My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I have to admit, I’m rather excited about the NeuroSwitch and what it could do. I feel like I could be my old self again, I feel a little of my old arrogance, my confidence. It’s good to be a bit arrogant sometimes, it takes a little arrogance to do things that seem impossible. The last few months have been slowly and quietly breaking me down, as it’s gotten harder and harder to write.

Words are so powerful, they can create reality just as surely as any physical act. Words properly arranged into sentences can inspire fear, sorrow, love, so many emotions. Writing is really the only thing I do well, it’s how I’ve accomplished things that mean everything to me. It’s how I meet people, it’s how I go places, the written word is entirely important to me. Without writing I’m a living corpse, I’m nothing. If I couldn’t write, every dream I have would be ash. I’d never find another lover, or an end to loneliness, I’d have no future that I want. These ideas have terrified me since December, but not today. Not right now.

So, in about three weeks, a fellow is flying in from Australia to hook me up with a NeuroSwitch. The NeuroSwitch is pretty much the Jason Bourne, the Lestat of switches. It’s a switch that does not fuck around. Kitty Jesus willing, I’ll be back to my old self soon enough.

Like I said, there’s absolutely no questioning that Queen of the Damned is awful, I totally admit that, but certain scenes…

I’m completely addicted to the concert scene, I can’t help it. I love the goth imagery, the atmosphere. I love Lestat, his arrogance, his confidence. He knows what he is, he lives unflinchingly on his terms. I sometimes see myself like Lestat, but not often enough.

You’re all sex, and liquor, romance and sin. You’re all dark clothes, and dark music, dark words. America, baseball, apple pie, these things you’re not. You fit nowhere, tired of trying, searching, tired of wanting. You’re all lonely and bored, things you hate, and never lack.

Queen of the Damned is definitely a terrible movie, definitely a terrible adaption of a decent book. It’s so wrong in so many ways, and yet, I watch it. I watch it because it does do a few things right, such as the film’s final sequence…

I think it’s such a gorgeous visual metaphor for immortality, it perfectly illustrates how time only flies for we who die.

So, today I tried a few infrared switches to use with my eyebrow. As I kind of feared, infrared switches don’t respond quickly enough, or accurately enough for someone as fast as me. Supposedly, very few are close to being as fast as me with a switch and my switch software.

So, I still need to find a responsive switch that doesn’t require my thumb, or the zombies could just come. Either way.

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.