My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo, number seventy-seven, is from an Aimee Mann song, Little Bombs, which is off of one of my top ten favorite records, The Forgotten Arm.

As I’ve mentioned around the blog, I died once, in some violently bright trauma room, but it didn’t stick. المراهنات It was spectacularly dramatic though, my heart quit its post, a team of doctors and nurses beating the Hell out of me, trying to wake me up before all the beating in the world wouldn’t matter. My girlfriend, Sara, crying. Sara telling me not to go. It was like a movie. Had it stuck, it would have been quite something, a big, theatrical death, but it didn’t, and here we are, almost a decade later. I don’t think most death is all big and flashy, it’s slow and subtle and certain.

One of my favorite writers, K.J. Bishop, has this total badass character, Gwynn. Gwynn lives by his own set of morals, he kills for cash, he kills for justice, sometimes he just kills because it’s his whim and it feels like proper etiquette to do so. He drinks hard, enjoys all manner of narcotics. He dresses impeccably, plays the piano for eccentric old ladies at swanky parties. He has fallen in love, HARD. Though Gwynn could die pretty much every day, in some grand fashion, some way that he would personally find spectacular, he doesn’t. His hold on life in the midst of combat borders on preternatural. He takes kill-or-be-killed to a form of high-art. He is death in the theater of killing. Unfortunately, even though your profession is snatching life from others, and you do it well enough to see your gorgeous, flowing black hair go gray, you’re going to have to retire. It comes time to hang up your weapons and just be. In a later short-short story, She Mirrors, we see Gwynn as an old man. His recreational narcotics are replaced by medicines for his creaky joints, aches and pains that are the cost one pays for pushing a body past its limits over the course of a career that isn’t usually lengthy. His doctor has vehemently warned him against alcohol and cigarettes. His great love is now just a memory. He’s not dying as a mercenary in some great war, he’s not dying by sword or gun. He’s dying the slow death inflicted by time. He doesn’t go quietly, at the story’s end he’s off toward one more adventure, an adventure that might not go the way he wants, that might be the last his body allows, but to Gwynn, it’s the possibilities that are exhilarating.

She Mirrors is such an honest story, it resonates with me, and scares me, scares me because it’s so true. Our stories aren’t guaranteed to end how we want, or even with a quick bang. مواقع كازينو  Time is what kills us, usually slowly, softly, over minutes, hours, years. The story shows how we’re all fighting against a force that we can rail at, furiously, and still, we will not win. She Mirrors brings to mind my favorite line from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I know the words by memory, “…Christ was not crucified: He was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels.”  We’re all worn away by those clicking little wheels, the clock makes us all equals, we all get too little from time. Our clocks stop and we end. Gwynn, Christ, me, nobody gets out of it, time quitting our company.

Life just kind of empties out, less a deluge than a drought, those words resonate too, those words have been important to me ever since the first time I heard Aimee sing them. I got the words permanently etched into my leg because the idea that time is slowly, but inexorably, wearing me away drives me. It could have happened way back in that trauma room, it could happen tomorrow, but probably, it’ll happen years from now, tediously and maddeningly. Still, one way or another, or another, it will happen, which is why I have bouncers carry me up two flights of stairs at the goth club, or fly to Boston during a blizzard, my antiquated breathing machine powered by an equally unsophisticated battery, with the woman I love just to see Aimee Mann play. It’s why when Sara asked, “So, would you ever go swimming?” I said, without a blink, “Yeah!” I’m terrified of being in anything larger than a bathtub, but she only got, “Yeah!” The reality that that slow drought will come is why I once told a woman I love her more than air, why I asked if she’d wake up with me tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It didn’t go how I wanted, but I did risk it. مراهنات المباريات I’ll risk simple failure, I’ll risk my life, anything, because at the end of my drought, when time has shoved me toward death’s enfolding kiss, I don’t want to feel like I let time wear me away without fighting with everything in me to experience everything I want. I can’t not fight.

The tattoo reminds me that my life is emptying out, and I can’t just sit back and watch it go.

So, Monday, I went to the hospital for a typical, boring, old-hat trach change (getting a fresh plastic tube in my throat). One trach change became four, and by the end, after eight hours in the hospital, I was fucking exhausted and uneasy. Just getting so tired makes me nervous, I don’t bounce right back anymore, it can easily take the whole week to feel even just kind of normal, if everything goes sideways enough.

I feel weak, and small, it scares me a little more every time. I still get back up, I fight it, I’ll never just willingly stay down. After seven years I know that much about me. I’m not trying to come across like I’m complaining, I’m just saying what’s what. I get tired, I get scared, and that’s that.

Doing this alone is getting harder. Not having someone to hold me close, and kiss me slow, to love me and be there when I look like Hell, and tell me I’m still me. The lack of her is the hardest part. She made the bad stuff not really so bad. That’s how I feel about her, have always felt about her. My nebulous her.

So, I haven’t written in a really long time…

First, we’re now running WordPress 3.9, then 3.9.1. The updates are totally automated after 3.8, so it won’t be me who destroys the blog with an update gone stupid. As for WordPress 3.9, I really love it, everything keeps getting more polished, sophisticated, yet easier to use. I just have to practice the use part.

Next up…

I moved. My purple/red/black gothy sanctuary is no more, and I really do miss it. A lot. Being here feels like that time I was in the hospital for two months. I had familiar stuff from home, my girlfriend was there, but it obviously wasn’t home. Here feels like that, just clearly less extreme. I mean, I’m not hooked up to forty-seven machines, I’m not scared of dying at the drop of a hat, but still… Everything’s totally white (and painting isn’t allowed), it’s smaller, it’s not a “master suite,” so there are lots of doors in/out, no attached bath. My other room felt separate, like my own little apartment.

Technology-wise, it’s pretty fabulous. A fellow came in, hung my tv on the wall, my iMac from the ceiling, my surround sound, around.  It’s not a bad house, a bad room, it’s just..

Okay, pictures before I elaborate.

I wide view…

Crazy shelved closet door…

Art…

Charmer, transplanted…

As you can see, it’s very different. I mourn the old room because, it was a symbol of independence. It was a symbol of what I could accomplish with words and sheer will. Originally, that room was a really hideous pale yellow, with anime art on the walls that I collected when I was twenty-four and astonishingly lonely.

Three years later, I was madly in love with a girl, Sara. We were apart after being there a year, after I died but didn’t, after I got the little plastic tube in my throat, after I quit talking forever, after all that, we were apart. Back then, the only thing I was truly scared of wasn’t dying, wasn’t not talking, it was being apart from Sara, which is exactly what happened. So, after I recovered my strength and my wits, winning Sara back was everything. I knew I could, I knew that so long as we lived in the same city, I could remind her why we got lost in each other’s eyes, why we danced. I got crazy face piercings, more tattoos. I flew to New York with my life-saving breathing machine powered by a boat battery. I road in a boat on Saranac Lake. I had my picture taken at the very top of the Olympic ski jump in Lake Placid.  I wanted to show my Sara everything we could be doing together, that all the bad changes were nothing but temporary. While on my journeys through upstate New York, I met the head of a production company who worked with Ira Glass on the tv version of his radio documentary show, This American Life. They ended up doing an episode about me, Sara, independence. Even so, I hadn’t totally convinced Sara that I was the right bet, but the night we had dinner with Ira and the TAL crew, she gave me the last bit of inspiration needed to sway her. She said to me, “Look, I just don’t think I can be with someone who’s twenty-seven with anime all over the walls of his room.” I didn’t have to capture a unicorn, slay a dragon (I’d have done both if necessary), I just had to redo my room, something I always meant to do, but never really tried. That weekend I ditched the anime, went out with my assistant and bought art I genuinely loved. By week’s end I picked out paint, hired a painter. I created a space that was beautiful, that reflected the me in my head. I did it without my family’s help, or approval. It was me, a crazy act of independence, building a path toward the life I wanted with someone I loved. Sara and I would end up waking up together many mornings in that room, so close, so in love. Then she left, for good, for Boston, someplace I couldn’t follow.

Still, I’d spend almost ten years in that room. I’d find love again, I’d lose it, and find it again, and lose it, again. Though, we’ll save all that for some other post, maybe for post one-thousand-and-one.

For now, I just want this feeling to pass, this just wanting to go home.

So, I’m at this bar, a beer bar, with an outdoor stage for shitty local bands, stand-up comedians… Tonight, it’s stand-up comedians. Not my style. I don’t care if the beer’s from Ireland, brewed by faerie magic, you still have to drink two, three, five, just to feel anything. I want some clear liquid in a tiny glass that takes two seconds to drink and two more seconds to make my face feel warm and fuzzy. Drinks like that burn your throat, but that’s part of their magic, the whole pain heightens pleasure, I like girls who pull my hair while we kiss, thing. At any rate, yeah, beer bars, not my style. Neither is watching stand-up comedy, but I’m there doing that too. It’s kind of a downer evening, just a few evenings before Christmas. I’m at this beer bar, I’m stone sober, I’m bored, and I’m cold. Like I said, outdoor stage, late December. Even Florida gets bitter-cold a few times a year. One of the previously mentioned stand-ups is actually funny, but he’s the headliner, he’s up last. This leaves a solid hour of jokes about what is apparently the wannabe comics’ go-to topic, Hilarity Without End, Amen, the vagina. I’ve never heard the word so many times during what felt like an eternity, vagina as the Holy Grail of punch-lines. I guess if you’re 27, and you’re only with a woman, say, whenever an Olympics rolls around, you get a bang out of at least talking about it. I’m bored. Though, I’m less cold by the forty-seventh vagina joke, my brother brings me a heating-pad. Yes, I’m a giant sissy about being cold, and I really don’t care about looking cool at a beer bar. Warmer or not, I still want to go home, but I don’t.

After the headliner gives us a generous reprieve from the Vagina Monologues, the show’s over, everybody’s straggling toward their cars or cabs, or better bars. I’m just kind of sitting in my chair, staring up at the night sky, wanting to see stars rather than clouds, thinking about a girl. I haven’t seen her in a really long time, but she’s always in my head, permanently etched into my memory, a tattoo behind my eyes, a sometimes torture that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’m thinking about how I wish she were next to me, that we were about to drive home together. I want to be going home together, crawling into our cozy warm bed, kissing and talking and kissing in the dark before we fall asleep, the unspoken promise of deeper intimacy in the morning, the sacrament we’d share, her skin against mine. I’m thinking about the way she used to look at me, all these years later nobody has ever looked at me like her. She saw past all my outward flaws, saw me the way only God sees me, into my soul. She saw the real me, the melancholy, happy, scared, brave, dark, light me, and in her eyes all I saw was love, love as simple and beautiful as summer sun shining through green tree leaves. I’m thinking about just wanting to have those eyes in my life again, if for only one night, one hour, ten minutes. Anything.

I close my eyes, head tilted toward the gray night sky. Cold air stings my face, cold air that scoffs at the heat draped across my chest. I focus on the heat, it reminds me of that girl, I see her, the tattoo only I can see. My sometimes torture that I wouldn’t trade for anything, she’s vivid and bright and so right there. I get this stupid feeling that if I just open my eyes and look next to me, she’ll be there. I don’t look, I know she won’t be there. I know and I’m scared, the lack of her scares me.

I open my eyes, the clouds shuffled off like so many drunks. I see stars, I know that they’ll be here long after I blink out and disappear.

So, to me, story collections are generally hit or miss creatures. You usually get three or four great stories by three or four great writers, some good stories by some very capable writers, then you get dregs. Story collections by a single writer tend to fare better, provided that said writer is good or great in the first place. Great story collections by great writers are definitely rare enough, but they do exist. That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote by K.J. Bishop is one such collection.

If you haven’t read K.J. Bishop’s novel, The Etched City, and you fancy yourself a fan of Speculative Fiction, well, then you haven’t really read the best of Speculative Fiction. I mention The Etched City because, by itself it’s an important book, but also, three of the best stories in That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote are set in the world of The Etched City, The Art of Dying, The Love of Beauty, and She Mirrors. If you haven’t read The Etched City, I actually recommend skipping those three stories, just set them aside, until you’ve read the novel that they would eventually become. Bishop wrote two of the short stories before her novel, but I think the short stories are better appreciated after reading the masterwork of which they’re a part.

While the three above stories are particularly important to me, because The Etched City is so important to me, they’re definitely not the only magic that That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote has to offer, not by a longshot. There’s the dark fairytale of Saving the Gleeful Horse, a story in which childrens’ games have deadly consequences in unexpected ways, There’s We the Enclosed, a story of searching for something lost that reads like a fever dream. The Heart of a Mouse is a post-apocolyptic nightmare, a story of people suddenly transformed into animals struggling to maintain their human minds, it’s kind of The Road meets The Tale of Despereaux meets The Rapture gone terribly wrong. Mother’s Curtains is a light-hearted look into the world of the absurd, a story of bedroom curtains that feel unloved, curtains that long to live as the masts of a pirate-ship.

It’s hard to really pick a favorite, the entire collection is that strong. Each story has a way of sliding into one’s mind, always to be remembered in one way or another. One story that struck me in a very personal way was Between the Covers, a story of a writer who lost her connection with her craft after taking on the Devil as her benefactor. Writers have a certain relationship with their words, their stories, Between the Covers depicts that relationship in a uniquely visual way. Honestly, I’d pay full cover value for that story alone. Tales of writers come to ruin always terrify and fascinate me.

A really neat facet of this collection is that in the closing pages Bishop discusses each story, talking about inspiration, points of symbolism, all those little questions you’d like to ask a writer after you’ve finished reading their work.

That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote is a brilliantly imaginative collection of stories written by an absolutely brilliant writer. K.J. Bishop is someone that doesn’t blink into existence every day, her use of craft is something special. She uses words to create life, to create worlds, to create art. K.J. Bishop does things with words that few writers can accomplish. Ultimately, she writes things that are worth reading, which is really all that matters.

Is China Mieville going to come kill me in my sleep? I mean, he knows things, dark, arcane things that we can’t even comprehend.

So, we are four posts away from one-thousand… I feel like the one-thousandth post should be something compelling, something to start kind of a renaissance, a revitalization of the blog. I want to clean the slate, cut loose some mundane things I said I’d write, but haven’t. I mean, who cares that it took me five years and many attempts to finally read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville? It’s a terribly overrated book. Yes, I know it’s heretical not to pleasure whatever part of the body Mieville sees fit, and calling something Mieville wrote overrated is worthy of being hanged in some circles, but I don’t care. I willingly commit both sins. There, I’ve just covered that promised, yet unwritten post. Who needs more? I definitely don’t. With my one-thousandth post, I want to start clean, and write something important, or at the very least, something worth the time it takes for me to write and you to read.

I have some ideas, rather, shadows of ideas that I will make solid in the coming days.

Still, I’m also open to reader suggestions (I know there are at least six of you!), but I only want really ambitious suggestions. No What sorts of movies do you like? suggestions. If you’re going to suggest something, or ask something, dig deep, way down. No topic is off-limits, no question is too personal. Either you’re going to guide my boldness, or I go it alone. It’s the one-thousandth post, it’s going to be something rather than nothing…

Leave your whatevers in this post’s comments (not in Facebook comments or tweets, please).

So, I feel bette-ish, better than yesterday, at least. Maybe. I don’t know. I get nervous when tube after tubs goes wrong. Doing a bunch of procedures makes me nervous afterward.

I’ll get over it. There’s really no other choice.

I miss the person who could make it all go away.

The third emergency trach change in under a month.

I’m tired.

I’m uneasy.

I’m scared.

Well, I really wanted to give out five e-copies of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, but alas, I only got one entry. Still, it was really great, so the win was earned.

Monica (not the Monica I pined over) predicted:

OK, I’m game, seeing that the probability of me getting a book is pretty high at the moment:

SPOILER ALERT!!!

It turns out that Area X is populated by cats. Really goddamn mean ones.

So, Monica, congratulations!

I’ll try another game next week, I really do want lots of people to have this book.