March 6, 2007

Who is the person, she writes her life in fiction

I stand at the washing line listening to the birds making fun of each other and my reason for writing upon these dry bed sheets of mine is that I can’t seem to find time throughout the day to write with honesty. To tell you the truth, I’m not even quite sure how to do it. If I were to write what I practise so matter-of-fact and precise without vision of what the matter could have been or certainly was not, I may paint myself rather rough and frightening. Or, heaven forbid, with a streak of naivety. Ninety-five words in now and I am already a character, no longer a writing girl who lives on a hill with a dog.

See, my ability to concentrate has lessened since Thursday evening when she hit me with that hairbrush. My mind is thick with honeyed reminiscing of her beautiful eyes. I must admit that I have resorted to laconic replies to tired everyday questions from those who break my dreaming of her; the fibres of her corset brushed past my cheeks and the slight aroma of her locked within those fibres now, when I think back, has semblance to a light dessert, Crème brûlée perhaps. However, I will not be so daft to compare a woman with such enriching force, hard and precise as hers, to a simple custard treat. No. She is divine.

Once I had red spots in the back of my throat and being temperamental and drastically afraid of sexually transmitted diseases I went to the doctor for her advice. I opened my mouth for her, my mouth that I had once envisioned as a cavernous love hole I could feel now, with each small breath I took, was screaming ‘I am the entrance to hell’. The doctor held my tongue down with a Popsicle stick. She took a quick look and then said, ‘You can close your mouth now.’ She asked me if I had been sucking on lollies recently. I took a moment to think about this and then replied,

‘No.’

A look of annoyance flashed across her face and she said, ‘You have been sucking on lollies.’

I repeated, ‘No…’

She then shifted in her chair, gave me a very dirty look, placed her finger near her mouth and repeated, ‘You have been sucking on hard boiled lollies.’ She took her pen and wrote something down in her manila folder then she turned to me again and said, ‘If you suck on too many lollies you give yourself hickies in the back of your throat. I’m going to advise that you stop sucking on so many lollies.’

I nodded. ‘I can do that.'

You know, the funny thing about story writing is that the story doesn’t matter in the moment of writing it. In the moment we are only attempting to move away from the regions we are currently stuck in. I am a writer myself, a fairly shit one in my opinion, and I feel this because I have to lie to tell the truth and I find that difficult. A story is just a picture of something invisible in our lives. Some moments need one thousand words and others, none at all.

What is bothering me is that I’m not sure what honesty is anymore and I can’t figure out what needs one thousand words. Perhaps there are few things. I think people need to be contradictory to be pure. That’s what I decided over the weekend while my lover was informing me of things he has done that irritate me. I can barely understand myself so I’m unsure how I’m supposed to understand anyone else. I don’t think I need to so much. Mainly I just steal people and place them in stories and converse with them that way. They are easier to deal with and they always say the right thing at the right time, even if it’s the wrong thing to say, they say it the way I like. People have pace and their lives are arced in the most beautiful way through story, that is, if they get a good writer writing them.

I am considering writing apologetic letters to friends who have deserted me. I figure they couldn’t stand my cryptic writing about them and didn’t appreciate my lack of arc. Poor fuckers. I love them more than I could not say.

I have a cranky view on something today and it’s this node. Fuck it off! Here is my replacement node,

How to build a fictional character: a twelve step guide.

2. Crack open a watermelon and eat it with your bare hands 7. Don’t watch television

The other ten steps are for you to make up. Don't count on them working for you.

Driving to school this morning¹, I got to the edge of campus and saw a Toyota Yaris with its left front end smashed in and sitting in the bushes of one of the university lots.

    Ouch, looks like something went wrong.

I see a guy running down the sidewalk, I think he's the driver…he's running towards another car, a Honda Accord parked on the side of the road, I drive by and look in the rear-view mirror. A bunch of people just came out of the building, and I see the car's left fender is also smashed and the driver's slumped over on the side.

    Shit.

I call 911—I've never needed to before, but I felt it was the right thing to do.

For emergency service press any key...

What on earth? I thought this was 911 what else would I be calling for? A burrito?

I get transferred, oh great, 911 has an automated response. Okay, I've heard the stories about the budget problems in the County of Los Angeles and how it's affected 911. Understood.

All operators are currently busy…please stay on the line.

Okay, I'm getting tired of this, someone might be seriously hurt and I can't get an operator. I hang up and call the University Police, maybe they might get more attention than someone on a cell phone. They pick up and say they'll send someone over. Okay, I guess that's all I can do. There's enough people over there already who were attending to the situation while I was waiting on hold.

I park my car and get out and head to class. I see the Los Angeles County Fire Department on scene and I'm glad that there's been a response to the accident…but I hung up on 911, aren't they supposed to call me back?

I take the 10 minute walk to the class and I keep wondering…are they ever going to call me?

It's been more than 12 hours and no one's called back, and I wonder: Is the last thing I am going to hear when I really need emergency help going to be?

All operators are currently busy…please stay on the line.

It's cold (the radiators don't work) at Headquarters, so I'm writing you from the nice community college down the hill from us. I'm getting over viral pneumonia, my right arm feels like it has a mega-pinched nerve, and my thoughts fly towards...Trouble on Triton?

Anyway, I've always been a Delaney fan. Back in the day (1977-1986), my friends and I speculated on his race and sexual preferences (and were quite pleasantly surprised when we found out...) For some reason, I read all the early stuff, Nova, Dhalgren (still my favorite beach book), but not Triton (as it was being marketed in those days). People said it was "difficult", which was hardly a handicap for me: after all, it was shorter than Dhalgren, by several hundred pages. They also said it was awful, just awful.

Well, they were right. This doesn't mean that I don't like it, however.

On one hand, we have Delaney's spot-on take on the Northeastern Establishment of the 60's and seventies: his account of how he tried to get kicked out of a party on the Ring (vomiting on the art? Have a pill...) sounds far too hilariously accurate not to be true. Similarly, there is "vleit", a send-up of early (noncomputer) wargaming, with dice and cards, plus (holographic?) realistic microscenery, sound effects, and a Mystical Cube, whose scoring system is based on a ludicrously complex equation in vector calculus, as well as a visit to a hilariously luxurious restaurant (you've got to read it to believe it). The Spike (I can't believe no one ever pointed out that my old nickname and hers were the same) reminds me strongly of Twyla Tharp for some reason, or for that matter, any number of slightly-older-than-Boomer women in the arts. (That some reviewer referred to her as a "young woman" I can't imagine -- in 1976, to be 34 was to be "middle aged".) Life in a society where it doesn't matter (much) whether you're gay, straight, bi, transgendered, or whatever sounds pretty much like life at the turn of the Millenium, for good or ill.

The problem is, people talk about it. And talk, and talk, and talk some more. About prostitution and prostitutes, which for some strange reason, almost never get referred to by their more homely terms. (And if everyone's so damned sexually free, how can a brothel exist?) About economic systems, and about the Laws of Form. Even a conversation with someone acknowleged to be "severely retarded" includes enough heavy-duty physics and fake math/logic to make me skip ahead a few pages until something happens again.

I'm into the war parts now, and praying something happens again. The new edition has a preface by Kathy Acker (figures....)

Meanwhile, I'm sleeping in the kitchen tonight if it doesn't warm up. Later....