Control

There are things I wish to control.

An hour before, my stomach is knotted and unforgiving. I feel ill. Practicing makes me feel better, at least for the moment. Everything sounds perfect. Ten minutes before, my pulse is a madhouse. It fires in rapid succession, beating to the frenzy of a stampede. I breathe as slowly as I can, go over my lyrics in my mind, visualize the chords. When the time comes, I take a deep breath. I know everything I've written, I know that it's not the end of the world, and I know that this is what I want. My heart beats faster than my body can measure. My fingers fail to express my ability. Words escape me in their proper order. Stomach, unforgiving; calm, lost.

There are things I wish to control; like myself.

Lolita

I was told that it was a beautifully grotesque novel; a horrible story told epically poetic. That as the main character fell in love with the twelve-year old nymphet, the reader was equally romanced. That it was the great seduction. Even the back of the book had a quote endorsing it as the only believable love story ever written. Hardly the case.

While being wonderfully eloquent, I never believed it was love. It was a journey of distasteful imagination for the narrator, and I know this is exactly accurate because the last several chapters proved it. The last several chapters proved me right for not believing the narrator's perversions; and in fact, it was this, the last several chapters, that made the first few hundred pages beautiful. Nabokov made me believe with absolute certainty in remorse.

%

I calculated my percentage of happiness tonight. To determine this, I included my successes, failures, relationships, ambition, talent, and likelihood of achieving personal goals. The result of this was that I wish I were better in life or worse in math. I've been pretending. Lying. This isn't better, this just is; and I can't spin it off somewhere whimsical and wonderful. Not tonight.

Stubborn

Flying back home, I chatted with a couple that were beginning their vacation. The man saw that I was reading and interrupted to ask what the book was about, then after the conversation maundered to writing, he told me that there weren't any original ideas.

A horrible thought, because after all, he was exactly right. There aren't any original ideas; not in the context of the point he was making. All stories have beginnings and ends, conflicts and resolutions, love and death with fighting in-between. I even helped him prove his point, since Treasure Island was just a story about pirates, and pirates existed long before Stevenson wrote about them.

And then he asked me why I'd want to write; what satisfaction could I possibly get from creating unoriginal stories?

Once again, he was right. Most writers don't actually make a living from it. Like Kafka, he didn't write anything publicly acknowledged as brilliant until well after his death. So what, then, is the attraction? Vanity, ego, the desire to be remembered?

No. The truth is, there aren't any original ideas, and we write to prove otherwise.

A Pale Undress

I finished my ghost story yesterday evening, shortly before I saw many good friends I hadn't seen in far too long. Today, one airplane and three busses delivered me my lonely apartment in Vancouver. Condensing years of friendships to two weeks is punishment. I hardly knew what to say in the last seventeen days, but truly, I've never wanted to say goodbye less.

But enough sentiment. I called my story A Pale Undress, and its synopsis is: "Be careful what you steal from the graveyard; the graveyard may steal from you." It has been submitted in duplicate, polished as best I could in my free time.

I wrote myself a note and I stuck it on the wall in a place where I will see it every day.

Anatomy of my Shower

First, I throw a towel over the curtain rod, because I like to have something to wipe the water and accumulated soap from my eyes. After I get the water to a suitable temperature, I pull the curtain closed and turn the shower on and step into the stream from the furthest end. (I think that normal people turn it on while they themselves are in the shower, but it's possible that I am simply not normal.) Next, I stand with my back to the waterfall as long as I can because I don't like drops splashing up into my eyes. I adjust the water temperature hotter and hotter, never quite reaching a point that's comfortable and just shy of scorching. I shampoo, I lather with bar soap, and then I rinse for three times as long as either of those took. Then I stand in the warm water, steam building around me, for a long, long time. Once I feel like I've used up enough water and energy, I turn the shower off and grab my towel, never leaving the tub until I'm completely dry. Only at that point do I step out, drying one foot at a time, and dressing as soon as is possible. Oh, and always, I sing.

Second Attempt

Last year I entered New York City Midnight's Short Story Contest, exiting from it after a bitter first round. Despite my poor opinion of the event - (which, I assure you, is more than merely being a sore loser) - a friend convinced me to give it another shot this year. The heat that I was randomly assigned this time around was to write a ghost story about a wedding dress. My brainstorming has left me with a very interesting avenue to pursue, which I think is relatively original. With the subject being what it is, and the genre what it is, the scope of possibility is limited considerably. The most flexibility I've left to set my story apart, then, is in setting and character. Still entirely possible.

I beg of you pardon for my lack of recent entries; I am on holidays still. I've missed many of these faces here.

Personal Complaints

My dental problems were supposed to be nearly relieved. I was supposed to have two months left of this inconvenience. Now it's worse. The bone in front of the implant has disappeared completely, so I've had to have a piece of jawbone grafted in place of my missing tooth. In many months when that heals, then the procedure begins again with a new implant that has to wait to heal, then a post, then finally the tooth itself.

I am on holidays now. Back home in the town I grew up, one of the three places I've lived in, and convalescing. It's quite unexpectedly frustrating that I can't actually do anything but rest when I've been looking forward to this trip for months.

Presently, there are still bothersome and troubling things passing through my mind from time to time, and I will not move on until they've stopped. No one will suffer that discourtesy.

White Out

The airport was snowed in. That’s why I didn’t get to her house in time.

Keep in mind that my plane had landed four hours earlier, and there was now only one shuttle going to the city. It was the only bus that could tough out the miserable cold, but even it hadn’t come back in over an hour. Nobody had heard from it either way; this was long before cell phones. And even still, I tried calling a few times from a payphone. Nothing. I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have called her before I left.

Jason asked me where I was going. The truth sounded stupid, so I lied. A half-truth.

“Family reunion,” I told him.

He laughed, said I was better off not going at all. I doubted that very much. Some people see their families every day, some don’t.

The snow came down even harder.

Jason said it wouldn’t be a problem to drive me to the city, but that he wanted to wait for his wife’s plane first. I tell you, not a single thing had come down that runway since my flight; but he wanted to wait. Two trips through that storm would be a waste, he said. I only met him that one time, so I can’t fault him for not taking me. It’s not like I could have paid him back. Everything I owned paid for my ticket here.

In my wallet was a picture that I’d managed to find of her. It was from about ten years ago, so I tried to imagine what her hair might look like now, if she still had those glasses. I wondered about the man standing next to her.

An announcement came over the intercom. “Flight 320 from Seattle now delayed until further notice,” it said, and then repeated.

“That’s your wife’s flight,” I said, with a slight nudge to my voice.

“Sure is,” Jason said. “Hell of a storm, huh? Hell of a storm.”

I looked out the large glass windows into the endless blanket of white.

Somewhere out there was a woman that I’d never met but wanted nothing more than to see for perhaps the only time.

The Boyfriend Hat

I'd never heard of this before she mentioned it a month ago. The idea as a whole, of course, but never in such a succinct and obvious way. Allow me.

In a romantic relationship of whatever nature, people act differently, speak differently, and relate differently. At times, these things may fall into a familiar persona that we revert to when we enter a new relationship. It may be because we see traits in them that we liked about someone else or because we see the possibility of those things. When this happens, as she put it, "we wake up one morning and put on our hat."

I can see exactly how I've done this in past relationships, and I see exactly why I will never do this again. It is a terrible discourtesy; an indifference to honesty.

Professional Friend

"What is it that you do, exactly?" she asked, dipping her fork into her salad. First dates always had these same usual questions, but they were important in getting to know someone.

"I'm a friend."

She furrowed her brow. "A friend? No, I meant, what do you do for a living?"

"That's what I do, I'm a professional friend."

She crunched away on the lettuce, considering this information. Her face was clearly confused, so he continued, "I maintain daily correspondence with 54 people all over the world. Some by e-mail, others by phone."

"I'm not sure I get it," she said, a little inaccurately. She was quite sure she didn't get it.

"Well," he began, setting his own fork down, "these people pay me ten dollars a day, five days a week, to talk to them. Some are lonely, others just like my company, I suppose. We talk about their lives, their relationships, I give them advice. That sort of thing. I'm very good at it, you know. I have these great big lists of what they're doing, what they say. I know everything about them."

Her confused face did not change. "Well, do you have any real friends? People that don't pay you?"

This made him chuckle. He said to her, while chuckling, with a bit of food in his mouth, "I don't like to take my work home with me."

She wondered what a relationship with him might mean, how much that might cost.

Best vs First

I am having a disjointed affair with Alice. I'm into the second novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and I'm finding it remarkably difficult to stay interested. While there are parts that I find amusing, I don't think it's that exceptional of a story as a whole. It feels unstructured, like a bunch of absurdities mish-mashed together, without relevance or moral. The thought that keeps going through my mind is that you don't have to do it best if you do it first.

Other things going through my mind lately are appearances. I'm trying to perceive how the devil would look if he was human. Tall, dark, and handsome, of course; but how would his hair look? What shoes would he wear? How well would he fit in to society, if he were walking downtown? What prominence would he stand with, or would he slink into shadows and hide? Would he appear among plagues of rats and snakes, would he have an aide?

It would be easy to create this character if only I'd done it first.

Subtraction

Near as I've noticed, I can't figure out a morning routine that will comfortably get me on the bus when my mind is still set on sleeping. The #84 is estimated to arrive at 6:51. I've missed it on days when I've arrived at 6:50, 6:49. 6:45, and even 6:41. Today, I left the house at 6:43, and after the usual - (a little unusual, since the city is full of snow, slush, and water) - walk, I caught the bus at 6:55. There's a whole lot of waiting to do in life, and those impatient types are worse-off than the rest.

This whole Facebook nonsense throws a wrench into the function of a relationship. In the wrong hands, it is a tool to demonstrate pettiness. I'll never understand why she untagged herself from our pictures without telling me, letting me wonder her intentions for months. When I found out, it bothered me. A lot. Last night I saw that she'd removed me completely, and it bothered me very little. The last time that I saw her, I thanked her for helping me do something with my life. Beyond that, the only good that came from our relationship was realizing that I will never again fall for someone that treats me badly.

Only thing to do now is wait.

Sharp-Dressed Man

He stood on the opposite side of the room, looking over at her with a casual pose. He wore a pressed dark Divanti shirt tucked neatly into his black Eddie Gebran dress pants; an expensive pairing. She wore a dark green Zingara dress, the one from the fall collection, which - it now being winter - was on sale. Women that saw her often remarked what they wouldn’t give to look as good as she did. Nobody ever could.

They would never speak. They would forever be strangers with only the superficial in common: a room and fashion.

Fractions

This morning, I woke up without any idea how I was going to get my things to Vancouver. There was no way I could pack all my precious belongings into two - even three - bags. This is still what my subconscious believes, that possession is nine-tenths of my life.

In passing moments, my mind has been out walking. It comes across things that I've long-since forgotten and other things that I'd be best off to forget. My mind gets tired of walking and it lingers in these memories with no positive outcome other than to remember what I want to forget. I maintain in my best a pleasant demeanor, and this is who I am, but there's another bit - one-tenth kept deep down inside - that could huff and puff and blow down a house of bricks.