Tag Archives: writing process

Eternal Fucking Recurrence

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“The Hive should be more your thing. It’s tactile.”

“Tactile. You’re really losing me.”

“You can replay the perfect moment, the bra sliding down, the hand against your breast, just that tiny perfection, the closest thing to it, in your head.”

“And then what? What after that?’

“You do it again.”

“Which leaves you with what?”

“Eternal fucking recurrence. Aren’t you programmed to fucking understand that?”

“Your dreams of madness, orgasms, the delight of thinking of nothing.”

“What’s the point in talking about it? It’s sex. Just sex. There aren’t words to go on about it. It’s fucking.”

“It’s not my programming to accept that.”

Aqaara: More Expunged

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“I have no fortune for you today.” Liyuan gave Dee a cigarette.

She reached out with indifference.

“How is Icarus?”

She smoked passively, staring out.

“Sleeping poorly?”

“This is worse than a cruise ship. It’s like high school, always stuck in fucking high school.”“You had a bad time there?”

“Always seeing the same faces, doing the same things, going nowhere.”

“That’s not entirely true, Dee. We really are going somewhere.”

“Jesus, Liyuan, what’s wrong with you? Did you actually like high school?”

“Very much. I loved to learn. It was a very exciting place.”

“Figures.”

New York Subway Story

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“I had a chance to do something another time a week or so after that, on the subway again,” Liyuan offered. “A young boy, maybe 10 years old, was performing a dance for a crowded train, with his father watching beside him.”

The boy approached Icarus again, head twisted to the side, humming a tune to himself.

“It was late at night, maybe midnight, and so I said something this time. ‘There’s a reason for child labor laws, you know.’ He glared back as the train pulled into Union Square. The doors opened, and he kicks me, hard, just like that. I was so surprised by that. ‘Mind your own damn business.’ And he storms off the train, pushing his kid ahead of him. It took me days to realize that I had been assaulted.”

“I liked living in New York,” Dee offered. “The people are real.”

“Even if they’re racists?” Faith demanded.

The Dehanced DMV

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I went to get that new enhanced driver’s license today – something which requires two proofs of address, passport, green card and social insurance card, to say nothing of the undisclosed number of unmarked bills, blood and Stem cell samples. This was my third attempt. A guy stood wavering at the entrance and then puked on the sidewalk. It didn’t seem like a big deal to him, more like he was spitting. The woman at the front door was very nice and upbeat and steered me to Counter 30. I thought that I might actually get my enhanced license, and the counterperson made me even more confident. She accepted my unopened utility bill and asked for my Social Insurance Card. I had forgotten that. I would return. That’s what I told myself as I sat down at my desk and realized I had forgot my glasses on the counter.

Expunged from “Aqaara”

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Fragments are getting set adrift from Aqaara as I trudge through Draft One:

“Lying to your maker, Em. That won’t get you anywhere.”

“I miss you, Dee. I really do. I look forward to seeing you. I think about coming here. I look forward to coming here to see you and my cat.” Em opened her Bearing, glancing through the images. “And then I don’t.”

“There’s nothing worse than high expectations.”

“I keep mine very low.”

“This is cellular,” Liyuan interjected. “This exchange, all of this is cellular. That’s who is speaking to each other, your cells.”

“Ignore him,”’ Dee replied. “And tell us about your politics. They make you a senator yet?”

“Lai got me an Ethi for a present.”

“What do you get out of it? To do your bidding?”

“Her name’s Emma.”

“I mean, what’s the point of it? Does it tell you how great you are?”

“Dee, why don’t I bring Emma here so you can insult her, like you do with me.”

“Insult you? Em, I only talk to you like you were me.”

“That’s it, isn’t it?”

Moby Dick: Learning Through Herman Melville

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A few things I’ve gleaned from the opening 100 pages of Melville’s opus:

  1. Maritime jargon such as “lee of land” and handspike.
  2. Surprisingly non-traditional views espoused by Ishmael: What is worship? To do the will of God. That is worship. And what is the will of God? To do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me. That is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator.
  3. Building a story takes time. Captain Ahab does not appear until page 85, with Moby Dick not even on the horizon. 
  4. That said, Mr. Melville also would have benefited from an editor.

“All In” Trilogy: Teetering on the Edge

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I titled my second trilogy All In, long before General Petraeus’ ballyhooed biography, Chris Hayes’ tedious MSN programming or the latest Marvel extravaganza. The first section begins on the Christmas Eve of 2001, a man teetering out of control following the loss of his brother on 9/11:

There’s just these bits of blackness, and that makes it hard to put everything together. I can see the building on fire and the back of the plane melt in, gone, just sucked in like that, like nothing, and the windows down and the glass and water and me. It is all wall and window, nothing below. I am coming up, all of it hard. I want it. This is what I want. I am in hard. I am not half folded. I am not waiting. I am not holding to anything.I am of this wall, and it all comes down on me, not small or big, not anything, all in my head arched back, my whole fucking body out in light, gone through me, gone through everything, high, released, out from her, not for anything, but hard. I don’t know how much I can really take of this. I’m stuck out. Yes, it’s a story, and, yes, he’s here with me, and this is it. I was going to call Robin, and then the phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer. “Hello?”The second section follows the daughter, the third section, the widow, as everyone drifts toward isolation until a Christmas dinner one year later.

You Know How You Are Exactly That…Then Not?

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You know that moment where you are at the cusp of something real, where you are wonderfully comfortable and still, where everything seems almost as it should be? You know that clear sense of purpose where you know what you need to do, where you know exactly who you are, where you think there could be nothing more to life? And then you know that shift, where it slips, where the edge is not as it was, that was just there and then not? And you know how you are suddenly out of it, where you are just as you were, as before, not sure about anything at all, least of all who you are?

Yeah, well, I get that from time to time too.