My,
haven’t the last few weeks been a bit… unpredictable? Such is the marathon
mindfuck that is the holiday stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New
Year’s Eve. Couple that with a ravaging illness, a complete change in my
professional life, and the impending end of the world in nine days and, well…
let’s just say things haven’t been quite going my way. But who am I to lament?
Haven’t we all been there at one time or another? You know… those pits and
gullies in life where you find yourself begging to be eviscerated by the
gnarled death of zombies or to be set upon by a tribe of cruel, salaciously
vicious pygmies JUST so you can avoid
facing the waking light of dawn. Or maybe that’s just me: hell, when you’re
bummed out and sauced enough who doesn’t concoct a litany of bizarre statements
that sound better in the head than ever being said?
I
digress. The point is, to manipulate a Volkswagon slogan for my own devices, on
the road of life… there are passengers and there are drivers, but my car seems
to be lacking breaks and the driver is blind stinking drunk! Yup, things have
gone askew. But, as my saintly patient mother reminded me: one door closes,
another opens. So maybe me getting mugged and violated by that perverted goon
known as the everyday is a Fourth of July fireworks display going off. Maybe
it’s pounding me on the coconut, whispering: time for a change? Who knows…
other than Papa Hemingway, that is?
Throughout
all of this, however, my biggest disappointment is with myself and my inability
to stay honest and true to what I care so deeply for. To clarify for those of
you just joining us, that would be writing. This experiment in meta-writing
known as a blog, on my new book (despite being really happy with recent plot
changes), even in the rambling gibberish that runs through my head and which I
jot down in notebooks. I’ve been an absent husband to my metaphysical wife
called writing and it’s absolutely infuriating. Despite setbacks, I always try
to work. Okay, I’ll give myself a week off… seeing as I was convinced I was
incubating the reincarnated Bubonic Plague. But other than that, shame on me.
The
encouraging part is that I wasn’t lacking the words themselves. No, this time
around… I was lacking the time and willingness to sacrifice comfort and rest to
get the words on the page. Or screen. Or whatever the hell you’re reading this
damned thing on! Point is, in my earlier (and admittedly purple) days, I was
unflinching in my willingness to suffer a literary crucifix so long as I did
what I do.
Maybe
I’ve gotten soft. It could be getting older; it could be wielding more
responsibility than someone with Peter Pan syndrome can handle; it could be the
mirage of serenity in Shangri LA. Who can say for sure? Yet another one of
those goddamn rhetorical questions! I think I’m starting to even piss myself
off with those things! But it is a part of being a person in pursuit of a
dream, constantly locked in doubt and confusion while wandering the desert of
anonymity. In the end, really all you can do is just keep trudging, hoping to
find that promised land of recognition and justification.
Happily,
I have but a few more days in this festering desert city that calls itself
angelic. Then I’ll be going coast to coast, back to the rustic mysticism of my
humble hometown roots. Couple that with bringing in the New Year back in my
–creatively formative city of New York with some of my closest friends and
compatriots… and I’ll have a plethora of shenanigans to base new short stories
on! So tune back in soon for some of the old stuff. For now, I just felt the
need to talk! But I’ll close with bit of prose I wrote thinking about my
generation. Until next time, you goddamn aluminum-foil eating freaks!
-s/j.@
Alanis Morissette said it
best:
“what
it comes down to…
is
that no one’s really got it
figured
out just yet.”
Such a better testament to
the youth today has never
been
stated.
The angst and sense of the
unknown
has grown into
something far more insidious.
It is a creature that lurks
in
the shadows behind our
eyelids; it is the loss of
a
POINT.
Those of us in our mid-twenties
no longer have anything
to look forward to; our lives
have become a mathematical
equation… devoid of the X-factor
known
as experience.
We are raised in elite,
private
kindergartens…
where playing with blocks is
no
longer
acceptable.
From the time we can
talk we receive instructions
on
what to say;
by the time we can walk
we
are expected to be
varsity athletes.
When was it decided for
us that we had to be
perfect?
Colleges have become four-year
vocational schools,
around
merely to
gain us nothing more than gainful
employment.
More and more, we’re encouraged
to
think
less
and less.
In place of imagination, we
have been inundated by
the
Digital Holocaust:
from birth we’re plugged into
electronics… the manipulative
stimuli of the digital menace.
Books are obsolete,
toys
are distractions,
and
crayons have been
deemed offensively ineffective.
There’s not one moment when
the
world is not a single
click
away.
And those before wonder
why
we’re so fucked up?
We never really figured
shit
out
because we were never really
given
the
chance.
-3/31/11
