inefficiency

my writing process is stunningly inefficient. I had to go through several (more than two) hours of being stunned by the amount of work i was just assigned and the deadline on it, then several hours (again, more than three) being pissed at my editors and trying to figure out how this could happen, what caused them to sit on my original draft for a week and then require a completely new draft the night before the print deadline, then another hour or two making peace with the thing and accepting that whatever happens, i've really done all that anyone could reasonable expect of me, before i started actually putting pencil to paper.

that's an insane way to work. i wish it didn't have a history of working out really well so i'd stop relying on it.

also, one of the editors made this note on my original draft before they told me scrap it and start over:

in the rest of the draft, this editor used orange to indicate things (s)he wanted cut or clarified. I can only assume (s)he wanted this apostrophe cut. this pissed me off four or five hours ago. now i can only shrug. 

frankly, its bullshit.

slaying the dragon

i've heard that there are writers who like to write, who enjoy the act of creating a story and committing it to the page, who can write with regularity and discipline.
i have never been one of those writers.

my writing has always felt like an exorcism. like a demon swirling around in me for months and i like it there and i keep it there and i put off writing it down for as long as i possibly can and when i finally do it's a violent, messy, painful thing. it's blood all over the page. it's the battle of st george and the dragon and in the end the dragon lies headless on the page and i stand over it, white-knuckled grip on my sword, but i don't stand tall like st george in the paintings, i stand heaving and panting and bleeding and torn open because this was no minion of some other satan sent to fight me; this dragon tore it's way into the world from inside my guts, and then forced me, still leaking my own entrails, to slay it.

writing is pulling monsters out of your bloodiest deepest insides, cutting them out with scalpels and knives and rusty blades and then fighting them while you lose blood, vomiting your darkest monsters into their corporeal forms and killing them and smearing their blood and yours all over a pure white page, and writing your dying words in the gore.

i've heard murakami sits for the same number of hours every morning and writes with a cup of tea next to him, then goes running, then comes home and re-reads his work and edits it. every day.

my writing is the swirling pit of demons that occasionally becomes so violent it forces me to do battle until i've killed them all.

writing is masochism. writing is an exorcism.

brain stem hemorrhage

at almost exactly 6pm yesterday, 36 hours ago, my dad got home from work. i was sitting on the front porch with the dogs. he answered his phone as he walked over to me and i heard him say "who's with her?" and "get her to the ER."

he left for the hospital with my mom and i stayed home to take care of the dogs and because i'm a selfish cunt.

my father's middle sister has had an atrial fibrillation which apparently let a blood clot slip through her system where it lodged in the stem of her brain and caused a massive hemorrhage. i'm a bit foggy on what happened after that, but i know that any fluid flooding the skull will cause irreparable damage to the brain. the brain simply cannot be impacted in such a massive way - or in any way, i'd imagine. i'm not an expert in neurology, but if you think about such a sensitive piece of machinery being held in a solid case, and then something else suddenly filling that case by squeezing that machine against the wall and squishing all its operating parts, you realize that that piece of machinery is not going to recover.

but she'd been married since she graduated from high school. Married married. as in every single night making dinner for this man and watching tv with him and raising their kids together and watching the grandkids and being married to this man since she was nearly a decade younger than i am.

and she came home from work yesterday and talked to her husband, probably about their grandkids' soccer games or what he wanted for dinner or some stupid bullshit she'd had to deal with that day, and suddenly her side of the conversation turned into strings of unrelated words while he listened, and then he watched her collapse and seize up and it was just any other friday except that he was holding his wife, the girl he wooed in a red convertible when he was a teenager and married straight out of high school, he was holding her and dialing 911, holding her until the EMTs strapped her down and drove her away.

the ER CT scan told us what happened, and the DNR order was signed, and the life support will be pulled in a few hours, and it was just a friday night. it was every friday for the last forty years. and now there aren't any more friday nights.

just like that.

my family has seen a lot of important people go in the past couple years, but never like this. never without months of waiting, of preparing, of setting everything in order. never like this.

i didn't process it until an hour ago on my drive home from work. it didn't hit me at all. i just got the medical updates from my mom and nodded like i know shit about medicine. "oh ok, what are the CTs like? what's her condition? is she responsive?" like i have any idea what that means.

what it means is that the last time i saw her she watched me in a music video and said she liked it, and that's the last of my work she'll ever see. it means there's no more growth, i don't get to know anything about her beyond what my dad and - holy fuck - surviving aunt tell me about her. that's it.

her entire life, her whole story, ended on a friday afternoon like every other friday afternoon. there were so many things left unresolved, but that's how they'll stay, because on a friday afternoon like every other friday afternoon a blood clot lodged in her brain stem and hemorrhaged there, and now she's gone.

my recent new york visit

i was in new york for about a month and came back almost two weeks ago.

i've made several attempts to write about the trip as i promised i would, but i can't seem to do it comfortably.

i had a lot of incredible experiences with some of the most special people in my life, and frankly i don't want to share them with you.

those experiences are mine.

suffice to say the trip filled me with love and gratitude for my true friends.

you know who you are. thank you.

freelancers; modern cowboys.

i just so desperately want the stuff people said they would give.
im waiting on two different presents from nyc, plus payment from the paper, plus payment for this house sitting gig ive been doing for two weeks. i had to get another job because none of those jobs seem inclined to pay me.
i have so many great tattoo ideas. i need to get paid.

a study in masochism

so obviously i've been thinking a lot lately about my relationship history.

when i was in new york a close friend asked me what the common thread is between the men i've loved, and this got me started on a new thought process - that i am, essentially, more a victim of my own shit character assessments than of the men who've treated me so poorly. i know, heavy stuff.

when my last relationship ended, i was a mess. i crumbled. the ground i stood on crumbled beneath me and i fell and just kept falling.

i hurt.

so i decided that i would allow no new people into my life. no more flirting with emotional attachment because it only leads to searing pain and scars. i retreated from society. i watched a lot of tv with my parents.

but i realized yesterday that, completely without my awareness or knowledge, i've allowed a new person into my head. i'm not jumping into a relationship or into bed, but suddenly there's a new presence in my life, and this realization took me completely by surprise.

i know i meant it when i swore off new people. i know i meant it when i said i'd learned my lesson, and i would never again invest parts of myself in other people. i meant it when i said i had nothing left to invest, that any ability to feel i once had had been burned out of me.

so, what is this? am i glutton for punishment? have i learned nothing from being repeatedly driven to insanity by the men in my life?

or maybe it's not men generally - here comes the blind relentless hope i thought i'd been scourged of - maybe it's a certain type of man that consistently hurts me. maybe they're not all the same.
or maybe i'm addicted to intimacy and attention and will spend my entire life in a cycle of new happiness followed by familiar pain.

despite the tone of today's reflection, i'm happy. i'm building a life here, i have two jobs and i train every day and i have a crush on a boy. let's see what happens.

papi pacify, FKA twigs

really the best video i've seen in a long, long time. i can't stop watching it.

love interruption

introducing trey badami: fledgeling fashion photog extraordinaire

i'm leaving new york today to return to toledo. ill be on the train from 1530 today until 0600 tomorrow, so i'll have plenty of time en route to tell you everything i did and everyone i did it with while in new york. i promise to name names and go into excruciating detail about every moment of my triumphant return to the first city i ever lived, so check back for that.

right now though, i just have to show you these pictures. trey and i took them late last night / early this morning when neither of us could sleep. we'd been planning to do a shoot together to give him some practice and build his portfolio, so i expected us to have some fun and play around a bit. i certainly did not expect the images he created - this is only the fourth time he's ever photographed a model, and he took to directing naturally and comfortably. he was not only a pleasure to shoot with, he took some truly stunning pictures. these are not those pictures - they're pictures of his pictures, taken with my iphone while they displayed on his laptop screen.

(this next one is my favorite)

*probably my favorite thing about these is that if you look you can see mine and trey's reflection on his computer screen as i'm taking the pictures of his pictures*

Raymond Carter's notes

In the introductory chapter to Fires: essays, poems, stories by Raymond Carver, he reveals his rules to writing, that he will "someday put on a three-by-five card and tape to the wall beside (his) desk."

I'm listing them here for my own reference, because when I have a desk I'll need to write them on notecards and tape them above it, directly underneath "SHOW - DON'T TELL."

- "write a little every day, without hope and without despair." (Quoted from Isak Dinesen)
- "Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing." Ezra Pound
- "...and suddenly everything became clear." Anton Chekhov
- "No cheap tricks." Geoffrey Wolff
- "No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put at just the right place." - Isaac Babel, "Guy de Maupassant"



Quotes
"It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill down the reader's spine - the source of artistic delight, as Nabakov would have it."

"In the end, the satisfaction of having done our best, and the proof of that labor, is the one thing we can take into the grave."

"There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, ... or else ... there simply won't be a story. What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linking together to make up the visible action of the story. But it's also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just underneath the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things."

"V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, in passing.'"

"The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things-like no one else. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to light the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right, they can hit all the notes."

because, journalism

i've been working for the toledo city paper for about two weeks and written in exactly one issue.
so i may be taking some risks with what i'm about to do.
they asked to me to write about this:
http://www.artofprevention.com/Index.html

last year's article looked like this:
http://www.toledocitypaper.com/September-Issue-1-2012/Prevention-and-promise/

i want to write about this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/30/ohio-abortion-restrictions-budget-bill_n_3526844.html
http://www.toledoblade.com/Editorials/2013/08/21/Heart-failure.html

it doesn't seem like a big jump to me. planned parenthood was stripped of their funding last week. it's an article about a planned parenthood event. i'm going to write more than "hey look, art made of condoms." because if we're going to do the news, i think we should do the news.

internships n shit

i've been back in new york since tuesday interning w igor of drivenbyboredom.com and it's been pretty fantastic.
in my first two hours he taught me how to get paid for freelance work, and it's been all education all the time since.
so things are good.
i'm in the city for two more weeks just to hang starting this tuesday, so hit me up if you wanna hang out or need a gogo.
also, the gyms here are terrible. i went to that spot on delancey and was not impressed. i'm gonna try out an actual mma gym this weekend and see if that's better.

MMA

so as i've mentioned about a thousand times, i've been training in mixed martial arts for the past couple weeks. I've always loved the sport, and now that I'm training I'm fully in it.
i just went to my first live fight tonight. one of my instructors fought and kicked ass. knowing what's going on makes it so much more interesting to watch. before i was in it for the show of strength and, you know, dude-sweat, but now i realize how intellectual it is. you have to think SO fast.
because if you dont, there are serious serious consequences. in the title fight tonight dude took a left hook to the jaw that echoed through the arena and immediately went down. medics came in, put him in a neck-brace and tied him to a stretcher. he was breathing, but definitely not moving. and this was one of the two best fighters of the night, just didn't react quickly enough and got popped in jaw. went straight as a board and fell directly backward, like a cartoon. except you could hear his skull hit the mat.
all in all, great sport. if anybody knows a good place to train in brooklyn, i'm gonna be out there for the next three weeks and do not want to get soft. let me know.

i leave you with this. watch the master earn the title he has never lost.

and then there are those other things, which for several reasons, we won't mention

Saudade

Saudade (European Portuguese: [sɐwˈðaðɨ],Brazilian Portuguese: [sawˈdadi] or [sawˈdadʒi], Galician: [sawˈðaðe]; pluralsaudades)^[1] is a Portuguese and Galicianword that has no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or deeply melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return.^[2] A stronger form of saudade may be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing.

Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one's children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment but is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings all together, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.

posted in september, 2011

"Summer's almost gone.
We had some good times, 
But they're gone.
The winter's comin' on.
Summer's almost gone.

Morning found us calmly unaware."

helping out around the house

so my parents have a pond in their front yard, and near this pond is a large tree stump. until two days ago, an old, very weather-worn white(ish) post leaned against the stump. slung from this miraculously-uncollapsed post was a definitely rotten styrofoam lifesaver tube that would definitely sink if thrown to a drowning person.

so i bought a new lifesaver tube and painted stripes on it, dug a hole in the ground to make the pole free-standing, painted and finished the pole, and added a warning sign and a hook for the lifesaver.

i am crafty as all fuck, and highly concerned for the safety of people trespassing onto my parents' property to swim in their pond.

you're welcome, trespassers. swim at own risk. probably no one will throw this flotation device to you.

the trauma of being half-awake

I just woke from a terrible dream. I had lost my love, or he had left me, it was unclear, but I spent the whole night chasing after him, looking for him, wondering where he had gone.
Then when I began to wake up, my first thought was "it's ok. it was just dream. he's right here."
Then I woke up completely and realized he wasn't right here at all.

I'm doing so much better during the days, but the dreams still hunt me at night.

bravado - lorde

today was a day, i guess.
i got my first edit on my first story for the paper and it was overwhelmingly positive, so i'm going to re-write it and resubmit it tomorrow morning.
I also wrote a few new pieces for submission to a few different writing competitions and am looking forward to seeing how that goes.
i'm working on lining up a trip to the city, internship for a week and then a week catching up with some friends (you know, friends, people who you like and don't go out of their way to hurt you).
speaking of, I had a great night out at the greatest dive drag bar in toledo with a couple girls i've known for - jesus christ - ten years. so that lifted my spirits a bit.
nothing is really new, but i'm very much looking forward to getting back to new york.
oh also sensai told me today that i have a remarkable roundhouse kick and credited it to my long history of ballet. so don't fuck with me, i'll break your knees.

Things I like

Trees.
Roots and bark and leaves.
Dirt.
The moon.
The color of the sky when there's a storm coming in the afternoon.
Fields full of things growing.
Mountains. Large bodies of water. Small creeks.
Pine trees with their roots underneath the dirt underneath me and their trunks standing perfectly straight and their top branches in the sky.
Trees.