Opened up Microsoft word and chose the font. Went with Cambria Math in fourteen-point. When I first started writing I thought to write straight into Times New Roman, twelve-point font, but that's better for proofing. Still dip back into it pretty often, it's not bad at all. It reminds you what you're doing, which is nice.
Pretty quickly I switched to Courier in ten-point. I would still use that for some stuff. I do not like Courier New. I quit using Courier when I began to feel that I had mastered my old typewriter, which I threw in the garbage in a fit of ego-destroying, memory-driven madness as I gruesomely extracted myself from a narcissist. I had stopped using Courier and its bastard before that, but more recently than I might care to admit maybe. Two and a half years ago.
This is really basic font-talk, I'm boring the shit out of myself, and the reason I am writing here instead of in the word document I opened is of course that despite my bravado, I am terrified to begin. Hilarious.
*
Started banging out stories with a purpose at the age of eleven. My fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Bates, made us, called 'em Super Subjects. Just little freewriting exercises. Ole girl knew what she was doing; I was a discipline issue when she took over halfway through the year, and before long mostly all I thought about was how to impress her with my writing. She was fucking tough, see. I sweated over the book reports she assigned and crumpled up I don't know how much good paper getting a paragraph just right.
Get 'em while their ego is as enormous as only a child's can be, before too much self-consciousness has set in but the process is in motion. I actually hungered to read my work in front of the class. Immigrant boy, best writer in the class. Yeah I fucking liked that. I was, too. Ms. Bates didn't talk to anyone about their writing like she talked to me, not even to KdB., who was and remains to this day fifty times smarter than me. An essay I had to write for D.A.R.E. about why I would never do drugs was selected as the best by the program people and I was put up on stage in the auditorium to read it aloud in front of all the fifth-grade classes. That this should have been my first professional success is perhaps a damning mark over my career; I'm stoned right now and also am a fucking alcoholic.
Hell, I knew when I was filling out those D.A.R.E. worksheets that I was putting on an act for these people. I could feel already that I was fucked up. I remember consciously and cynically putting a tremble into my hand when I filled in some bullshit about how I didn't want to drink because blah-blah-blah and I've seen what drink does to my uncle. More on him another day, there's always good stories around a drunk*. I would be stealing nips from the fine tequila my dad had a bottle of in the freezer right after I got home from school within two years of reading that essay in front of a bunch of beaming cops and teachers.
"So far above his grade level!"
lol
Anyway, the problem with writing is it can get out of your hands, become bigger than you, drive you around. When you're a kid it's just something you do, even if it's something you are; it feels more like a choice even though it's really unchaining a drive which, when liberated, will perversely never let you go. No matter what goes wrong, no matter the severity of the ego death or the blindness of drink, you just fucking keep writing. Mostly just to see it burn.
*
So, beginnings are hard, maybe even triggering. That's why I wrote this blog post instead of a single sentence. But it's loosened me up, see? I'm not as nervy as when I sat down. I got a rhythm going and I'm not done with the good good fucking great-ass feeling of punching keys. So I'm gonna try again. Forget all the important work I lost; get hard and go. Writing is Ironborn: what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger. Words are wind, and everything is built on the wind.**
*
Ready to start again.
--JL
*I cannot help but notice, dear reader, that the most hit-upon posts on FP are usually the ones which rely on what I have called the sordid tonal qualities of cigarettes and alcohol. I see you motherfuckers. Well, so be it; I'm finna bring some drinkin stories out this fall for sure. Maybe even tomorrow.
**profound thanks to George R.R. Martin, who is a greater writer than he is taken for; I am aware that the man has risen high, but I stand by my statement. Like Stephen King, he is so fucking rad that to call him merely a great writer is to mildly insult him. The dudes are writer's writers and reader's writers in a way that will outlast much around us that will soon be deservedly forgotten. Speaking in a literary sense. They are at the center of letters and as universally despised as they are popular and beloved for a host of good, bad, simple, and complex reasons.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Monday, September 23, 2019
#214
This year, the first of September, summer died all at once. Autumn was present immediately, with a finality and a completeness that startled, but with such correctness, such inarguable factuality, that the calmest sense of the harvest season blankets the spirit.
Some grieve the end of summer, but autumn is far and away my favorite time of year, and it was a privilege indeed to be out and touched by its very first breeze of the year, complete with the first sparse and gentle fall of little yellow leaves.
Spent at least a couple hours outside almost every single day this summer like I do, also. Feel like I got a real good strong pull of the season's bottle all the way through, which helps very much with transitions. Transitions can be rough.
*
Yesterday on my usual Sunday double I sustained some real hardcore burns. That was the fun part. The main thing was I had to clean putrefied human feces and shit-impregnated compost from an upright plastic bin, the wheeled kind with a hinged lid. This was quite a process, during which I heated, carried, and poured about forty gallons of soapy water in stockpots. I also used pine floor cleaner. Why not bleach, or any disinfectant, Joseph? That is probably what you are asking.
Because of the kind of workplace I choose for myself (bleach is poison with no excusable human use in those circles, much like canola oil), there is no bleach on the premises. Probably for the best; should I have had some handy, I cannot guarantee I would not have poured undiluted it over my legs and feet when I lost control of the bin and released a tidal wave of rotten shitwater into the back alley, dousing everything below mid-shin. Then again, I would have felt considerably more confident I wasn't going to develop a staph infection in the time it took to finish the job, drive home, wash off, change pants, and drive back to close out the shift, which I did by shattering a huge panel of safety glass on our salad bar--if there had been any bleach around. But there wasn't.
Also a dude called off a three-person crew, so it was all suitably overwhelming.
*
It's a fucking gorgeous autumn day. I'm having a rough time, but because of how bad yesterday was, today feels exultant and unquenchable, and would even if the light weren't golden, the breeze cool, the trees blushing beautifully, the sky that lightest evening blue, extra distant, extra keen.
Sometimes it's be thankful or die. I mean to stay thankful.
*
Picked up more Stephen King books on Saturday, as I read The Shining again and have never read Doctor Sleep, which was among the ones I had not yet grabbed. I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie when I went to see It: Chapter Two and it reminded me it'd been years since I reread The Shining, which used to be a favorite and which reliably made me mongo-freaked the living shitfuck out. That book is still a hellacious creepshow. It creeps. Thank heavens.
Loving Doctor Sleep so far. I had no faith that I would when it was released, but I was wrong, which is kind of always the consequence of lacking faith. Faith bears disappointment better than certainty, which is vanity in the first place. But it is amazing how consistently faith bears out; miraculous.
I need this book right now, in fact. With that magic pertaining to wonderful books, it waited till I needed it most. The feeling of needing a drink might be on me very strong right now, were it not for these two books.
One year sober, folks. No one to give me a chip to carry on my keychain, no cake or candles, but I guess I can share that here. Actually it was a year back in August, but it don't matter.
'Course, I been sober for a year before. Haha! Staying thankful.
*
Anyway, the books:
Saturday
Doctor Sleep
Mr. Mercedes
End of Watch
Dolores Claiborne
The Institute
Sleeping Beauties
Today
Blockade Billy
And, other books not by Stephen King that I also obtained:
Saturday
At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing edited by George Kimball and John Schulan
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (recovery, given to my younger brother)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Today
Neuromancer, by William Gibson (recovery, given to my youngest brother)
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett
What is the What by Dave Eggers
The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
The Song of Roland translated by Frederick Bliss Luquiens, introduced by Nathan A. Smyth
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
Jangle the Threads by Scott Beal, Aracelis Girmay, and Rachel McKibbens
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak (recovery, given to a friend a long long time ago feels like. I guess twelve maybe thirteen years is a long time but when I use the numbers it feels like less time. so weird)
Dragon of the Lost Sea, Dragon Steel, and Dragon War by Laurence Yep (I checked this series out from the library like a dozen times as a kid, I fucking love the shit out of them. Now I am heedlessly driven to obtain Dragon Cauldron, maybe the best of them and definitely the creepiest. I read that one the most as a kid, and was able to get my hands of Dragon Steel fewer times. The first and last of the series were around about the same frequency. I don't know why things just play out like this sometimes but there is always this kind of reverse play in life with stability mixed in. Wild)
Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, by Rodman Philbrick
After Dark, by Murakami Haruki
The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well, by Philip Pullman
Animorphs #51: The Absolute by K.A. Applegate
The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well, by Philip Pullman
Animorphs #51: The Absolute by K.A. Applegate
*
Been driving around a lot. I drive again, I guess. All part of the endless healing. Gonna go do that now.
Peace, you golden clits
--JL
Thursday, September 19, 2019
#213
Boy oh boy, people of Earth. It is such a time to be alive.
Often as I walk to and fro I am reminded, because of my propensity for inhaling smoke on purpose (really? Think about it. Really? What a stupid fucking monkey is a man) how amazing it is that the air is still breathable at all. Dirty enough, though. I can tell shit is worse because cities smell like shit. Cities always have, but man, my sense of smell has only gotten worse and less sensitive as I have aged, and I think every city, every town, smells way way worse than in 1995. Man, I went to New York a few years ago, and I never in my life want to go back. Talk about a location that is its own brand of ordure with every step you take. New Yorkers are a proud people, and rightfully so; it is possible that no other city in the world presents such a complex assault on each and every sense the human body possesses, and to be a part of the tradition that has brought about such a state of affairs is surely the province of a powerful culture. God love the place and all, but I wanted to sink down to its bedrock and die there, where there is nothing to smell at all.
Anyhow, we'll get the turtles, and the crocodiles, some other shit that made it since practically the start of the game, but the algaes and the jellies and the sightless worms that feed on heat in the places where only human beings have ever brought visible light are all going to be fine. This planet has way many life cycles left in it, way many, and we do not matter. Try to live your best life. Fight! Be brave, because courage is more significant than life; or, courage is what makes life significant. The symbol is more than the paper and the ink. We've gone down into the impossible crushing dark and fucked the moon up with our dirty feet; what more could you ask for?
Oh, you want to spread, like a dang virus. Ok, we who live in the Philip K. Dick present will determine how bad the Ridley Scott future can be. Let's play the game. Let us... extrapolate.
*
Almost finished with The Running Man. After I complete it--after its clock runs down, so to speak--I'll probably eat chocolate and watch a movie. Those are the decisions I make in the face of the sixth extinction, as democracy dies in the darkness or some other thundering bullshit an asshole sells.
*
Today I looked at the news and found myself unable to parse the headline. It meant less than nothing to me; it was composed of words I knew, each of them I knew, but together, in the order that they made, they became less than themselves, the reflection inside of a box made of mirrors. Pictures of Donald Trump's face in close-up--really only that, for about a fucking minute, as the headline blared the void itself. I have no idea what the voice-over was saying. It was all extremely grotesque, like licking green furry mold off a log of watery cheese. Sometimes bad tastes can actually cause your tongue to feel like it has withered, withered like a dead flower. Ever experienced that? Think of my brain as a tongue. Think of your own brain as tongue, and watch what you put in your mouth.
My mom tried to explain it to me. I consider myself a decent presence of mind, on a good day if I'm paying close attention, and all I got was that Donald Trump talked on the phone, and what he said might have been illegal. I almost died of a surprise-induced coronary, I did. Look: if that dude made a promise to somebody, that person is getting fleeced. Bouncing memos about what a criminal says to other criminals--be real; these potentates are each and every last one all washed head to toe with blood, from the meanest to the most exalted, and they all lie to each other and to their lying coworkers and to their real bosses and especially to us--and calling it something to pay attention to? Someone marked the memo urgent. Well holy fucking shit.
Man, I'm glad we can get an economy to run around this kind of bullshit. I'm glad someone's getting paid to run the worst rigged game show, contemptuously scribbled by the most cynical writers on the planet.
I paid extremely close attention to all sorts of news for a few years there. If you're on that tip, have fun while you can, before you pay close enough attention to see the seams.
*
Before I forget, today I bought volumes 14 and 15 of One Punch Man. Also The Legend of Zelda: Encyclopedia, companion volume to The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, which has been a jewel in my collection since it hit the shelves. They look so fucking handsome together that I want to take my last shit and drop dead. I'm serious. The latter deepest, richest green, green of the fathers of all firs, the former a blue whose royalty humbles Royal. The heft of them, their smooth, velvety covers, the astonishing image quality, the wild, rich, somehow fleshly scent of their pages, deep in their centers...
Man, I love making pornography of conspicuous consumption. I love being an American. And I fucking love having sexy books. Used books are also exceedingly sexy, but sometimes ripping the plastic off a coffee table book you actually want and being the first living thing to smell it is like having a new woman. Bam. I fucking said that, and I mean it.
Have a beautiful evening. Yes books are yonic and yes the brain is phallic and yes that interpenetration is the perfect balancing of sexual energy because reading is fucking and being fucked, like all good things, especially fucking, and writing*.
--JL
*I discussed this quite recently. I should give in and read more of Peter Sloterdijk's books. I have mentioned this also, I think. If you allow it to be, Peter Sloterdijk's name is both phallic and yonic, but if you've gone that far, it's phallic twice.
Often as I walk to and fro I am reminded, because of my propensity for inhaling smoke on purpose (really? Think about it. Really? What a stupid fucking monkey is a man) how amazing it is that the air is still breathable at all. Dirty enough, though. I can tell shit is worse because cities smell like shit. Cities always have, but man, my sense of smell has only gotten worse and less sensitive as I have aged, and I think every city, every town, smells way way worse than in 1995. Man, I went to New York a few years ago, and I never in my life want to go back. Talk about a location that is its own brand of ordure with every step you take. New Yorkers are a proud people, and rightfully so; it is possible that no other city in the world presents such a complex assault on each and every sense the human body possesses, and to be a part of the tradition that has brought about such a state of affairs is surely the province of a powerful culture. God love the place and all, but I wanted to sink down to its bedrock and die there, where there is nothing to smell at all.
Anyhow, we'll get the turtles, and the crocodiles, some other shit that made it since practically the start of the game, but the algaes and the jellies and the sightless worms that feed on heat in the places where only human beings have ever brought visible light are all going to be fine. This planet has way many life cycles left in it, way many, and we do not matter. Try to live your best life. Fight! Be brave, because courage is more significant than life; or, courage is what makes life significant. The symbol is more than the paper and the ink. We've gone down into the impossible crushing dark and fucked the moon up with our dirty feet; what more could you ask for?
Oh, you want to spread, like a dang virus. Ok, we who live in the Philip K. Dick present will determine how bad the Ridley Scott future can be. Let's play the game. Let us... extrapolate.
*
Almost finished with The Running Man. After I complete it--after its clock runs down, so to speak--I'll probably eat chocolate and watch a movie. Those are the decisions I make in the face of the sixth extinction, as democracy dies in the darkness or some other thundering bullshit an asshole sells.
*
Today I looked at the news and found myself unable to parse the headline. It meant less than nothing to me; it was composed of words I knew, each of them I knew, but together, in the order that they made, they became less than themselves, the reflection inside of a box made of mirrors. Pictures of Donald Trump's face in close-up--really only that, for about a fucking minute, as the headline blared the void itself. I have no idea what the voice-over was saying. It was all extremely grotesque, like licking green furry mold off a log of watery cheese. Sometimes bad tastes can actually cause your tongue to feel like it has withered, withered like a dead flower. Ever experienced that? Think of my brain as a tongue. Think of your own brain as tongue, and watch what you put in your mouth.
My mom tried to explain it to me. I consider myself a decent presence of mind, on a good day if I'm paying close attention, and all I got was that Donald Trump talked on the phone, and what he said might have been illegal. I almost died of a surprise-induced coronary, I did. Look: if that dude made a promise to somebody, that person is getting fleeced. Bouncing memos about what a criminal says to other criminals--be real; these potentates are each and every last one all washed head to toe with blood, from the meanest to the most exalted, and they all lie to each other and to their lying coworkers and to their real bosses and especially to us--and calling it something to pay attention to? Someone marked the memo urgent. Well holy fucking shit.
Man, I'm glad we can get an economy to run around this kind of bullshit. I'm glad someone's getting paid to run the worst rigged game show, contemptuously scribbled by the most cynical writers on the planet.
I paid extremely close attention to all sorts of news for a few years there. If you're on that tip, have fun while you can, before you pay close enough attention to see the seams.
*
Before I forget, today I bought volumes 14 and 15 of One Punch Man. Also The Legend of Zelda: Encyclopedia, companion volume to The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, which has been a jewel in my collection since it hit the shelves. They look so fucking handsome together that I want to take my last shit and drop dead. I'm serious. The latter deepest, richest green, green of the fathers of all firs, the former a blue whose royalty humbles Royal. The heft of them, their smooth, velvety covers, the astonishing image quality, the wild, rich, somehow fleshly scent of their pages, deep in their centers...
Man, I love making pornography of conspicuous consumption. I love being an American. And I fucking love having sexy books. Used books are also exceedingly sexy, but sometimes ripping the plastic off a coffee table book you actually want and being the first living thing to smell it is like having a new woman. Bam. I fucking said that, and I mean it.
Have a beautiful evening. Yes books are yonic and yes the brain is phallic and yes that interpenetration is the perfect balancing of sexual energy because reading is fucking and being fucked, like all good things, especially fucking, and writing*.
--JL
*I discussed this quite recently. I should give in and read more of Peter Sloterdijk's books. I have mentioned this also, I think. If you allow it to be, Peter Sloterdijk's name is both phallic and yonic, but if you've gone that far, it's phallic twice.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
#212
July 13th was when I watched Midsommar, which was great. Here is what I have looked at since then, in no particular order, not including Hell or High Water, which I mentioned, and am still thinking about.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Cube
Cube Zero
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus
Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling
It: Chapter One
It: Chapter Two
part of The Third Man, got bored, probably try again someday
Mean Streets
Rocky
Think there might be more, but I'm not gonna go ferreting around anywhere to remind myself of anything. You know what movie I should watch next? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is not the first time I've said this, but it's the first time I've typed it; hopefully this helps it stick.
It seems also that a lot of good movies are going to be coming out. Finding myself more a theater patron than in several years; haven't gone to the movies a ton since 2013 or so, not compared to how it used to be. All of my teens through my early twenties, Hollywood could reliably count on my box office dollar; rare was the season when there weren't a couple-three things to catch each month. Then I started to feel like practically all new movies fucking sucked. Most may have, but how can you compare to, for example, 2004, which is vintner's year for movies if there ever was one. I know I've missed a lot of good movies.
Man, when I was twenty-one I watched about three hundred fucking movies in less than a year. All kinds of fun shit too; Eastern European stop-motion from the late seventies and eighties, bizarre illegal pornography (hope no one has heard of The Sinful Dwarf), obscure film versions of famous operas, all manner of whatever and also tons of regular shit too. My friend and roommate would often choose the evening's picture, and my ex would go to bed before it was half done, and my friend would four out of five times fall asleep before the end.
Don't remember individual pictures so much as I remember the year of nights begun in company and ended alone, finales only I would stay awake for, if not a hundred percent lucid; the bitter, satisfying pleasure of seeing a thing through to the end mixing well with the booze and the smoke and the television's light illuminating witness, shining down my vigil.
--JL
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Cube
Cube Zero
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus
Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling
It: Chapter One
It: Chapter Two
part of The Third Man, got bored, probably try again someday
Mean Streets
Rocky
Think there might be more, but I'm not gonna go ferreting around anywhere to remind myself of anything. You know what movie I should watch next? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is not the first time I've said this, but it's the first time I've typed it; hopefully this helps it stick.
It seems also that a lot of good movies are going to be coming out. Finding myself more a theater patron than in several years; haven't gone to the movies a ton since 2013 or so, not compared to how it used to be. All of my teens through my early twenties, Hollywood could reliably count on my box office dollar; rare was the season when there weren't a couple-three things to catch each month. Then I started to feel like practically all new movies fucking sucked. Most may have, but how can you compare to, for example, 2004, which is vintner's year for movies if there ever was one. I know I've missed a lot of good movies.
Man, when I was twenty-one I watched about three hundred fucking movies in less than a year. All kinds of fun shit too; Eastern European stop-motion from the late seventies and eighties, bizarre illegal pornography (hope no one has heard of The Sinful Dwarf), obscure film versions of famous operas, all manner of whatever and also tons of regular shit too. My friend and roommate would often choose the evening's picture, and my ex would go to bed before it was half done, and my friend would four out of five times fall asleep before the end.
Don't remember individual pictures so much as I remember the year of nights begun in company and ended alone, finales only I would stay awake for, if not a hundred percent lucid; the bitter, satisfying pleasure of seeing a thing through to the end mixing well with the booze and the smoke and the television's light illuminating witness, shining down my vigil.
--JL
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
#211
Finished Cell just a couple hours ago, a very good King book, one of the short ripcords, like Cujo. This is to speak well; While It is without question my favorite, I've read Cujo many more times. My girlfriend's favorite may be, besides The Stand, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, another snappy one and a pretty fucking incredible book. At the end of the day, we bow to the inexorable nature of King's sprawlers, but given the choice during the day, more often one reaches for the ripcords. Cujo can be read in couple of hours; the book radiates the cocaine energy with which it was penned.*
Anyhow I am glad I did not read Cell when it came out. As it was, I could not be convinced to own a cell phone till I was past eighteen, whereas my peer group had them grafted to their bodies** by the time we were twelve. Almost all of them. If I had read Cell at a more formative time in life, never would I have put one of the fuckers to my ear, guaranteed.
*
Well, if you'd like to read Cell and haven't, this is where I warn you to skip to the next section; what I have to say constitutes spoilers. I mean it; I am going to give away a huge part of the book in one sentence, and most of the rest in the sentence following. I try to never spoil things in this blog, can't remember how decent I am at it, but when I go there, I take it all the way. Another warning I guess I can say is that these ruminations get macabre. So it goes.
Probably it is not helpful in a critical sense or a practical sense--practical in terms of really truly learning something useful from what you are reading, no matter what it is--to say exactly what you would do differently than a protagonist or set of protagonists for the simple reason that you cannot really know. You cannot know for true and real how the group dynamics, weather conditions, how your last meal is sitting in your stomach, or any other good-as-infinite combination of factors might ramify into your thought process or affect your decision matrix. The safest way to think yourself into situations is to attempt to keep your reactions open and not get married to your big-ass brain figuring shit out so much better than the characters, said brain after all sitting extremely safe on its biscuit with a book in its paws.
That said, really putting yourself in those kozmic othershoes is why we are here, and seeing how they fit teaches us pretty important shit, and it does this by tricking us into dealing with it, by making us believe not only that it could happen but that it is happening now; a good book puts you there, which is magic, and then compounds into a miracle: really good books can do it again. Some will do it every time you read them. That is some fucked-up shit.
So, you read and you live and you work on hitting your skill ceilings in your desired proficiencies, grind adaptability and what you consider to be the virtues, and you find yourself in many situations, real and imaginary. The characters in Cell use fire to destroy part of the a hive mind that has invaded a huge portion of the global human population through a signal broadcast simultaneously through all cellular communication devices; that is to say, human beings whose minds have been for all intents and purposes replaced by something parahuman. For this they are marked as insane and untouchable, and the book concludes with a repeat of their transgression on a yet larger scale.
Question. Would you have used fire on these bodies, which were once people?
It is, as I have said, sort of pointless to say that I wouldn't, because you never truly know, not when you're really in the corner. I've known a corner or two, done enough things I didn't think I would do, been the kind of person I never believed I would or could be. But hey, I would not do that thing.
Using fire on another living thing is something I find really abominable. It is in a way the very worst of humankind, that we use fire on each other, on other creatures while they're alive. To take the gift of Prometheus and turn it to such a purpose is the essence of a Fall, definitely Capital, Mortal type deal we're talking about. At the juncture that the group of protagonists were deciding how best to kill these not-people (but are they not people? It is a question), before they thought of fire, I thought of the knife--for you see, these not-people were sleeping, and would not wake.
Using fire was expedient. Fire was easy and got the job done with aplomb and extra credit. Expediency was certainly the keystone of the endeavor, that human drive to be as efficient as possible, doing the most with the least, twitch a finger, watch a man die a mile away, press a button, watch the missiles fly on perfect target every time.
If you get busy, though,and know what you're about, if the throats are real close together as they were in the situation, you can slit probably four or five jugulars a minute for stretches at a time, and pacing yourself, get maybe two thousand sleepers in a night. If there are four of you, as there were in the situation, so much the better. It's old-school, it's messy, it's not really better than fire, but it's not fire, and that makes a difference. It makes a difference to do it with your hands, to touch and feel, to make the decision each time and see the features and maybe say you're sorry it had to be this way a few thousand times, till your throat bleeds maybe. These things have to make a difference. If they don't, what the fuck are we, anyway.
Fire is life. We cook on fire, and cooking makes us more human than killing. The least of what we build with fire is worth more than every method we've ever developed in order to destroy with it. The sun is the head and center of the life-fire, all the stars in the galaxy burn, the universe is kindled with fire, which is light, and light is the core of all being, the weave of what is, the first and last Word, and what we choose to do with it means something. It is significant, it is the most significant thing, for fire is the first Sign, and it in its light that all other Signs can be Seen.
Definitely never burn a person. You can't do justice that way. The book asks and answers and leans on this question a few different ways, and I don't think there is a wrong or right answer to the question--perhaps you are familiar with how much I have problematized justice for myself, should you have had the misfortune to dwell long on the questions I raise in my own books--in the end I have no objection to what the protagonists chose to do, for something did have to be done.
That's the fucking problem. Something always has to be done. Justice. Christ alone knows, in most cases. Maybe all. Yet something must be done.
Although in this case, was killing even necessary? Should I be glad I thought of the knife, like I'm supposed to feel better than another or good about myself given this detail? I would say not. I have always tried to live by the idea that the further you can go in distinguishing yourself from murderers, the better off you're likely to be, so I hope I can learn to better think beyond the knife. I am not a good protagonist in the plot-driving sense. Too often I answer "no, probably we can come up with something else--something less risky to our bodies and our own immortal souls."
Ha, but the actual lesson is, as it always is, that nothing, nothing, nothing, can really prepare you in the slightest for the actual situation.
*
One of the things that makes Stephen King brilliant and true, is the elementality and honesty with which he plies his foremost and strongest symbols, of which there are three: fire, blood, and shit. Three lenses through which perfection can be glimpsed. Formes of Red, White, and Black. Fire's destructiveness is part of its perfection, just as one is water and cannot be without water and can drown in and freeze in and be poisoned by water.
Nothing is anything, morally speaking. It takes us to make evil. Shitty but true. And even our evil, which is the most despicable thing we can see in the universe, is a perfect element in a larger perfection.
*
Never played Minecraft, but from observation it seems like that game has somehow captured that very literally.
*
Watched Hell or High Water last night. That shit was fucking perfectly made from tip to top. Perfect fucking western. Maybe my favorite ever. God damn flawless. You can break it down and build it up from zero. One sloppy cut, too close. That's all. Perfect otherwise. Everybody did such a job that no teacher in the world would mark them down a single point. I can't stop thinking about this movie.
Another incredible western that I love and have even mentioned in this blog (I think?) is The Proposition. That movie was scored by Nick Cave, and who should have been on the score for Hell or High Water but the Caveman himself. Also Warren Ellis. I don't listen to these dudes myself, but the music for both movies is exquisite magnificence, perfectly chosen and boldly composed, masterpieces of restraint and release. The correlation is established: if Nick Cave worked on the soundtrack for a western, I will watch that movie with no further information.
Advantage number two for Hell or High Water was a cast composed of two dudes who I'll watch anytime in anything if the other factors balance. This is Jeff Bridges' most believable and, I think, truly patiently and lovingly realized character in a western to date, though I may have missed some. Ben Foster is phenomenal as always and reminds me that I need to watch Hostiles. Also Galveston. I like crossed sets of data points, movies are really good for that. Chris Pine had thus far failed to make me care about him but he did as good a job as anyone else, super damn good, and in one moment of brilliance enacted some of the best physical performance I've ever seen in my life.
*
Next post, a list of other things I have watched in the last while. I don't remember if I've made a list like that. The vacation seems to have stripped me of my "blog awareness". Or, pretty tired. Purty tarred.
--JL
*I have never tried cocaine. That stuff seems like it fucking sucks. A drinking problem doesn't need that kind of company, and I am super lucky to be wired this way.
**they didn't really. I only clarify because in this the year 2019 I believe we are pretty close to that reality, maybe three years out from the iImplant and its counterpart, the Android Be, with the brave little Google Chip bobbing in their choppy wake. I might even be right about one or all these names, which would suck a lot, but we'd get used to it.
Anyhow I am glad I did not read Cell when it came out. As it was, I could not be convinced to own a cell phone till I was past eighteen, whereas my peer group had them grafted to their bodies** by the time we were twelve. Almost all of them. If I had read Cell at a more formative time in life, never would I have put one of the fuckers to my ear, guaranteed.
*
Well, if you'd like to read Cell and haven't, this is where I warn you to skip to the next section; what I have to say constitutes spoilers. I mean it; I am going to give away a huge part of the book in one sentence, and most of the rest in the sentence following. I try to never spoil things in this blog, can't remember how decent I am at it, but when I go there, I take it all the way. Another warning I guess I can say is that these ruminations get macabre. So it goes.
Probably it is not helpful in a critical sense or a practical sense--practical in terms of really truly learning something useful from what you are reading, no matter what it is--to say exactly what you would do differently than a protagonist or set of protagonists for the simple reason that you cannot really know. You cannot know for true and real how the group dynamics, weather conditions, how your last meal is sitting in your stomach, or any other good-as-infinite combination of factors might ramify into your thought process or affect your decision matrix. The safest way to think yourself into situations is to attempt to keep your reactions open and not get married to your big-ass brain figuring shit out so much better than the characters, said brain after all sitting extremely safe on its biscuit with a book in its paws.
That said, really putting yourself in those kozmic othershoes is why we are here, and seeing how they fit teaches us pretty important shit, and it does this by tricking us into dealing with it, by making us believe not only that it could happen but that it is happening now; a good book puts you there, which is magic, and then compounds into a miracle: really good books can do it again. Some will do it every time you read them. That is some fucked-up shit.
So, you read and you live and you work on hitting your skill ceilings in your desired proficiencies, grind adaptability and what you consider to be the virtues, and you find yourself in many situations, real and imaginary. The characters in Cell use fire to destroy part of the a hive mind that has invaded a huge portion of the global human population through a signal broadcast simultaneously through all cellular communication devices; that is to say, human beings whose minds have been for all intents and purposes replaced by something parahuman. For this they are marked as insane and untouchable, and the book concludes with a repeat of their transgression on a yet larger scale.
Question. Would you have used fire on these bodies, which were once people?
It is, as I have said, sort of pointless to say that I wouldn't, because you never truly know, not when you're really in the corner. I've known a corner or two, done enough things I didn't think I would do, been the kind of person I never believed I would or could be. But hey, I would not do that thing.
Using fire on another living thing is something I find really abominable. It is in a way the very worst of humankind, that we use fire on each other, on other creatures while they're alive. To take the gift of Prometheus and turn it to such a purpose is the essence of a Fall, definitely Capital, Mortal type deal we're talking about. At the juncture that the group of protagonists were deciding how best to kill these not-people (but are they not people? It is a question), before they thought of fire, I thought of the knife--for you see, these not-people were sleeping, and would not wake.
Using fire was expedient. Fire was easy and got the job done with aplomb and extra credit. Expediency was certainly the keystone of the endeavor, that human drive to be as efficient as possible, doing the most with the least, twitch a finger, watch a man die a mile away, press a button, watch the missiles fly on perfect target every time.
If you get busy, though,and know what you're about, if the throats are real close together as they were in the situation, you can slit probably four or five jugulars a minute for stretches at a time, and pacing yourself, get maybe two thousand sleepers in a night. If there are four of you, as there were in the situation, so much the better. It's old-school, it's messy, it's not really better than fire, but it's not fire, and that makes a difference. It makes a difference to do it with your hands, to touch and feel, to make the decision each time and see the features and maybe say you're sorry it had to be this way a few thousand times, till your throat bleeds maybe. These things have to make a difference. If they don't, what the fuck are we, anyway.
Fire is life. We cook on fire, and cooking makes us more human than killing. The least of what we build with fire is worth more than every method we've ever developed in order to destroy with it. The sun is the head and center of the life-fire, all the stars in the galaxy burn, the universe is kindled with fire, which is light, and light is the core of all being, the weave of what is, the first and last Word, and what we choose to do with it means something. It is significant, it is the most significant thing, for fire is the first Sign, and it in its light that all other Signs can be Seen.
Definitely never burn a person. You can't do justice that way. The book asks and answers and leans on this question a few different ways, and I don't think there is a wrong or right answer to the question--perhaps you are familiar with how much I have problematized justice for myself, should you have had the misfortune to dwell long on the questions I raise in my own books--in the end I have no objection to what the protagonists chose to do, for something did have to be done.
That's the fucking problem. Something always has to be done. Justice. Christ alone knows, in most cases. Maybe all. Yet something must be done.
Although in this case, was killing even necessary? Should I be glad I thought of the knife, like I'm supposed to feel better than another or good about myself given this detail? I would say not. I have always tried to live by the idea that the further you can go in distinguishing yourself from murderers, the better off you're likely to be, so I hope I can learn to better think beyond the knife. I am not a good protagonist in the plot-driving sense. Too often I answer "no, probably we can come up with something else--something less risky to our bodies and our own immortal souls."
Ha, but the actual lesson is, as it always is, that nothing, nothing, nothing, can really prepare you in the slightest for the actual situation.
*
One of the things that makes Stephen King brilliant and true, is the elementality and honesty with which he plies his foremost and strongest symbols, of which there are three: fire, blood, and shit. Three lenses through which perfection can be glimpsed. Formes of Red, White, and Black. Fire's destructiveness is part of its perfection, just as one is water and cannot be without water and can drown in and freeze in and be poisoned by water.
Nothing is anything, morally speaking. It takes us to make evil. Shitty but true. And even our evil, which is the most despicable thing we can see in the universe, is a perfect element in a larger perfection.
*
Never played Minecraft, but from observation it seems like that game has somehow captured that very literally.
*
Watched Hell or High Water last night. That shit was fucking perfectly made from tip to top. Perfect fucking western. Maybe my favorite ever. God damn flawless. You can break it down and build it up from zero. One sloppy cut, too close. That's all. Perfect otherwise. Everybody did such a job that no teacher in the world would mark them down a single point. I can't stop thinking about this movie.
Another incredible western that I love and have even mentioned in this blog (I think?) is The Proposition. That movie was scored by Nick Cave, and who should have been on the score for Hell or High Water but the Caveman himself. Also Warren Ellis. I don't listen to these dudes myself, but the music for both movies is exquisite magnificence, perfectly chosen and boldly composed, masterpieces of restraint and release. The correlation is established: if Nick Cave worked on the soundtrack for a western, I will watch that movie with no further information.
Advantage number two for Hell or High Water was a cast composed of two dudes who I'll watch anytime in anything if the other factors balance. This is Jeff Bridges' most believable and, I think, truly patiently and lovingly realized character in a western to date, though I may have missed some. Ben Foster is phenomenal as always and reminds me that I need to watch Hostiles. Also Galveston. I like crossed sets of data points, movies are really good for that. Chris Pine had thus far failed to make me care about him but he did as good a job as anyone else, super damn good, and in one moment of brilliance enacted some of the best physical performance I've ever seen in my life.
*
Next post, a list of other things I have watched in the last while. I don't remember if I've made a list like that. The vacation seems to have stripped me of my "blog awareness". Or, pretty tired. Purty tarred.
--JL
*I have never tried cocaine. That stuff seems like it fucking sucks. A drinking problem doesn't need that kind of company, and I am super lucky to be wired this way.
**they didn't really. I only clarify because in this the year 2019 I believe we are pretty close to that reality, maybe three years out from the iImplant and its counterpart, the Android Be, with the brave little Google Chip bobbing in their choppy wake. I might even be right about one or all these names, which would suck a lot, but we'd get used to it.
Monday, September 16, 2019
#210
Well! How about a list of all the books I have gotten through since last I mentioned such data? Some people will think I am lying about this list, but those people don't know me or live my life. I am not to be fucked with.
Since August 26th, after realizing that I actually only had two pages of Philosophical Fragments before the end and completing it, I read, in this order:
Duma Key, The Stand, Desperation, It, Hearts In Atlantis, The Tommyknockers, Mr. Mercedes, Sleeping Beauties, Stranger Things: Darkness at the Edge of Town, 'Salem's Lot, and Pet Sematary.
Those books are all by Stephen King except the one under the umbrella of a licensed property, and Sleeping Beauties, which is a collaborations with Owen King. They are also, by and large, quite long. Perhaps not long long, or long in the way that a book like Moby Dick is long (yeah I've read that bad motherfucker), but long. Without thinking about it too hard I can say that I've read more than four thousand pages in the last month and a half or so.
How do I accomplish this and also work so many hours at my job? Friends, the answer is simple: I truly care about little else.
--JL
Since August 26th, after realizing that I actually only had two pages of Philosophical Fragments before the end and completing it, I read, in this order:
Duma Key, The Stand, Desperation, It, Hearts In Atlantis, The Tommyknockers, Mr. Mercedes, Sleeping Beauties, Stranger Things: Darkness at the Edge of Town, 'Salem's Lot, and Pet Sematary.
Those books are all by Stephen King except the one under the umbrella of a licensed property, and Sleeping Beauties, which is a collaborations with Owen King. They are also, by and large, quite long. Perhaps not long long, or long in the way that a book like Moby Dick is long (yeah I've read that bad motherfucker), but long. Without thinking about it too hard I can say that I've read more than four thousand pages in the last month and a half or so.
How do I accomplish this and also work so many hours at my job? Friends, the answer is simple: I truly care about little else.
--JL
Friday, September 13, 2019
#209
Mm-mm-mmm, people. Thought I'd wait a bit longer to write, but the mood came on strong, and while sometimes the mood must be denied, and sometimes laziness is stronger, well, here I am, punching keys and watching the words appear on the blank field.
Phew. How do I describe it? It is like sex, a dragging, slow fuck with the infinite. As a penetrative member of the species, this is the closest I come to experiencing being fucked in the way that I fuck, if you can dig it; not that the penetrative element is absent from the experience, but that there is something rocking me back in the same way. In this sense it is more like plunging my hands into raw dough and kneading, only the dough carries a live charge that travels up my arms and causes the wild bunch of inexplicable phenomena in my forebrain to ferment and vibrate. To roll into long slow climaxes punctuated by sharper comings--throwing my head back involuntarily and working my jaw as I hammer out something elemental (to me), not even breathing as the words assert themselves (I do not choose them so much as clumsily summon them to do an imperfect job), before the charge, having flared bright, drops and leaves me boneless and giggly in my chair is not uncommon occurrence in the typing life.
Also it is like carrying two suitcases up an infinite hill, and you don't give a fuck about what is in them any more than you want to be walking up a hill, you would rather be living any other kind of life at all, and denied that, you would rather be fucking dead, but something behind you, something so vast it is either God or every devil sprung from every hell ever conceived, propels you forward with not just undeniable power, not just goads of ice and goads of fire, but with Force, and not even Force could tell you what the burden is or signifies or why you have to climb the hill, only that this is the Situation and everything in Creation is subject to the Force and the Situation. So fuck you if you don't like it. So you bend to your work, and you sweat, and it sucks, and you burn it all down yourself later, you don't grieve if by accident you lose it all; what matters is doing it, and it's like sex in that way too, isn't it? No matter how much you might think you might be better off without it, happier, easier in your mind, you find yourself making the right moves to end up laid. No matter how much you play with dropping all your pretenses and living a sober life of calm attention to the moment, eventually, you always get back to work, the insane work you can't say no to.
Put me in a room with a typewriter hooked up to a pistol that tracks my head, rigged to pop me square if I write a full sentence, go over half a page, or wait twenty-four hours.
It won't be too very long. Might shed a tear, but I've led a good life, and ending it with a period would be so poetic there exists no doubt that I'd die smiling. Comes down to it, how much fun it is, to write a sentence--any sentence.
Force and Situation.
*
I said there would be lists, and lists you shall have! Not all at once, though, because I might need the next post to be lower-effort. I really do work very hard at my day vocation and probably will be updating less often than before. Also, I currently have no saved work, not so much as a sentence in word document, so if I want to publish another book anytime soon I have to start from scratch and work pretty steadily, as opposed to before, when I had two books simmering and one getting started pretty good. Some foolish part of me is holding out hope, but I know the score. My hard drive holds no evidence that I'm a writer at all, and the cloud is just as empty.
Anyhow! The length of this particular list may be shocking, even if you're familiar with this blog.
Books Obtained since July the 28th
The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness and An Echo of Heaven by Ōe Kenzaburō
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake
Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
Dreamsongs vol. II by George R.R. Martin (already had vol. II)
1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley (these are recovery purchases; bundled together because you know how these books seem to get gifted right out of your library constantly, willingly or less willingly, for very similar reasons. Or maybe you don't, whatever)
Deliverance by James Dickey
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
No Time to Spare by Ursula K. LeGuin
Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami Haruki
Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel (have owned the sequel, Sunwing, for a long time, and used to own the conclusion, Firewing; got rid of it at some point, find it again someday maybe. Sunwing is far and away the best of the three)
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece with Carlos Gómez as general editor
A Really Big Lunch by Jim Harrison
The Drawings of Heinrich Kley (200, Dover Press)
The Passion of David Lynch by Martha P. Nochimson
The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir
The Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2006 edited by Dave Eggers (now I have 2005, 2006, and 2007--the years I spent wholly ensconced in High School)
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid
Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Adam Christopher
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg
There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar
and,
Elevation, The Shining, 'Salem's Lot, 11/22/63, Under the Dome, Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Needful Things, The Long Walk, Christine, Everything's Eventual, Firestarter, Thinner, Dreamcatcher, The Tommyknockers, The Outsider, Pet Sematary, Revival, Carrie, Finders Keepers, The Colorado Kid, Misery, Cell, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and The Running Man, by Stephen King, as well as Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar, and The Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King and illustrated by Bernie Wrightson.
See? Big difference between my trying not to buy books and my letting myself do what I wanna do.
*
Did you see how much Stephen King I bought? I checked Bag of Bones out from the library at age eleven, depressed and angry and ready for a fucking adult-ass book. I had no idea who Stephen King was, though the older movie based on Pet Sematary (which I am currently reading) had done some psychic damage to me as a kid. I only knew that the desolate cover, with its man in silhouette facing the ghostly nude woman on the still water, looked adult as all hell and the paperback was thicker than my arm. I propelled myself through somewhat madly, drinking its pain and its nightmares and its gasping loss like they were cool water in the desert.
Got an education from that book. Yes, in many ways, it was exactly my first adult book, setting the course of my life as I very consciously put childish things aside (being able to see the childishness in this act only comes much later, of course, and only if you're lucky). The only book about authorcraft I would tolerate for a long time was Stephen King's On Writing*, and it is high time, as I have mentioned before, that I completed my collection of his work. At one time I felt I had too many of his books and didn't get any new ones for a long long time, stopped reading new stuff, mostly, after he moved to Florida. Fine, things went how they went, but I'm reclaiming certain threads of my life to myself, and his books are crucial to the endeavor, perhaps in some still-unacknowledged way central, essential.
*
Many more lists to come! At least two next post. I have an interesting and nice day planned for my one day off, and the writing in the blog portion of it is up. I am going to take a big rip out of my new bong. Have a blessed day, free of the undead.
--JL
*the list has not exactly bloomed: Strunk and White's guide, accepted based on Stevie's guidance, John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist, and Italo Calvino's Memos for the Next Millenium.
Phew. How do I describe it? It is like sex, a dragging, slow fuck with the infinite. As a penetrative member of the species, this is the closest I come to experiencing being fucked in the way that I fuck, if you can dig it; not that the penetrative element is absent from the experience, but that there is something rocking me back in the same way. In this sense it is more like plunging my hands into raw dough and kneading, only the dough carries a live charge that travels up my arms and causes the wild bunch of inexplicable phenomena in my forebrain to ferment and vibrate. To roll into long slow climaxes punctuated by sharper comings--throwing my head back involuntarily and working my jaw as I hammer out something elemental (to me), not even breathing as the words assert themselves (I do not choose them so much as clumsily summon them to do an imperfect job), before the charge, having flared bright, drops and leaves me boneless and giggly in my chair is not uncommon occurrence in the typing life.
Also it is like carrying two suitcases up an infinite hill, and you don't give a fuck about what is in them any more than you want to be walking up a hill, you would rather be living any other kind of life at all, and denied that, you would rather be fucking dead, but something behind you, something so vast it is either God or every devil sprung from every hell ever conceived, propels you forward with not just undeniable power, not just goads of ice and goads of fire, but with Force, and not even Force could tell you what the burden is or signifies or why you have to climb the hill, only that this is the Situation and everything in Creation is subject to the Force and the Situation. So fuck you if you don't like it. So you bend to your work, and you sweat, and it sucks, and you burn it all down yourself later, you don't grieve if by accident you lose it all; what matters is doing it, and it's like sex in that way too, isn't it? No matter how much you might think you might be better off without it, happier, easier in your mind, you find yourself making the right moves to end up laid. No matter how much you play with dropping all your pretenses and living a sober life of calm attention to the moment, eventually, you always get back to work, the insane work you can't say no to.
Put me in a room with a typewriter hooked up to a pistol that tracks my head, rigged to pop me square if I write a full sentence, go over half a page, or wait twenty-four hours.
It won't be too very long. Might shed a tear, but I've led a good life, and ending it with a period would be so poetic there exists no doubt that I'd die smiling. Comes down to it, how much fun it is, to write a sentence--any sentence.
Force and Situation.
*
I said there would be lists, and lists you shall have! Not all at once, though, because I might need the next post to be lower-effort. I really do work very hard at my day vocation and probably will be updating less often than before. Also, I currently have no saved work, not so much as a sentence in word document, so if I want to publish another book anytime soon I have to start from scratch and work pretty steadily, as opposed to before, when I had two books simmering and one getting started pretty good. Some foolish part of me is holding out hope, but I know the score. My hard drive holds no evidence that I'm a writer at all, and the cloud is just as empty.
Anyhow! The length of this particular list may be shocking, even if you're familiar with this blog.
Books Obtained since July the 28th
The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness and An Echo of Heaven by Ōe Kenzaburō
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake
Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
Dreamsongs vol. II by George R.R. Martin (already had vol. II)
1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley (these are recovery purchases; bundled together because you know how these books seem to get gifted right out of your library constantly, willingly or less willingly, for very similar reasons. Or maybe you don't, whatever)
Deliverance by James Dickey
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
No Time to Spare by Ursula K. LeGuin
Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami Haruki
Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel (have owned the sequel, Sunwing, for a long time, and used to own the conclusion, Firewing; got rid of it at some point, find it again someday maybe. Sunwing is far and away the best of the three)
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece with Carlos Gómez as general editor
A Really Big Lunch by Jim Harrison
The Drawings of Heinrich Kley (200, Dover Press)
The Passion of David Lynch by Martha P. Nochimson
The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir
The Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2006 edited by Dave Eggers (now I have 2005, 2006, and 2007--the years I spent wholly ensconced in High School)
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid
Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Adam Christopher
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg
There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar
and,
Elevation, The Shining, 'Salem's Lot, 11/22/63, Under the Dome, Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Needful Things, The Long Walk, Christine, Everything's Eventual, Firestarter, Thinner, Dreamcatcher, The Tommyknockers, The Outsider, Pet Sematary, Revival, Carrie, Finders Keepers, The Colorado Kid, Misery, Cell, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and The Running Man, by Stephen King, as well as Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar, and The Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King and illustrated by Bernie Wrightson.
See? Big difference between my trying not to buy books and my letting myself do what I wanna do.
*
Did you see how much Stephen King I bought? I checked Bag of Bones out from the library at age eleven, depressed and angry and ready for a fucking adult-ass book. I had no idea who Stephen King was, though the older movie based on Pet Sematary (which I am currently reading) had done some psychic damage to me as a kid. I only knew that the desolate cover, with its man in silhouette facing the ghostly nude woman on the still water, looked adult as all hell and the paperback was thicker than my arm. I propelled myself through somewhat madly, drinking its pain and its nightmares and its gasping loss like they were cool water in the desert.
Got an education from that book. Yes, in many ways, it was exactly my first adult book, setting the course of my life as I very consciously put childish things aside (being able to see the childishness in this act only comes much later, of course, and only if you're lucky). The only book about authorcraft I would tolerate for a long time was Stephen King's On Writing*, and it is high time, as I have mentioned before, that I completed my collection of his work. At one time I felt I had too many of his books and didn't get any new ones for a long long time, stopped reading new stuff, mostly, after he moved to Florida. Fine, things went how they went, but I'm reclaiming certain threads of my life to myself, and his books are crucial to the endeavor, perhaps in some still-unacknowledged way central, essential.
*
Many more lists to come! At least two next post. I have an interesting and nice day planned for my one day off, and the writing in the blog portion of it is up. I am going to take a big rip out of my new bong. Have a blessed day, free of the undead.
--JL
*the list has not exactly bloomed: Strunk and White's guide, accepted based on Stevie's guidance, John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist, and Italo Calvino's Memos for the Next Millenium.
Thursday, September 5, 2019
#208
Hey, blogland! I took August off and it was fucking excellent for me. I read and bought so many books I’ll have to type up massive lists. Does that excite you? It makes blue steel of me, ladies and gentlemen. I could cut glass thinking about how things have gone with books this month.
Plus I quit smoking cigarettes again (been using the gum this time around), my computer appears to have destroyed all of my documents and I am tapping this out on my dad’s old iPad and do not know if I will be able to recover any of my projects in process (not the first time such a thing has befallen me, kind of a bummer but, forward, forward, always forward, not a glance backward!), and my heart is full of love.
Also I work six days a week now with a scheduled double on the second day. It’s tiring but I know folks work way harder than that. I appear to be entering a time in life in which a sixty-hour workweek seems only right and proper. Feeling pretty strong, pretty lucky. There are far worse things than having plenty of work in front of you.
*
Yeah, this vacay was pretty necessary. Rediscovered some fundamentals in selfhood long-neglected and joyfully embraced. Remembered some stuff about myself. Sounds silly and simple, but it is frankly fucking amazing, fucking ridiculous what a person can forget, can let go of without realizing.
More on that after I take two more weeks off! Bwahaaaaa! Tho long, thuckerth!
—JL
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