Saturday, July 31, 2010

Juxtaposition

I obviously have not been up to the task of writing here very often of late. As it were, I have been temporarily and voluntarily evicted from my bedroom by my sister and her husband visiting. What I have to use as a desk is just a TV dinner tray and my old room is infamous for being inhospitable climatically. Not to mention the chores and tasks I have had to occupy me lately, I have been distracted.

This is in the vein of a series of meditations I consider on my rides home. Late nights, weariness, wind against one's face, the flash of lightning bugs, the whir of engines made distant by trees, the shear sense of movement, of velocity all provide a fantastic vantage upon not only the recently passed hours, but on the past months and years. Often, I am struck with the desire to write when I get home, but the impetus to satisfy hunger, thirst, cleanliness, and fatigue can be too much when one is undercommitted, the thoughts inadequately formed. All the same, I want to make an attempt now.

Being home--my mother's house, Lincoln, Nebraska, and in the company of old friends and acquaintances--has given me a different and decidedly convoluted perspective on place. In a very real way, I see myself as a time traveler, revisiting a life, place, time, or people (likely some synthesis of those) that has become foreign despite its familiarity. Changed hair colors and styles, new glasses, different fashion styles, facial hair come or gone, new tattoos; these all obscure the frustrating reality that I am back somewhere I associate strongly with being past, being gone. I am confronted with this potent juxtaposition of the old with the current.

Chatting outside the Bourbon Theater with Mr. Chris Bowling--amongst others, but Bowling himself is a powerful composition of past and present characteristics--he pointed out a number of passers-by, some of whom were old classmates or acquaintances. Most of those I think of as friends were inside at just that moment, though Miss Allison G. and Miss Paige N. did join us for a spell here and there. Well, what I mean to say is that Mr. Bowling is an acquaintance, a well-established acquaintance but distinctly not a personal friend. This is of no insult to Mr. Bowling, only that our rapport has been conversational when our paths cross and only of late; when it comes to high school, we hardly spoke at all. Now, I can recognize in him and in myself a much greater self-assurance, a certainty of self that definitely manifests in how we handle ourselves around others. In a way, Mr. Bowling's success is very satisfying to behold simply because of his mostly shed discomfort. Nevertheless, his body language, eye contact, jittery speech all link him to that person he was but no longer exactly is; that is, I have no doubt that he remains Chris Bowling despite him no longer being the person I used to think of as Chris Bowling.

What I mean to get at is my description of Mr. Bowling is apt for my experience in Lincoln overall. Lincoln is a place I cannot help but treasure, but I left it eagerly because of the despondence I felt over my senior year in high school. Emotionally and physically distant friends, playful but condescending euphemisms, exhausting the fruits of the Lincoln Public Schools, and getting the bug of exploration and travel provided ample preparation if not downright encouragement for leaving. With my return, which has been a frustratingly slow but clearly educational submersion, I must resolve this peculiar tension between a moment in my personal history I wanted to leave and a present I want to understand and develop.

Which does not exactly leave me with a great deal of understanding. If anything, and rather appropriately, I feel as if I am revisiting old epiphanies, old understandings, but with my new vantage. It is as if I have uncovered a collection of old coins, collected in one's youth, and forgotten; upon their rediscovery, not only are they remembered vividly, but I finally flip them over to see them in new ways. This novelty of old things is not perfect newness, but rather heavily accented with the recognition of things of the past.

I do not want to demean those people, those experiences that are perfectly new to me--my friendships with Misses Paige and Allison are part of that lovely novelty. What I want to articulate is that I have made an especial attempt to explore Lincoln in ways that any city makes me uncomfortable. Later nights, more drinks in different locales, conversations with and proffering drinks to strangers, and other activities have never been my cup of tea. In fact, the best nights are still those long-lived evenings with tea or wine or beer with friends in a warm space, music floating scent-like in the air, discussing philosophies or politics or ourselves; those are the places I feel closest to other people, to knowing them in that ineffably private way. All the same, I ought to practice means of developing those sorts of connections and similar ones with strangers and acquaintances, especially with my rapidly approaching move.

I have been unable to exactly articulate the synthetic reality of oldness and newness that I recognize all over me in Lincoln. It is a richly textural and often bizarrely satisfying experience. Sometimes it is painfully distancing, divorcing me from the moment in a way similar to and rarely directly associated with my own negative sensations when I experience deja vu. This juxtaposition is any many ways a grand deja vu; I am experiencing what has come and gone in a new way that neither solidifies the present nor affirms my past, but somehow cuts between those two potentials. It is neither a delight nor a disparagement, but almost something frustratingly neutral and highly uninterpretable.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Re-Emergence

Following an unintended sabbatical, I am back and writing here again. Up to Miss Linnea McCully's arrival last week, I was writing the Vincenzi story about every other day, although it was pretty slow going. I have been increasingly distracted by finding housing in Flagstaff, which I either have resolved or postponed for a good while. As Miss Linnea would confirm, the rhythms with which I am familiar are out of sorts and I look forward to righting them again, at least until I drive down to Flagstaff.

First order, I am anxious, excited, energized, agitated, irritable, quiet, and a dozen or so other dwarves that didn't make it into Disney's adaptation of Snow White. Linnea left what feels like minutes ago after a sometimes busy sometimes lackadaisical week (well, almost week) of her stay. I introduced her to about two dozen people, very few of whom I imagine she will be able to recall just from sheer magnitude. Really, it was time to spend together, and I am happy for that. I managed to find a few distractions in the housing situation and felt the buildup of unused energy without my customary bikerides, followed by a weird malaise due to inaction. I did not realize how much I had ordered my life until those rhythms felt out of synchronicity. Unfortunately, I let that disharmony foul up some of Miss Linnea's stay, but she is ever-patient with me, for which I am always grateful.

Other news would include a redoubled effort to keep up with blogs, news, and others' writing which will show up as further posts to the Tumblr. I linked a few things recently, but want to draw special attention to this bit about bikes and this article with its sweet 8-bit fx boarding video. (Both are from FastCompany and the latter references AR and ARG, which stand augmented reality and augmented reality games, in which you see the usual world more as a playground for your game experience rather than seeing the game world through some screen or other. Sometimes the "A" stands for alternate rather than augmented.) Also, having Miss Linnea about to distract me--not to mention Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert being on vacation--has pointed out to me how much time I spend in front of the TV normally. At school, this was not at all true and I want to return to going without TV again, especially in order to read more. I have seriously slacked off on reading, despite finding so many addictive books. Television lends itself to multi-task distractions, thus avoiding doing anything constructive. I want to finish all the books I am reading presently before leaving, which shouldn't be hard if I am the least bit faithful to them.

And of course, a few words on what I am reading. Most delectable of all is Gary Snyder's A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds, a collection of concise and clear-headed essays that draw me back to myself every time. I have read The Smokey the Bear Sutra aloud to a handful of friends and just can't get enough of it. You may also notice a few snippets on the Tumblr. As a result of reading Snyder, I finally picked up William S Burroughs and am well into Naked Lunch, but have yet to finish it. This has first priority. In short, Naked Lunch picks you up, loses you in the sofa, shoots you up, spits you out, points this way and that, walks in neither direction, and makes good fun of the trip the whole way. I can't say that this is a read I am really understanding, but it is certainly one I am enjoying. I can only affirm mentions in my previous post, especially now that I may be passed the more explicit graphic and violent sexuality of the book. I also have both of those writers' collected works "readers" laying about, which I am not making much of an endeavor to work through, but always find satisfying. In short order, I will read Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Daniel Clowes Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon; which are on the backburner presently. When I am in the mood for more earnest SF, I'll return to Makers by Cory Doctorow, but not at the moment.

Expect something more insightful, likely a review/blurb of Inception which I saw last night and sort of drooled at. Not to say it was perfect, I heartily recommend it. More on that later. Movie-wise, I also plan on watching Performance (anyone seen it?) and Out of the Past. Expect an announcement for a movie night for the A&E production of The Lathe of Heaven in short order as well.

And many happy returns.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Writing, Word Viruses, Burroughs, Vincenzi

I have finally summoned the courage to start reading William S. Burroughs. Perhaps it sounds silly, but Burroughs was one of those writers who distinctly intrigued and frightened me. I have this image of Naked Lunch in my head that is some sort of horror story about highly detailed intravenous drug use. Without a doubt does Burroughs go into some pretty stalwart detail about drug use--he claims to have written Naked Lunch while he was going through withdrawal from junk/opium derivatives--but taking the work as simple some drug-laden chronicle is a pretty shallow interpretation.

I have read a few excerpts from Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader from his other work (Junky, Nova Trilogy, and letters), not to mention a few excellent essays on him. Admittedly, Burroughs is not a writer I would have gone to without some background to encourage and define his particular style for me. This may have, in the end, provided me with too many other ideas before exploring his work, but his endeavor to redefine narrative and develop an alternative imagery takes center-stage whatever I pick up of his, regardless of whatever assumptions I have of the work itself. The reader title itself, "Word Virus," has this rich, creative, fluid identity in his work. In The Nova Trilogy in particular, the spread of (pseudo-)sentient memes (called nova criminals) through the population, their criminal-epidemic characteristic, and the usurpation of others' bodies or behaviors functions as a sort of accurate metaphor for powerful sociocultural memes today. (For those who have read Naked Lunch, the shoggoth-esque entity of the "buyer" as himself a user of junkies is a sort of early form of the nova criminal's victim; the nova criminal itself being the ritualistic obsession the buyer has with being around junkies.)

I have been working diligently if not regularly on my Lorenzo Vincenzi detective story. Working on it is rather steady, but I prefer to write it once it is dark, but with closing shifts at Ivanna Cone, I mostly lose the opportunity. During the daytime I have little problem developing in greater detail and scope the lives of the characters and the plots and subplots at stake. Getting it onto paper is just a sort of exercise I need a certain setting to do. More and more I feel that the ideas Burroughs deals with--possessive memes, complicated and tyrannical language games, subverted persons, voluntary and involuntary participation with maniacal non-human entities--are exactly where I want to go with Vincenzi and his participation in the Cthulhu Mythos. Later work and style I think will hinge increasingly on my own deep reading of The Nova Trilogy because of its direct confrontation (nova police and nova criminals) between more or less human persons with non-human intelligent infections.

Oddly, this doesn't feel the least confusing to me. Burroughs himself is heavily influenced by pulp literature (both horror/weird fiction and hard-boiled) in his work. His skill with slang and vernacular is incredible and often--at least in Naked Lunch--beyond me. Most of his references, I understand, are to drugs, sex, and sex industry, so I can easily get the gist of them. Nonetheless, I also notice I miss more than a little. Naked Lunch is rapidly finding is place among books I will reread and refer to often in the future. In a way, it has just exploded in its fiery liveliness, humor, sincerity, and criticism directly in front of me. Reading it, you cannot help but have it seep into more and more of your life.

~~~

Note: This entry connects strongly to my previous post concerning the notion of underworld, that is, of reality being more richly textured than by the well-accepted physical laws/expectations. I don't think of science as wrong, but as incomplete and inadequate. Anyway, look those up if you're interested.