My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I’m not a big fan of Christmas much anymore. It’s just gotten to be very lonely, and stressful, and full of unmet expectations. I suppose I’m getting old and bitter, or perhaps I just don’t carry around the right people in my backpack. I don’t know.

Aside from not liking the season in general, I don’t tend to like Christmas music. It’s all either saccharine sweet, or just plain weird. Like, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. How fuckin’ creepy is that? I do, however, love Aimee Mann, so I had to have her Christmas CD, One More Drifter in the Snow. She sings a bunch of the more low-key traditional Christmas songs, but then there’s one song on the CD that really stands out, Calling On Mary. I’d never heard it before, it’s very sad, and beautifully written. It’s about taking happiness for granted, and ending up fucked up and alone at Christmas. It’s so real, and so beautiful. This is because it’s an original song, co-written by Aimee herself. Which explains why it’s so gorgeous, and dark, and perfect. There’s one line in particular, kind of a warning against guaranteed misery, that really caught me.

‘Cause comfort’s not possible when you look past the joy to the end…

Tattoo by Colt, hardcore badass at Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

That really is true, it’s impossible to feel any sort of peace, or contentment, or happiness, when you’re thinking fifteen steps into the future, never living right now. Lying in bed with someone you love, only thinking about the fact that they’ll be gone far too soon, that you probably won’t see them for awhile, all that thinking ruins the beauty of right now. Still, it’s very difficult, at least for me, not to think that way. It’s difficult when absolutely beautiful moments are drowned out by so much loneliness, and uneasiness, and melancholy. It’s hard to focus on the beauty of right now knowing that everything for miles ahead is just fucking bad. It’s hard not to look past the joy to the end, I don’t think I’m very good at it, but I try. I do try.

So, this tattoo actually came from a piece of writing from a very bizarre tv mini-series, The Prisoner. Normally, at least to me, tv writing isn’t particularly sharp. I don’t remember any one line from Lost, or Battlestar Galactica. Okay, I actually remember lots of lines from South Park, but I don’t think I want, “I like dancin’, and ponies, and getting my snootch pounded on Friday nights,” tattooed on me. Nothing I’d ever heard on tv had ever affected me enough to want to carry it around on my skin forever, until I heard Ian McKellen say so plainly, “Love is a torment, or it is not love.”

Tattoo by Colt, resident badass at Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Love is a torment, love is the most difficult easy thing in the world. Being in love with someone means caring for them so deeply, you’ll do anything to make them smile, keep them safe. If that particular person isn’t around for awhile, you miss them, their absence is palpable. The absence becomes something weighty, a painful heaviness in the chest. When you love someone, you don’t want to be apart. You want to fall asleep holding that person close, you want to kiss them slow, and their face is the first thing you want to see when you wake in the morning. Without that closeness, and that kiss, and that face next to yours, bathed in soft morning sunlight, it’s almost difficult to breathe sometimes, difficult to think. Loving someone so completely, you don’t ever want to lose that person, the thought of being apart forever gets to be terrifying. That’s the cost of feeling something so spectacular, the pain of distance, the fear of loss.

So yes, love is a torment, or it is not love.

So, I went to see Up in the Air three times in the theater, and I’ll probably go for a fourth. Aside from firing people for a living, the film’s main character also does motivational speaking gigs. He talks about how we all carry a backpack, we fill it with keepsakes, gadgets, furniture, cars, houses, friends, acquaintances, family, lovers, secrets, compromises, responsibility. We jam so much into that backpack that we can’t move, we’re completely weighed down. The idea is that all that weight, even relationships, it all equates to a lack of freedom and ultimately, death.

Much of me agrees with that philosophy. I have so much “stuff,” but it’s just stuff, it doesn’t make me feel happy, or loved. Aside from my computer, I often think about throwing everything on a fire just to watch it burn. Stuff is often just a fix, something to stop up a hole where the rain gets in. Back in 2005, I accumulated a collection of anime DVDs that screamed, “OH MY GOD, I’M LONELY, AND I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO LIFE!” Letting go of stuff can be freeing, gives a clean slate to focus on what really matters. People.

In my backpack, people, and all the accompanying emotional baggage, this isn’t inherently bad. I don’t want to be some lonely fucker, wandering around with an empty backpack. I don’t think relationships are inherently a lack of freedom. I mean, to me, being in love with someone who loves me the same way, that’s freedom. It’s the best feeling in the world, better than vodka and morphine combined. To me, all that matters is feeling genuinely connected to even just one person. I’m not afraid of commitments, or responsibility, that sort of weight doesn’t scare me. Loneliness scares me. I don’t want my backpack to be bereft of relationships, even if relationships can be difficult and painful. The hard part is really deciding how many people to carry around in that backpack. Some relationships aren’t worth the effort, some relationships are eventually detrimental. It’s difficult knowing who to keep, and who to toss. It’s difficult wanting someone to keep you, and knowing they might not.

So, recently, I read Finch by Jeff VanderMeer. I’d had Finch on my list for a long time, but I just felt too distracted to read it. Jeff’s work is always brilliant, so I didn’t want to waste Finch. I wanted to read it in the right frame of mind. It was so worth the wait.

Finch is the third novel set in the city of Ambergris, its predecessors being City of Saints and Madmen, and Shriek: An Afterword. Each novel is very different, they don’t read like a typical “series.” City of Saints is sort of a concept novel, a collection of broadly connected short stories and historical histories that bring the lavish, dark, cruel, and ultimately beautiful dystopia that is Ambergris to life. Shriek is an intimate character study, a memoir of one family’s life as Ambergris prospers, and then crumbles around them. Finch, however, is a gritty, genre-bending, noir-style detective story. While Finch tells a story that stands on its own, I seriously recommend reading the previous novels beforehand. Reading the entire history of Ambergris first will make Finch far more compelling.

Finch takes place a century after Shriek: An Afterword, and tells the story of John Finch, a detective on a case that could very easily kill him. Ambergris is a city in torment, a city breathing its last breath. occupied by a race of very hostile beings known as, Gray Caps. The Gray Caps are a race of mushroom people. They’re walking, talking, mushroom-like humanoids. Gray Caps are around three feet tall, dressing in grayish robes, donning gray wide-brimmed felt hats on their heads. They live underground, forced there through mass-genocide thousands of years ago during the founding of Ambergris. The mass killings do not endear humans to the Gray Caps, not one bit. So, they wait underground, they wait until Ambergris is mired in civil war, then they Rise. During the Rising, the Gray Caps use tunnels to flood much of the city, creating an artificial bay that’s fed by the River Moth, killing thousands. A rebel army existed, but the Gray Caps lead them into a trap during a tactical retreat, sealing them within a massive cloud of spores. The rebel army is never seen again. Gray Cap weapons are all biological, spore-based. A cloud of spores can turn a human body to nothing but a spray of blood scattered in the wind. The rest of the world abandons Ambergris, not wanting any part of a war against an obviously deadly and mysterious race of beings.

Ambergisian citizens are forced into work camps, building mysterious towers on an island in the bay. Some citizens work “voluntarily” for the Gray Caps, avoiding the camps, maybe doing some good. John Finch is one of those citizens, a detective. His story takes place six years after the Rising. He’s called by his Gray Cap handler to investigate a possible double murder. Two bodies in a dreary apartment, a man, seemingly uninjured, and a Gray Cap with both legs severed, both bodies completely unidentified. This is Finch’s case, and when one works for the Gray Caps, they can’t just call in sick. Failure equals uselessness, uselessness equals death. Pounding the pavement, asking questions, those things can get a fellow killed in Ambergris, but Finch has to solve this case. Possible death versus guaranteed death. It’s not much of a choice, but Ambergris is an entire city of few choices.

Finch is a fast-paced novel, written in punchy, short sentences. Not one word is unnecessary, nor does VanderMeer waste any words. A lesser writer would have botched trying to write in such a tight style, but VanderMeer is genuinely a master of his craft. He knows how to use words to create exactly what he wants to create. Generally, I don’t like crime novels, detective stories. They never really suck me in. Finch, however, is different. Yes, it’s a detective story, guys with badges, guns. Finch is trying to solve a case, searching for clues, talking to leads. Finch has a sultry lover, a mysterious woman with many secrets. These are all elements of a typical crime novel. Things that are usually dull to me. However, this is a crime novel set in Ambergris, a psychotic, dirty, lush, always dying, yet utterly alive city where anything can happen. VanderMeer is also a master of characterization. Finch’s characters are real people, with loves, desires, families, but they’re trying to live their normal lives in the most bizarre situation imaginable. It’s the reality amongst so much surrealism that makes this novel such a fantastic read.

So, here’s my friend, my voice, and fellow writer, Jimmy, reading Christmas in a Park at Cafe Bohemia’s open mic night.

I like this story, and I don’t. I wrote it sitting at Starbucks, thinking about being a spectacular fuck up. I just sat there writing this short sequence that popped into my head, fictional non-fiction about a fellow and the thoughts swirling around in his head. Jimmy gave it a good read on a particularly cold evening.

I could write a full review of Daybreakers, give a little plot summary, talk about the acting, but I won’t. I won’t because Daybreakers is barely worth the letters. It’s the most disappointing, poorly executed vampire movie I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to waste too much time on this, I really don’t, but I just have to mention something else. If a vampire is wearing EKG sensors, and if that vampire catches fire, repeatedly, those EKG sensors shouldn’t be there for a second ignition. EKG sensors are not fireproof.

So, tonight I saw a spectacular film, Up in the Air. George Clooney plays a fellow, Ryan Bingham, who lives his life out of a suitcase, he travels the country firing people for a living. When some company needs to let go of a bunch of people, they call Ryan’s company to send people to pull the trigger. Ryan likes this life, this life of frequent flyer miles, hotel rewards programs, airport lounges. He’s constantly moving, constantly surrounded by people. He’s practically a ghost to his two sisters, his only family, but he’s too busy to notice. He likes having no attachments, his career fosters that sort of lifestyle. He’s absolutely happy. He’s completely happy until he gets a look at the end, until he’s faced with life alone in his one room apartment in Omaha, Nebraska. Thanks to the magic of technology, the internet and video conferencing, face-to-face firing might not have to take place in the same room anymore.

The film is brilliantly acted by everyone involved, particularly Clooney. It tells a story that is so real, so common to the human experience. What does one do when life gets quiet? What happens when one’s tasks are done? It’s film that asks questions, but it doesn’t spoon feed answers. Up in the Air isn’t a fairytale, it’s a sometimes funny, sometimes sad, constantly beautiful story that examines what’s really important at the end of the day.

This is one of my favorite Alanis Morissette songs, it’s a beautiful, clean piece of writing. It’s questions, and doubts, and worries set to music. It’s very much the way I think on a daily basis. I worry about being lonely. I worry that I’m not a good person. I worry about someone loving me. I worry that I’m too much of a fuck up to be happy. I worry that my life is a waste. I worry that I’m going to end badly, so far from what I want. I worry that writing with complete honesty about myself only isolates me. These are my thoughts.

Since I quit talking, I spend a lot of time in my head. It’s not easy to distract myself from myself. It’s not easy to escape my thoughts.

So, on the outside of my left hand I have this tattoo, Silence. I’m pretty sure one’s immediate reaction to the tattoo is, “Oh, he can’t talk, that’s sad.” I’m not that simple though, it has nothing to do with me not talking.

Really, it’s the title of my favorite PJ Harvey song. To me, it’s a song about the silence one experiences in loneliness, the silence one experiences in longing for affection that is not returned. It’s such an absolutely perfect piece of writing. It captures so many feelings, loneliness, longing, pain, frustration, unrequited love, regret, in just a few words. As a writer, the song always amazes me. The song also reminds me very much of things I’ve felt in the last few years. So…

Tattoo by Colt, hardcore fuckin' badass at Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, here we are, my twenty-ninth tattoo. It’s from one of my favorite Nirvana songs, Dumb.

Tattoo by Colt, hardcore fuckin' badass at Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Dumb, to me, is a song about depression, about loneliness, about being broken, and chasing an illusion to make it all better. It’s about hiding darkness with a destructive sort of light. Liquor, drugs, pick your vice, anything to make life feel better, if only for a little while. I know what it’s like to be so dumb, to chase happiness that isn’t real.