My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Tattoo by Fish, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

This, my thirty-seventh tattoo, is from one of my favorite Aimee Mann songs, Susan, which is from her album, Bachelor No. 2 (Or, The Last Remains of the Dodo).

Susan is a song about a relationship. This woman, she meets a fellow, and he makes her really happy, keeps the storm clouds away. Going in, she knows it’s not going to last, that she’ll be lonely again and he won’t be able to drag her out, but none of that matters. She goes anyway. Happiness “may be pure illusion, but it’s beautiful while it’s here…”

It’s a very melancholy, but often very true idea. It’s an idea that’s true of absolutely anything, any human experience. Nothing good in life is guaranteed to last until one drops dead. There’s always the risk of lost love, or rejection, or failure, or returning loneliness, or any bad thing imaginable, but the risks are worth taking. Everything good that we feel is potentially temporary, potentially an illusion, but that illusion can feel pretty fuckin’ awesome when you’re smack in the middle of it. Illusions always have the possibility of turning out to be real. Illusions and possibilities are reasons enough to keep breathing, reasons enough for me anyway.

Sometimes, I just think too far ahead, I think about endings more than the beauty of right now. I’m always trying to remember to enjoy the good things right in front of me. Tattoos are good reminders of things that shouldn’t be tossed away and forgotten, they’re reminders you carry wherever you go.

Tattoo etched at Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, my thirty-sixth tattoo is a small one from an Alanis Morissette song, UR, which is off of her second album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.

I find it weird that I can be so many things, so many people, all at once. I can be brave, scared, introverted, outgoing, dark, optimistic, so many traits. So many mes, all at the same time. I try to figure out which me is the real me. I think maybe they’re all me, but I don’t know. Though, if they’re not me, then who the fuck are they?  Whenever I listen to UR, I think about these things.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, my thirty-fifth tattoo is from an Alanis Morissette song, Can’t Not, which is on my favorite Alanis album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.

To me, the song is about how artists practice their craft in spite of criticism, scrutiny, and the pain one feels from being struck by such weapons. People who are passionate about their craft, whether it’s visual art, or music, or writing, they feel a drive to share what they create, to put it out there for anyone to take in. Sharing such creation opens one up to not only praise, but also harsh words and deep criticism. It can be painful for one to have what they create knocked and dismissed, spoken badly of, but that drive to create and share outweighs any feelings of pain that come from practicing one’s craft with absolute honesty. Creation for the sake of creation, whether anyone likes it or not. Alanis writes songs that make people uncomfortable, some just flat out don’t like her, and that dislike hurts, but she simply can’t not write those songs. She can’t not be herself and create with complete honesty.

Whenever I write about depression, or suicide, or sex, or derision toward God, fictionally or otherwise, it is likely to upset someone (especially people close to me). Honesty in writing, particularly when it comes to personal subjects, isn’t always welcome, but this is what I do and I can’t not do it. No matter how much I hate any personal fallout the things I write can cause, this is my craft and I can’t not practice it.

Really, I have something deep inside me, something that pushes me to do things no matter what. I can’t not do things like, tell a woman how completely I love her, even though she might not love me back, or look into her eyes and tell her how much I want to kiss her, to take off all her clothes for the first time. I can’t not travel and experience things, even though something could go astonishingly wrong with the machines, and hoses, and tubes that keep me breathing. I almost died going to a movie last December, but I can’t not go, and do, and be. I do things because I can’t not.

So, in about ten minutes I’m going to die. I woke up late, my alarm didn’t go off. My alarm didn’t go off because the power went out. The power went out because, well, and this is so fucking stupid, apparently some giant fucking monster sauntered out of the Pacific Ocean and decided to crush San Diego. Who knows what woke the thing? Maybe it was off-shore oil drilling. Maybe I played my music too loud. Maybe this whole Goddamn thing is my fault because the fucker doesn’t like listening to Heart-Shaped Box at 4 AM. I don’t know, nobody seems to know. Just before the radio went out they were talking about casualties, people abandoning their cars on gridlocked roadways trying to get away on foot, trampling each other to death and getting nowhere. There’s nowhere to go, between the fucking Cloverfield Godzilla Sea Monster and the military trying to kill it, it’s nothing but chaos outside.

I’d rather just sit here with my Goddamn breakfast, my last meal of Fruit Loops and a bottle of vodka, than die out there in that sea of inhumanity. I’m just talking into this tape recorder because it seemed like the thing to do, to save a piece of me. I’m going to get smashed or burned to death, but maybe this tape and my voice will stay without me. I don’t know. Maybe Cloverfield Godzilla whatever the fuck it is will be the end of everything and my stupid voice on this stupid tape won’t mean a Goddamn fuckin’ thing. I don’t know. I really don’t know much of anything after twenty-nine years. I wish I could laugh about this because it’s so absurd, but I can’t. I hear sirens and gunfire, smell smoke and a million dead fish. I’m going to die and I’m scared. I’m thinking about someone who isn’t here, someone I love so much. If you’re alive and you get to hear my voice on this tape, I love you and I wish we’d had more time. I know it’s pointless to say that, but it’s all I can think about just now.

I think I have time to polish off this vodka. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after I close my eyes for the last time. I wish to God this would just stop, but You’re not going to do anything, are You, you fucker? Maybe You’re not even there and I’m just sitting here talking to no one. If You are there, and You are listening, I’m sorry. I don’t know, I really don’t know anything.

I don’t know what else to say, except, well, goodbye.

She’s all curly brown hair, soft brown eyes, eyes so beautiful you’re afraid to look into them for more than a breath, or a heartbeat. You’re afraid of getting lost in those eyes, afraid of not being able to find a way out again. You’re afraid that they’ll look into you so deeply, afraid they’ll see everything inside you and look away. You’re afraid how those eyes love you, but one day might not.

She’s an angel. She’s your warm and safe, and everything good. Her eyes are your connection to Divinity in the here and now, in this world of blue skies that fade to black and fill with stars. She’s your paradise found.

The worst torture in Hell is said to be the absence of God, the loss of connection from one’s soul to Divinity. You look into those soft brown eyes, the eyes of your angel, and you don’t look away. You know you’re already damned.

I’ve never had this much trouble writing, at least, not since I started writing this blog. It’s a bad feeling, not being able to create, it’s frustrating. I know I can fix it, I know I can dig my way out if I try hard enough. I mean, ultimately, writing is the only thing I have that’s truly mine, I can’t quit. Whatever I write is what will be around when I go wherever I go after I quit breathing, it’ll be all that’s left. I want something left. So, this not being able to write nonsense has to stop.

I need to pull myself together. I need to write with complete abandon. My writing is about absolute honesty, I need to get back to that place. I need to write like Kurt, and Elliott, and Alanis, writing without safety nets. Otherwise, the writing is empty and meaningless.

Until the Kindle for Mac app was released, I’d never actually read Fight Club, but I’d always just figured it was amazing. I mean, the film version sounds like Chuck Palahniuk at his best. It sounds like Survivor, and Invisible Monsters, and Choke. Fight Club is one of the movies I turn on just to listen to the writing, it’s practically an audio book. The film version of Fight Club is edgy, and smart, and entirely plausible in a violently surreal way. Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden is fucking brilliant, and totally fuckin’ cool. You want to be him, or at least hang out with him. It’s obvious why Edward Norton’s Narrator created him for an alter-ego. The film’s ending, all those corporate offices crashing down, Norton’s Narrator and Helena Bonham Carter’s Marla Singer holding hands while everything burns, it’s beautiful and perfect. They’re two fucked up people, but they found each other and in that moment, they’re happy.

If I had to pick a single word to describe Fight Club as a novel, that word would be “juvenile.” If I had to pick a second word, it’d be “tedious.” I found reading it to be painful. Palahniuk is so over-the-top, so obviously trying to shock people, that the novel reads like a ridiculous farce. The Narrator isn’t likable, he reads like a bitter seventeen year-old walking around in a thirty year-old body. We get more of his back-story, but his story isn’t endearing. Throughout the novel, one doesn’t get the sense that he’s evolving, growing up, learning anything from his experiences. He isn’t learning anything from Tyler because Tyler isn’t teaching anything genuinely valuable, he’s just an angry kid throwing a violent tantrum at the world. The Narrator and Tyler are just different degrees of bitter teenager, Tyler being more prone toward violence. Pitt’s Tyler is definitely irreverent, absolutely an Anarchist, but when he speaks it’s intelligent. He makes sense, in a dark sort of way. The same can’t be said of Tyler’s book-bound counterpart.

The novel contains various themes; losing everything makes one free to do anything, material possessions are an empty measure of one’s worth, paternal abandonment, destruction as a form of creation, all interesting for one to consider.  Unfortunately for the novel, these ideas are buried under a ridiculous story in which Tyler is making soap from stolen lard liposuctioned from Marla’s mom’s ass, lard Marla was saving to use for her own future lip and ass enlargement injections. A story in which Tyler and Marla constantly refer to each other as “buttwipe.” A story in which Marla and a bunch of cancer patients, some in wheelchairs, race to the top of a building to stop Tyler from killing himself. Fight Club as a novel smacks of immaturity and blatant attempts to shock readers with useless, crude dialogue. I’m sure at seventeen, Fight Club would have been taboo and amazing, but I’m not seventeen, and I’ve experienced too much to be able to relate to so much fluff.

The film version of Fight Club manages to distill the best elements of its source-material into a thought-provoking, intelligent story that’s ultimately beautiful in all its darkness. Maybe I’d feel differently if I’d read the novel first, but I doubt it.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never read any genuinely great zombie fiction. There are plenty of fun zombie movies, but books about zombies, they’re not particularly compelling. I’ve never picked up a “zombie page turner,” that is, until I picked up Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.

Boneshaker takes place in an alt-history Seattle during the 1870s gold rush. Russia puts out a call for inventors, they’re looking for a drill capable of breaking through the deepest layers of Alaskan ice in search of gold. Enter Leviticus Blue and his Boneshaker, the most powerful drill ever created, and soon enough, the most infamous drill ever created. During the Boneshaker’s first test run, something goes horribly wrong, the drill takes off, supposedly a malfunction, buildings collapse in its wake. The Boneshaker also just so happens to cruise by the Financial District, emptying every bank vault in Seattle. Blue turns up missing, possibly a thief, possibly killed by his own greed. Before an investigation can be mounted, a strange yellowish fog begins to seep from the city’s gashes. This fog is lethal upon inhalation, but after death the victim awakens, mindless, violent, and hungry for the taste of human flesh. These walking dead are dubbed, “Rotters,” and they quickly decimate the city. A massive wall is constructed around Seattle, but with the rest of America embroiled in civil-war, this raveged city is left to the Rotters trapped within.

Sixteen years later, Briar Wilkes, Blue’s widow, struggles to raise their teenage son in the world outside the wall. Briar doesn’t dare go by her married name, it isn’t particularly popular, given the wall, and the Rotters, and the death. Briar would just as soon let the past go, but her son, well, he can’t. Zeke wants to clear the family name. His mother’s silence of the past drives Zeke toward something drastic, a crazy journey under the wall in search of proof that the fall of Seattle was just an unfortunate accident. Realizing her son’s misguided plan, Briar does what any loving mother would do, she aims to find her son and bring him home.

Boneshaker falls under the genre of Steampunk, with a zombie twist. There are flying-machines, massive air filtration systems, deadly weapons, all powered by steam. None of the technology should exist, yet it’s entirely believable. The novel is truly a page turner, I absolutely couldn’t put it down. Priest’s pacing is pitch-perfect, switching perspectives between Briar and Zeke. Boneshaker often reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Inside the Seattle wall, death is always a palpable possibility. Clean air, water, food, ammunition, they’re all vital, and they’re all astonishingly scarce. I was constantly worried for Briar and Zeke, always hoping that their gas mask filters wouldn’t clog before safety could be found, always scared Briar might not have enough bullets to match with the Rotters. I just wanted to get to the next page to make sure everyone was okay. Boneshaker is fraught with a very satisfying sensation of tension and release. The tension exists not just from violence and zombies, but from the fact that Priest manages to create characters that are very real and relatable. We care about Briar and Zeke because they’re just a normal family trapped in an absolutely bizarre and dangerous situation. The book is compelling because it’s ultimately about the push and pull relationships between parent and child, mother and son. It’s about parental protection versus a child’s desire for independence, and finding balance between the two. We all can relate to that on some level.

Boneshaker is definitely a must for any Steampunk fan, but Priest’s spectacular use of story-telling and wonderful prose makes it worthwhile for a wide range of fiction readers.

Tomorrow will be better, I’ll get my 500 words down. I stumbled today, but we’ll chalk it up to a warm up day. I think I psyched myself out with clocks, and deadlines, and word counts. I’ll get myself together tomorrow.

So, apparently I can’t manage 500 words per-day. Nothing in my head seems even remotely compelling. I’m bored, and lonely, and sick of me.

I need a muse.