mmmm - file cabinet

I put stuff away in the file cabinet I found last year. One more repository to help me to sort out my mess! While I was at it I dug out the folder of my old scraps of writing. Put a few of them here this morning.

Story notes

Written sometime in the last twelve years. Since I moved to Maine.

I just want to touch someone, to explain myself and know, to really know, that they see me. See inside me, understand and say it's okay.

A wall of words, a flood. Trying to explain, contemptuous of self for explaining - the futility of it, the hubris. Wanting to be understood without explanation.

I've been here too long - long enough to see it wasn't the place to come. I want to reach out and touch and somehow needed to go where there is no one to touch to marshal my resources enough to do it. How truly, deeply fucked.

Murder as suicide - Suicide by murder.

But so proud as to not going to make it easy to find me. So the acts have to become more horrific to draw a powerful enough response to overcome my own cunning.

Half-assed philosophical underpinnings - no such thing as good and evil, blah. An excuse to channel rage and shame, each step providing deeper blinders.

Hurried slap-dash attempts at sketching the scene - at first - paying lip service to "readability" but mostly a rush of internal voice. Driving, driving, driven. Later relax and a more orderly, normal narrative.

The impulsive rush at first. Then the back story leading to the present. When the story comes back to now the tempo ups, end delivered in the same blind rush as the beginning.

Jamie

Sent this to a few magazines in 1990, 1991 when living in San Francisco. I think I may have written it in 1989, while living in Taunton, MA. A friend at that time was Stephen King's niece. As embarrassing as it is to recall, I sent it to King asking for advice, invoking her name in hopes of getting his attention.

Jamie is a witch man rich man. Jamie doesn't care. He strolls the streets at night, looking, looking in the dark canyons. Glass eyes black steel lace lids. The heat, the heat man. No wind, no air but hot, hot. Not heat, something sticks to the skin like dirt like grease like sin. Jamie walks the streets. No air no wind but the trash, the garbage, the paper, moves, ripples.

Black canyons, gray canyons, not color, not light not life. It's late the night is dead. The time before resurrection. The drifters, the grafters, the fuckers, the druggers, all down in their cages.

Jamie's time, Jamie's town, Jamie's king, Jamie's tops. Jamie's eyes bruises black pools to his cheekbones. Cheekbones thrust, caves below. Jamie's body wired wire wrapped tight, armature of his brain. Black leather on the wire, greasy jeans on the wire. Jamie's wrapped, Jamie's tight, he's an arrow in flight. Flying to the neck flying to the heart. Jamie's feet move pad, pad. Jamie's head's straight but he sees 360 degrees. Jamie sees it all. His back looks his hands watch his hips zoom in.

Jamie's close, he smells it. Hunt's done. Now it's time to play. Jamie pads pads around the corner. Drugstore's closed, steel, greasy steel over dead eyes. Jaimie's head snaps snarls smiles, remembers. Jamie pad pads.

A noise a sound a crash a scream. Jamie looks up sideways, smiles. Door slams. A woman in the street walking, walking. Shoulders move, small sounds trail behind her. Jamie slows. Pad. Pad... Jamie locks straight ahead. Jamie's day is done.

Woman walks walks fast. Jamie's glue. Shoulders shudder stop, they thump they slide they halt. Night is still night is dead. Jamie's night. Jamie closes. Foor kicks can, chunk. Rattle. Woman turns woman freezes. Walks, walks faster she faster, zags the dead street. Jamie's glue, Jamie does too.

She breaks the block, rounds the store. Her nerve's shot. She looks she looks. She runs. Jamie's tiie. Jamie's lightning. Jamie's wine. Jamie grabs spins, spade hand digs her hair. Pulls her face to Jamie's face. The bruises. Jamie smiles.

Jamie knows her eyes. Loves her eyes. Jamie pulls soars, necks arch. Hers. His. Jamie smiles. Jamie's tender. Jamie drinks.

The Wisdom of Insecurity

The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts is one of my favorite books. I've read it many times.

First farmhouse

We, Tam, mother, Ted, father, Bev, stepmother, Malory, sister, Paula, stepsister and Susan, stepsister, lived in the most child-wonderful house when I was around five to seven. An old farmhouse in the country near Dayton, Ohio.

We rented the house. The actual farmers lived in a newer house near-by. In the summer they would give us a bushel basket of sweet corn. A grape arbor led away from the kitchen door. Down beside that was a spooky wood and glass building, an unused chick incubator. As I recall, the cows were mostly across the street as was the barn.

The house was ell shaped and had earth floors in the basement. The final room in the basement had a huge fireplace. The small wing of the ell was for 'adults' only, mostly. It had two fireplaces each on the first and second floors. We had a black cat with white mittens, she would leave mouse feet in front of the fireplace in the dining room as presents for us.

Very high ceilings. We had really tall Christmas trees, at least from my point of view.  One Christmas I carefully opened and resealed all my presents. On Christmas Eve we were allowed to open one present. Mine required assembly, I asked if I could open that another as well (it contained tools).

A screened in back porch then the yard sloped down to a wire fence far back. When the grass had grown to a kid's head high my dad mowed winding paths through it. Greater scope for adventure then a shorn lawn.

On our side of the fence was a big tree with boards nailed to it for climbing. One of us pinched our folks Winston cigarettes; up that tree was the first place I smoked.  On the other side of the fence was the primary school. But we had to take the bus to school as there were no sidewalks.

Along the fence to the right, at the corner of the backyard, was a small dark cool old stone building. It was fun to play in. Behind that a half acre of mint. We'd be sent down there to fetch mint for lemonade.

One summer I was stung by a bee, a bumble-bee and a wasp - not at the same time. I used to dream about this house's attics. The dream attic was an elaborate series of inter-connected rooms, with secret passages and doors. Full of unexpected treasures.

Spring cleaning

Trying to do the simplest thing to a heavily customized, undocumented drupal site the last two days. Sheesh! Can't get one little bit working... - no, wait, it's done now!

Also spent the same two days clearing surfaces and putting away rugs for the summer. Followed by a good sweep. I feel much better now.

Daily reading

The one thing I try to read every day is Paul Krugman's blog and columns. I do so from here because I don't want (to pay for) an online subscription to the New York Times. I guess I enjoy his voice.

Blog future

I've been tidying my desk. So I'm copying here what I find on random scraps of paper, otherwise I have to file them somewhere... I have forty years of scribbles I'd rather transcribe here then continue carting around. Maybe tomorrow and tomorrow.

Reptile man's spiritual speech

Written in response to a largely excellent talk by David Icke: "The End of The Schism, Moving Out Of Mind Into Consciousness, Letting Go of Fear ... " I agree with a great deal of what he says, but don't particularly see any reason to believe in reptilian aliens :-)

Fragment, undated, around 7/18/2011:

People experiencing a vibrational change see it outside, so think the world is changing. It needn't. A change in oneself makes the world seem different. It certainly feels different..

If you want to change the world you will fail. If you want to change your world? You are the only one who can.

Dream as a spirit

Dream from about 7/15/2011.

I'm perhaps in the future in some non-physical way. Astral travel or a parallel dimension? Possibly as a dead spirit or disembodied entity. I'm listening to a family or group of people. Fairly soon I fall in love with a young woman, maybe at first sight, who I initially worry is too closely related to me.

Then I find myself in the past, around 1939 or 1940, with a large family or group. There's a girl of thirteen to fifteen very like the one I fell in love with in the future. I realize she is my aunt or great-aunt once or twice removed. The first woman will be her granddaughter or great-great-granddaughter. I grow hopeful because I feel I won't be too closely related to the future woman to be with her. There is a sense that I am or will be incarnate of an age (30?) appropriate to be with the future woman.

I start communicating with the group in the past through touch. Faintly, subtlely - knocks are chancy, not always clear. Somehow I also speak my name and predict the start of WWII - not sure how - not through speech?

While communicating with the second group I lose touch of the feeling for the first woman and second girl becomes the object  of my affection. I perhaps try to embrace or kiss her - I'm a disembodied spirit. She particularly and the entire group generally become very interested in talking to me. I become uncomfortable and try moving away. But they have become attuned to me and follow me to the space that I'm occupying.

The conversation is mostly light and witty, but becomes too personal or intense and I want to withdraw a bit. I've mostly forgotten the conversation, but one of the last things said was by a young man, jokingly, "When does the sex begin?" I then playfully tweaked his eyebrow.

I recall worrying they would see this spirit visit as a devil's visit, but that wasn't a problem.

First house

At two or three I remember running on the sidewalk in front of our suburban ranch house. Up the street they were building new houses. I had no concept of building houses yet. To me it was a mystery of plywood and wooden beams with dangerous gaping holes in the floor. I thought it was old.The wind blows past the sole tree by the street in the front yard. As I run past the tree the wind catches me, I start to rise and soon I'm flying. Not under full power, but gliding. It was only later, say at ten, that I could really control my flight. I remember these things. I imagine the images came in dreams, but I remember it as I remember anything.

One of my first memories is looking over the top of a tall wooden fence into the backyard next door. There was a swing set there. Not memory but detail: the fence was stained a redwood dark red, it had horizontally woven planks and was about six feet tall. In our backyard was a mound that grew cucumbers. I make a distinction between what I remember and what I know in a background sense. I imagine this later as coming from others' stories, pictures - some kind of memory backfill. For whatever reason these are things I don't "remember"; I just "know" them. Some happened to me, I don't "remember" them.

In a different house in a different city at between seven and eleven we had a deep front yard. Our neighbor's front yard had four tall, thick trees with their lowest branches many times higher than I was tall. There I flew pretty well; I could dive down below a branch and swoop up, stalling enough that to come to rest standing on the branch by the trunk. But I never went off flying over the rest of the city.

First blog

Well, here's where I intend to organize my thoughts, but I seem quite free of thoughts just now.