and then deleted the app. My head felt weird and numb. I was unable to focus, and a headache was blooming. I turned on the TV and watched a decent enough film about the Fox women getting sexually harassed, although it was irritating in the end because there was no one really to root for. Megyn Kelly as a hero? Yeesh.

Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie in “Bombshell”

I reopened the app and flew through the levels, more than a hundred in four hours. I knew that it was just a silly thing and I would blog about it. And then I ran out of the bombs and magic spinning balls and the bonus time. I would have to either wait for more lives – a new one every thirty minutes – or pay.

I began a book about Poland and Prussian history, Max Egremont’s Forgotten Land, Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia. There was a lot going on here, Teutonic knights massacring the locals 700 years ago and then a constant bloody mess between the Germans and Russians. Not to mention the Poles themselves.

Max Egremont’s Forgotten Land, Journeys Along the Ghosts in East Prussia

I checked my phone. I had five new lives and got on roll, not just the Standard levels, but the Very Hard and Extremely Hard ones too. I planned to stop at Level 200, but I didn’t. I had to wait it out a couple of times, but I got up to 265, my phone occasionally slipping from my hands, my head lolling forward, but I made it, fmatching the little green clovers, yellow crowns, blue shields and red suitcases like a master, exploding boxes the piggy banks and getting the little red birdies and snuggly alligators out of the maze.

It was all about me doing nothing, being mindless, getting to one more level. The thing was that I could do stuff if I wanted to. I really could. But I prefered to adjust my pillow and see what was next. It almost felt something like happiness. Or death. And don’t get the wrong idea. I could stop whenever I wanted. I wasn’t addicted or anything. I was doing this for my blog, research on the idea of addiction. That was the difference. I would uninstall the app soon enough. After the next level.

Witold Gombrowicz’s Cosmos

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What riveted me to the behind and beyond was the way that one object was behind the other, the pipe was behind the chimney, the wall was behind the corner of the kitchen, just like at supper when Katasia’s lips were behind Lena’s little mouth.

Gombrowicz’s 1965 novel Cosmos, the inspiration for my previous blog, deals with the introspectively demented interior of a young man staying at a boarding house.

When, waking at night, we could swear that the window is on the right, the door behind our head, our single orienting sign, the light from the window or the murmur of the clock, enough for everything to fall into place in our heads, all at once and in a definitve way, just so.

This isn’t the stuff we text about, that we comment on, that we are taught, but the stuff in our heads, the unnamable jumble inside, that defines us. If we could only make it make sense.

“Sir, you are a masturbator.”

“Ha, ha, ha, you’re right, berging with a berg doubly, triply, with a particular system of the on-the-quiet-berg at every hour of the day and night, and most eagerly at the family dinner table, bemberging a little under the eyes of my little wifie and daughter! Berg! Berg!”

Unsayable things said, untruth truth, it not it, something half of that, ad nauseum, that is supposed to be let be, sophomoric nonsense, bibble babbling, jimmy jam, like that.

I looked around, everything here below had changed, though it was still light – but a germ of indifference appeared, a crowding and abandoning. something like turning the key in the lock, and the mountains, hills, stones, trees were solely unto themselves and signifying their end.

It is something to find genuine writing, writing that isn’t contrived, that isn’t looking for a publishing deal, but as filmmaker Jafar Panahi says, “those who tell their own stories”, the story for itself, something that makes me think I have to get back to it and will do that soon, out of the morass and onto the bald-faced plain.

I pondered and thought very deeply, tirelessly, yet without a single thought, and I was now beginning to be scared, truly scared.

Tragic Tiny Things

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I had been alone for much of the day, not knowing where everyone had gone. The tide was coming up, the clouds descending.

I climbed the sand bank and went along a row of luxurious homes, peeking beneath the cement pilings to what looked like a little sandy basement piled with boxes and toys. There was no sign, no barricade or lock, just a plastic toy train, which I moved out of the way.

A large group of children followed me. I knew I shouldn’t have let them in and confessed my trespass to the family upstairs who I somehow knew. They expressed their anger with tight faces and phrases uttered under their breath. They forgave me and explained that this was a place of silence, of memorials and things locked away.

It was a moment of revelation for all, letting these things breathe and talk to one another again and express the sadness for our torn lives.

Teen Speak

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I recently received the following voicemail from a student: Actually last week. The calculator. Oh, Jesus, no, no! (Audio unclear)That was so loud. Mr. Ellen might come over here. Here we go, move on. What else you got? We’re running out of time. How’s your day? Because you can’t. This kid keeps asking me questions and they don’t have a question anymore. How was your day? Bob, I’m out. What’s the information? Yeah. It would not be shocking. It would not shock me tomorrow.

Anger > Fear

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I’m spooked listening to my breath, thinking that it might be somebody else ready to tear me apart. I turn my phone around, and there’s nothing there. I’m stupid enough to think that this might be real. A child, still a child.

I’m driving the winding road at the bottom of the city, thinking it’s the next left and never getting there, searching for whatever and it always being ahead. I’m lost. Maybe worse.

I’m on the phone. No one’s answering. I limp across the street. The door won’t open. There’s a siren and then another. I vanish into the dark and walk and walk. The anger comes first and then the fear. I work myself up and get back to the anger. I want that sense of control as the bear chews off my face.

That Millenia-Old Myth

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My girlfriend saw her ex across the room and was insistent about talking to him alone. I could hear everything they were saying, and then I couldn’t. She was gone when I looked over again.

“She had to sort something out with him.” That was the waitress, a once lovely woman with too much mascara. “I hope you have a healthy relationship.”

“The lies of love and how this millennia-old myth has kept civilization barely afloat.” I finished both drinks and ordered again.

There was a graffitied phone booth in between the bathrooms, and the phone actually worked. She didn’t answer. But my mother did. She was disappointed in me and wanted to know where I was. Things just got worse from there.

The Tininess in My Head

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The island where I was born has untold manifestations in my head. It is tiny and vast, empty and overbuilt, extensions from every building, every building gone, the path across hills and prairies, leading to a barren rocky point that never was.

I’ve circumnavigated the island many times, down from a steep ridge, the water choked with ice, a canoe at the ready. I need to go back for a paddle and watch everyone leave. There’s a menagerie of animals in the water, fish and seal, cats and birds, and a miniature sheep that fits in my pocket. Half asleep, I do the breast stroke to the bottom.

A message from my realtor comes through; someone wants to buy the island. I’ve already left. That’s what I text. I don’t intend to return. I get a question mark back and reply with a meme of the sheep in my pocket.

The Man in the Mirror

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I thought it was funny at first, this guy mimicking my every move. He was one of those fake plant people that popped out of nowhere and he got the nervous laugh.

I smiled as I walked away, but he wouldn’t stop, imitating my every step and gesture, every facial expression, always staring back. I wanted him to stop. I told him that. And he said it right back.

“No, I mean it.”

“No, I mean it.”

“I’m not fucking Pee Wee Herman.”

That drew a gasp, especially when he repeated that.

I pushed him, which he did back, and came after me. And so I punched him good and made him hurt. I was the villain and accepted that happily.

Pitching “The Sacred Whore”

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The Sacred Whore is a dark comic thriller that digs into the chronic ills of our spastically contradictory world. We care. But we don’t. What better way to address that malaise than through shootouts, car chases and furiously sexy women?

Sean Baker’s magnificent Tangerine, his first film to focus on sex workers

It begins with a tractor-trailer trip across the country during which one of the sex workers, Corinne, assaults a would-be rapist, altering the direction of their journey. Some of the women – led by Ave and Dorothy – decide upon an outrageous plan to kidnap a college basketball team at the Final Four Tournament and demand primetime coverage to air their views on the moral destitution in America.

Others, led by Corinne, Chantal and Savannah, leave for Las Vegas where they confront JP, the queen-pin in charge of the sex trafficking network. The original group, now named The New World Brigade, dress up as cheerleaders and successfully hijack the college team bus. In Las Vegas, after maiming JP and executing her security team, Corinne is badly wounded by a police counter attack.

Chantal and Savannah find themselves in a hostage-taking situation and reach out to The New World Brigade, hoping to obtain leverage. After tense negotiations with the authorities, The New World Brigade returns with the team to the arena where each of the women post video statements on the travails of sex work. Chantal kidnaps a FBI agent, leading to a car chase in which she and Savannah are both killed. Stunned by this tragic turn of events, Ave delivers an emotional speech on live television, the final scene revealing Corinne opening her eyes to watch the broadcast from her hospital bed.

The Sacred Whore empowers and celebrates sex workers as complex individuals, rather than the tropes and cartoonish figures we have become accustomed to seeing. Outrageous truth drives the spectacle.

Pink PickUp Truck

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The pink pickup truck was just ahead, a car and then the truck. I saw it when we turned, better to the left. It got further ahead, and I tried to keep up. What was that voice yelling in my head? Was it a workman on the street? A bad childhood memory?

The pickup glowed in the evening light, like an artificial starfish, the driver waving her arms back and forth in a steady beat. No, that was a dog’s tail. The dog jumped into the front seat. I picked out our family dog when I was a kid. “Not afraid of that one!” That’s what I said.

I needed to see the driver. I knew it was someone I should know. I changed lanes and then back again. I met a beautiful girl in my Feminist Film Theory class. She had heard stories about me and she still liked me. She said that laughing. I really thought it would work out.

The truck caught the light, and I couldn’t keep up. I remembered missing the bus. Shadows glided past as I navigated the curbs. I couldn’t find my phone and then couldn’t get it to work. I thought about that familiar frustration as I watched her go.