My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I thought I’d write lots about my trip to Cincinnati, I thought I’d write everything, but I just don’t have the desire. I feel more like writing the Reader’s Digest version.

I went to have my trach looked at by the foremost airway specialist in America, Doctor Robin Cotton. He personally looked down the hole in my throat, changed my trach out twice. He decided my trach tube should be 5 mm. shorter. So, we’ll see how that goes.

I did a lot of wandering around the city, and it’s actually a very cool place, I just wasn’t in good spirits, because of some things that I don’t plan to write, probably ever. I got a tattoo my first night in town, sort of a physical reflection of my intense melancholy. It felt necessary.

In the hospital, I mostly spent three days watching movies, as my left eye was swollen shut because of a weird sinus thing, so I couldn’t wear my glasses. I’m a little blind without my glasses. Mostly, I was lonely. I thought I was past lonely, but before I left I became not-soo-certain.

Anyways, I’m bored, this is boring, and I don’t have the will to make it interesting.

So, I didn’t write anything from Cincinnati… I’ll explain further, but the short version is that my left eye swelled shut, so I couldn’t wear my glasses most of the week. I didn’t get to finish reading The Bluest Eye, or The Red Tree, and I definitely couldn’t write anything. I’ll elaborate soon.

Anywho, right now, I’m leaving Macon, Georgia, en route to Tampa.

So, right now, I’m at a La Quinta in Lexington, Kentucky, but only for another hour or two. It’s only about one hundred miles to Cincinnati, then I’m off the road. It’ll be good to get off the road, too much time for quiet reflection in a vehicle speeding toward somewhere I’m already nervous about going hasn’t been good for me. I’ve convinced myself into some pretty awful things, like, “You’ll never be anything more than you are right now, and you’re going to die a lonely failure.” I don’t always do so well alone with myself, I’m not particularly good company.

Last week was really weird, the morning I took to the road was exceptionally bad, and I’ve had too much time alone to think about all of it. I suppose I could write about the weird, but the bad I’ll just keep to myself. It’s weird when someone explains that they can no longer be your friend because you’re just too dark, they just can’t stand you anymore. That’s weird, and pretty unsettling. Maybe they’re right, that’s what I keep thinking. Maybe I just need to quit people, because I’m just too damaged. I mean, I could just pretend to be someone else, but that’s the same as being alone, except with a lot of work, constantly writing and being some character who isn’t you. I’m only genuinely close to one person, but maybe I shouldn’t be. I know she deserves way better than me. Maybe I just don’t have a home, anywhere with anyone. I hope not, but I’m almost thirty and that’s what scares me just now, that’s what’s scared me every day since I left Tampa.

I’ll write again from Cincinnati, but I doubt I’ll have figured anything out by then.

So, in about an hour, I’ll be on the road to Cincinnati to see a trach specialist. I’ll be back online regularly, probably Monday.

I feel like I should write something important right now, but…this big ball of sad isn’t worth even filling with air…

Tattoo by Clare, Las Vega Tattoo, Ybor City

Elliott Smith – Placeholder

So, there’s this Elliott Smith song, Placeholder, off his second posthumously released album, New Moon. To me, the song is basically Elliott saying that his work, all the stuff he writes, it’s all just temporary. He’s just a placeholder until something else comes along. Though, he’s talking about himself as a person too, he’s just a placeholder for the people in his life.

I’ve thought about myself the same way many times, the song can remind me so much of me. So, when I was really very dark a few months ago, this tattoo felt very appropriate.

I don’t get the sad tattoos and regret them later. They’re not constant reminders of darkness, but rather, they show me the entire road I had to take to feel something good again. It’s odd, but it’s really kind of spectacular to look back on this lonely place and that empty place from someplace beautiful, seeing times that I could have broken, but didn’t. Then again, they could all add up to failure at the end of everything, but I won’t really know until I got there.

I don’t have anything spectacular to write at the moment, it’s been a long day. So for now, I leave you with this…

So, a few months ago my friend, Matt Staggs, tweeted something to the affect that zombie fiction was tired, which made me ask if “zombie erotica” was tired too. Zombie erotica is the only sort of fiction I’ve ever had published. Well, a bunch of us got into this bizarre and rather amusing conversation about zombies and sex, the lovely, Jaym Gates, coined the term, “Rigor Amortis,” and joked that it’d be a great title for a flash fiction anthology. Well, that joke got pretty serious pretty fast, Jaym took the idea and she fuckin’ ran with it. اندرويد كازينو She found a co-editor, the excellent, Erika Holt, and a publisher, Absolute XPress, and soon enough.. Rigor Amortis will be a reality.

I submitted this piece I wrote last year, Waking up someone who isn’t me, and they were kind enough to accept it. It was posted here, but I took it down because it’s being published. تنزيل اموال حقيقية I’m pretty proud of that story, and I tend to at least mildly hate everything I write. I wanted to take some really dark feelings, loneliness, sorrow, yearning for a physical connection to someone, pain, longing for existence without that pain, I wanted to take those feelings and paint them with words. I wanted to write images that made those feelings palpable. I think I managed to do that, I hope so anyways.

At any rate, I’m really excited to be a part of Rigor Amortis. I so can’t wait to see it finished. راهن على كرة القدم

A Woman a Man Walked By is the result of a collaboration between PJ Harvey and John Perish, Black Hearted Love is one of my favorite songs on that album.

To me, the song is about a woman and her lover, and their intense connection to each other. My favorite line goes…

“When you call out my name in rapture, I volunteer my soul for murder. I wish this moment here forever…”

When you give yourself to someone, your skin against theirs, and you genuinely feel something deep for that person, that’s kind of the pact. You give your soul to that person, and they can do what they will with it, keep it or destroy it. This pact can go both ways, but not always, Still, the moment that pact is formed, it’s like magic, and you wish you could stay in that moment forever. At least, that’s what I take from the song.

I’ve never written about politics here before, but something’s really bothering me, there’s something going on in America that’s really upsetting me. That thing is, “The Obama Paradox,” I didn’t coin that term, I heard it on the Rachel Maddow Show. It’s a term that illustrates the fact that the reality of the Obama Administration doesn’t match public perception. His approval rating kind of sucks, people are unhappy with him. The perception is that President Obama isn’t really doing anything. He was supposed to do things, big important things, but apparently he isn’t, I guess. I guess Republicans and Democrats were supposed to come together in some orgy of cooperation, every American was supposed to ride to their kick-ass awesome new job on a unicorn, we were all supposed to be awash in a sea of bliss, but since those things haven’t exactly happened, President Obama, well, sucks. Unfortunately, people don’t seem to follow the facts.

The facts are these, President Obama took office in the middle of a disaster caused by eight years of BAD decisions by the previous administration. Our economy was on the brink of  collapse, on the brink of a second Great Depression. It’s been his job to dig us out of that mess, and in a really ugly political climate. Republicans do not like him, they’re not pleased that they lost the election. With all this against him, his administration has managed to pass record amounts of landmark legislation. The Obama Administration passed sweeping Wall Street reform, Student Loan reform, Health Care reform, a new Hate Crimes law (something that so many others have tried and failed), a very important Stimulus Package that’s actually working, that included the largest middle-class tax-cut in U.S. history, he’s done all these things and more in under half a term.

President Obama is doing things, really important historical things. If he has a fault, it’s that he’s too subtle about his accomplishments. He doesn’t have a giant PR machine touting his achievements. While the right-wing media slams him with lies, he quietly continues his work rather than get mixed up in some PR smack-down. So, give President Obama some credit, he’s definitely earned it.