My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente tells the story of four lost and lonely travelers as they journey to a strange and beautiful city, a city that exists beyond the veil of dreams. Imagine a place of surreal delights, of bizarre masquerade balls and holy churches in which odd creatures worship in utter silence. This is Palimpsest, a city that is neither dream nor reality for those who stumble into its borders. Of course, to visit isn’t enough, never enough. Visitors long for residency, they desire to make Palimpsest their reality. Such desires, however, come at a cost.

For reasons we don’t early know, people exist in our world who bear marks on their skin, black tattoos that appear to be pieces of an otherworldly map. These people are gateways to Palimpsest, to enter involves sex and the heavy sleep after orgasm. Those who sleep after climax in our world wake to wander the streets of Palimpsest, the part of the map on their partner’s body, except in the case of first time visitors. First timers are required to visit a certain fortune-teller, a woman with the head of a frog. She sees clients only in groups of four, these four are then bound together, a family of sorts. Whenever in Palimpsest, no matter how far apart, these four strangers intimately share each other’s experiences. They taste the same tastes, they feel each other’s pleasure and pain. When morning comes to Palimpsest, visitors then wake in our world. New-comers also wake with a mark of their own, a new gateway to this gorgeous and sometimes cruel city. Permanent residence is elusive, but not impossible. The novel follows four characters who have lost something in our world and desperately hope to find it in Palimpsest.

Valente has created something absolutely brilliant in Palimpsest. Her decadent use of language brings so much life into a world that few have the skill to even imagine, let alone write into existence. To me, Palimpsest is an intricate metaphor for the nature of sex and relationships. Unlike any liquor, any drug, sex can take a person completely outside of their reality. In one sense, sex can be a hollow, empty act, a temporary escape from one’s broken life. Yet, in another sense, sex with the right person can be a perfect sacrament. Two people inside one another creating a world of their own. Sex doesn’t have to be about running away from something awful, it can be about moving toward something amazing. Sex with the right person can feel like going home after being caught in a terrible storm. Palimpsest explores these ideas with lush prose and haunting imagery. Cat Valente is definitely a singular talent at the top of her game.

Have you read Palimpsest? What did you take from it?

So, lately, I’m not writing much. My blog posts are rather short, I’m not really e-mailing people. I’m really not “talking” much to anyone. This is because my thumb, the thumb I use for tapping the little switch I use for typing, has decided to quit working. It’s been a really slow decline up until the last two weeks, during which my ability to move it has steadily tanked. On Monday I received a certified letter from my thumb telling me to, quote, “fuck off.” I found this gesture to be a little uncalled for, considering the years we’ve spent together.

Nevertheless, my thumb is quitting, definitely. It’s kind of disturbing, definitely isolating, but not surprising. After the last three years, absolutely nothing surprises me. Zombies could show up tomorrow and I’d think to myself, “yes, this seems right.” I am Jack’s total lack of surprise.

There are, however, lots of other switches. I’m looking into eyebrow switches, I’m going to get something as soon as possible, I just don’t have that something right now. So, if I’m quiet for a bit, this is why. I’m not being lazy or ignoring anyone. I’m not particularly happy about it, but these things happen.

You slit your wrists in a crowded bar. You put a bullet through your head at dinner with friends. You casually tumble onto the highway from a moving vehicle. You kill yourself at Starbucks. A dozen imagined suicides everyday. You imagine warm blood running down your arms, you feel the cold gun barrel against your temple. The song in your head goes, “ten good reasons to stay alive, ten good reasons that I can’t find…” A soundtrack to bleeding out. 

A dozen imagined suicides everyday, a dozen morbid prayers for peace. Morbid prayers, but prayers just the same.

First, I should say that I haven’t read much of the Watchmen graphic novel series, so I went into the movie pretty fresh. Anything I say here is strictly based on Watchmen as a movie.

My short description of Watchmen is this, it’s a long movie for such a simple story. The basic premise is that super heroes, particularly one god-like super hero, helped us win Vietnam and by 1985 America is a dystopian society in which Richard Nixon is our three term President. It’s decided that super heroes are too powerful, and congress passes a bill forcing them into retirement. Someone then begins murdering these retirees for heretofore unknown reasons. Meanwhile, America is on the brink of nuclear war with Russia.

The opening credits are a gorgeous alternate history montage that shows the rise and fall of super heroes, but after the first hour things start getting flat. Yes, the film depicts a morally bereft dystopian society. Yes, the “heroes” are broken, emotionally scarred. Unfortunately, a post Cold War dystopia is no longer a new idea, nor is it particularly scary these days. Unfortunately, we’ve seen fallen heroes and anti-heroes, but we’ve seen them done better. Watchmen’s heroes are very predictable in their disfunction. Visually, the film is definitely excellent, but again, it’s absolutely nothing new. If I’m going to sit in a theater for almost three hours, I don’t want a bunch of old ideas packaged in CGI I’ve seen a thousand times.

Not breathing makes me think of Diving Bell, makes me think of dying, makes me think of not writing, makes me think of fear, makes me think of loneliness, makes me think of Sara.

I’m not sleeping much these days, a few hours here and there. Palahniuk’s right about insomnia, everything starts to feel far away. I feel like I’m a copy of a copy of a copy, world without end, Amen. I’ve quit sleeping before, this isn’t anything new, or unexpected. Ill-contented worriers don’t nod off well, we’re missing something important. 

I vividly remember the last time I fell asleep content and happy, and it was so long ago, so far from here.

I recently finished one of the most brilliant books I’ve ever read, Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer. Shriek is the follow up novel to City of Saints and Madmen, but it’s definitely not a sequel. I wrote about City of Saints…

“The book is a collection of stories and historical guides that center around the city of Ambergris, a city of religious fervor and political corruption. It’s home to eccentric artists and strange creatures. It’s a city that brims with life, and so much death. None of the stories are tied together in a linear fashion, the first story doesn’t flow into the second. I think each piece of writing easily stands alone, but as a whole they create a fully realized world.”

City of Saints and Madmen is a brilliant piece of world-building, it introduces us to Ambergris and its inhabitants. Shriek: An Afterword is an intimate look into the lives of two such inhabitants, Duncan and Janice Shriek, brother and sister. Duncan is an historian and the writer of The Early History of Ambergris, his last published work. Janice, a once prominent art gallery owner, turned journalist, turned tour guide, is writing the Afterword to Duncan’s Early History. She’s writing the Afterword because Duncan has vanished and is presumed dead, lost to his obsession with the Gray Caps. The Gray Caps are a race of child-sized mushroom people, forced to live underground after the founding of Ambergris. Duncan’s entire troubled career is based on studying the Gray Caps and their mysterious, often dangerous influence on the city. He knows they’re dangerous, yet his theories are constantly dismissed as eccentric at best. Reading Janice’s writing we learn that Duncan is not wrong, that bad things are happening in Ambergris. We also quickly learn that Duncan is not dead, and that Janice, in fact, disappeared after writing her Afterword. We know this through notes written by Duncan on her finished manuscript. Duncan returns to find Janice gone.

Now, the thing that makes Shriek: An Afterword so amazing is that the characters are just so real. Their world is very surreal, but Duncan and Janice, their core experiences are common to so many. Love, love lost, obsession, addiction, success, failure, loneliness, pain, we’ve all been touched by some of these things. Some of us have been touched by all of them. Shriek is the story of two lives, seemingly promising lives, that just don’t work out as one would want. It’s a sad idea, but it’s honest and there’s beauty in that kind of honesty. Nothing in life is guaranteed, but even if things go horribly wrong, we keep going, until we can’t. The fact is, life isn’t one straight and happy line. Life is a crooked, terrifying, spectacular, beautiful, fucked up mess. We write our stories for as long as we can, while others scribble little notes on our pages. Maybe it all adds up to the ending we want, maybe it doesn’t, we never really know until the last page. That’s the essence of Shriek: An Afterword.

I haven’t been so moved by a book in quite some time, it really resonated with me.

Last Days by Brian Evenson tells the story of Kline, a detective of some sort. From the beginning, we never really know much about Kline. He’s a detective, on his last assignment he infiltrated some kind of cult and in the process, voluntarily had his right hand hacked off. He then cauterized the wound on a nearby hot-plate, drew his gun and shot his wannabe-surgeon through the eye. An eye for a hand. Aside from saving his life, the act of self-cauterization drew the attention of a rather odd group of people.

After reading his story in the paper, Kline is heavily researched and then contacted by the Brotherhood of Mutilation, a bizarre religious cult who believes in salvation through amputation. The bible says, “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast if from thee. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off, and cast it from thee,” an idea that the Brotherhood takes quite literally. A crime has taken place on their compound, and they insist that Kline, an amputee and self-cauterizer, be the one to investigate. Kline agrees to visit the compound with the understanding that the cult’s leader will explain the case. Kline, however, isn’t made aware that he won’t be allowed to leave the compound alive unless he solves the case, a case of murder. The situation is more complex than Kline could possibly imagine, he might lose more than his hand.

Last Days, to me, is a very well-written satirical horror novel. It’s action, suspense, chilling atmosphere and violence. I read it in one day, simply because I couldn’t put it down. It’s not a book to be read for rich character development, Last Days is really a fast-paced and unflinching waking nightmare. It appeals on a visceral level. Its intellectual appeal is in its dark satire of blind faith and the dangers of obsession. Last Days is a solid and disturbing read.

Lately, I can feel the weight of time, it’s like a lead blanket on my chest. I’m Quentin Compson and I can feel time, it’s a rock tied to my body, pulling me toward the bottom of the Charles River. Time doesn’t feel abstract, or arbitrary. Time is palpable, unflinching. Time is a zombie that you can’t shoot in the head, or burn. The cross didn’t kill Christ, time did. The clock is killing me one minute at a time, just like you.

If I died tomorrow, I wouldn’t feel content on my way out. Right now, I feel like Jack’s wasted life. I haven’t found the love of my life, I haven’t written my book. If I really think about what’s important to me, all I really want is to fall asleep at night holding a woman I love, and to write consistently well. Of course, time doesn’t particularly care about such things, time gives no guarantees to anyone. For me, time isn’t an excuse for failure, it’s a maddening force that drives me, frustrates me, and often terrifies me.

What do you want before time crushes you?