Discorporeate

Here is my penultimate Elephant Word for the year. I took the theme to heart somewhat. I've always loved the process of bognostification, which is the method of creating a new word for the purposes of literary usage and gain. Combining that function with the images Elephant Words presented, with its link to memory (the elephant, if you are unfamiliar with the idiom, is purported to possess an astonishing memory, hence the scene in Amelie).

Here is a link to the image that inspired this weeks story: Discorporeate

wait here. Incorporeality is very likely if we get any closer. If you feel yourself starting to loosen up, a tingling on the backs of your hands or the tips of your fingers, try to start digging into the sidewalk. The pain receptors will help you maintain integrity.

They are going to press the whole world into a book. It’s a hobby. Their eyes, their mouths, salival smacking shut.

Hobbies usually require the expense of that which is seen as inconsequential, the rolling up of the birth certificates of orphans held to the ear to listen for the sound of paper. Burning the last photographs of the last, final, and now deceased members of the families of Napoleon’s soldiers. Leaving the Lionels of a pedophile outside, in a box so the cardboard discorporeates into the cars, warping the tracks.

On Promethea, and our need for Her

They posted this over on Newsarama today.

To say that Promethea sets me off is an understatement. When I write, I try to clip the very lowest edges of that story with my reaching, out-stretched hand. It is a mountain, like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, or Blood Meridian, which I have set for myself to cross when I approach a story.

The asshole in me regards anyone who is not suitably impressed by Promethea as a story and an artifact worthy of awe in a very poor light, and the more enumerated renderings of those comments said asshole makes are sentiments I keep to myself.

I truly and utterly love this story, and I'm very happy with the comments I wrote, so I wanted to post them here as well.

To tell you that I nearly cry every time I read issue 17, at the image of Christ on the cross, would compel you to take up immediately and read the entire series (if you had ever actually met me, such would be the impression you had of what strokes of evocation it would take to induce such a reaction in a person such as myself).

I am many things, mostly yeti, but surely not what any reasonable person would consider a christian and sure as hell never cry, but that scene, the evocation of that image, is the most pronounced rendering of Jesus I have ever encountered, and does more to reconcile the nature of Christ’s value as a figure worthy of the highest regard than any words ever uttered by a pastor asking for a tithe.

It IS a long, drawn out essay on magic done as a comic book series. But name anything even remotely like that? “Everything is magic" is entirely the point and has never been made so completely and with such applomb.

The storytelling weaves together Moore's musings on magic and the nature of imagination, and J. H. William's pages, his layouts and paneling, and José Villarrubia's coloring follow in richness the examples set by Eisner or Steranko. They break out of any commonplace ideals set for modern comics storytelling to create something singular, something that holds up a mirror to ourselves to show we are, in fact, capable of much more than we have ever been lead to believe. I for one appreciate that sentiment.

Promethea incorporates nearly all of existence into the story. It is not a mistake that Moore uses a significant portion of the text to mirror the content and ancient role of the tarot and the kabbalah, because both of those systems served to provide a cosmological framework for a time when science was not capable of doing so. They were structured schema organizing observable phenomena into a coherence with the unexplainable chaos of life.

That Moore was able to realign these elements with our modern understanding of time, evolution, and nature I think is actual magic, because he is able to use such admittedly esoteric quanta to the effect of compelling the reader further into a story which illustrates, again and again, how the value of humanity MUST rest not in our derisive contempt of the mistakes we have made, but in how we move forward from failure, in inches by the decade at times, towards being worthy of the time we have on this world.

The christ scene, and countless others, strike at the base of what I believe, and by projection (because I have never met him but I argue he believes the same), Moore believes: that humanity has, and will continue to, attack, destroy, and punish the people who have found through their own awareness, talents, and abilities the means to make of us a better people and a better world, but that through the suffering of fools and tyrants and despots upon those who seek to remove chains and hatred we find the road from darkness up into light.

Moore exults, and I freely admit and support this, writers, as well as artists, poets, philosophers, and teachers. He exults those who would bring us light, which should be pretty obvious from the title, and I am thankful that he does, because there is not nearly enough of that in this world.

The Day of Attrition

I have no juice in my gonads of creativity at the moment. I am stealing everything. I'm robbing Warren Ellis blind. I just tackled Chabon, punched him in the back of the head, and ran off with his notebook. His wallet I tossed into the bushes where he’ll never find it, just the way we used to do it in high-school. If Robert McKee wants my blood he can come and fucking try.

In the meantime, I need a crutch, to hobble on my ill-fitting writing legs up these uneven hills with jutting rocks everywhere that don’t hide any secrets more interesting that telling of how a big fucking block of ice the size of Canada once raped the shit out of this place. Not exactly impressive.

That dog is wearing a foot-brace, or a wrap or something, and he still doesn’t look as ridiculous as the fat old man in a Montauk t-shirt and running shorts. Still need to get into the bathroom seeing as how I’m not actually competent enough to drink coffe without snorting it all over myself like an idiot, like this orange shirted dude here.

You could choke on the humidity out there and I don't even need to think about a jacket for another three weeks yet that dude has a parka on and moon-boots. He is also holding an open umbrella under a dry, overcast sky and carries a plastic bag filled with what looks like rotten weeds so there you have it.

The problem is still mine, because these people are offering me gold, more shit than I could ever want, and I can't mine a fucking thing out it.

Time just to throw away the shovel, shut down the drill, and just dig my fingers into the rocks until they are bloody. Someday it'll all be interesting again.

Worn, Torn, Yet to be Reborn

Kicked in the gut today, so try as I try, there was nothing for it. A moment maybe somewhere in there, when it looked like it might come out into the light, but really all for naught. Got run pretty deep into the ground yesterday, face-first into the muck, to suck and choke on blubbering sick pooled thickly in the gutter, and all that.

I've got egg on my face, a stone in the pit of my stomach, and a stake in my heart. So no more blathering.

Go listen here: Kalpana

And we got some new stuff up for Septermber: Postcard Fiction Collaborative

Memorizing W.C. Williams

I've never been a great memorizer. Speeches were something of an exception to this, so the art was not lost to me, just hidden more often than not. Maybe I just never made the time to do it. I've spent the last three days committing this to memory. I have typed it here from memory, and I think it is right.

This is from W.C. Williams Paterson, speaking of the falls on the Passaic River:

"Jostled, as are the waters approaching
the brink ; his thoughts
interlace, repel, and cut under,

Rise rock-thwarted and turn back
but forever strain forward - or strike
an eddy and whirl ; marked by a
leaf or curdy spume ; seeming
to forget.

Retake later the advance and
are replaced by the succeeding hordes
pushing forward ; they coalesce now,
glass-smooth with their swiftness,
quiet, or seem to quiet as at the close
they leap to the conclusion and
fall! fall in air, as if
floating, relieved of their weight
split-apart, ribbons ; dazed, drunk
on the catastrophe of the descent
floating unsupported
to hit the rocks ; to a thunder,
as if lightning had struck"

Just something to make me use my mind in a different way.

This is the Post Where I Post Nothing

Give me a break. I've been holidayed, and as such, required much time to read. See Goodreads blurp on the side. I've twittered, and been working on some of the fiction. I have much fiction, and I want more.

And because I am still very keen for it, I found out, after happening upon a free copy of Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator, that Jenny Boully used one of the subtitles from that for her book from Tarpaulin Sky Press.

On Pasts

"Ooooh you look so good, ooooh you looook so fiiine."


Who makes up the past anyway?

Was it you? I seem to remember you being there, like a detail in a movie that is very small and has to be mauled out in a flash, but that doesn't really fit. It's tight, it's a close-up, and it's in there, pressing it's untrimmed finger into your stomach. But I remember your name. And I remember when your Birthday is.

Because it's alive man, it's everywhere woman, the middle word in life, keeping itself inside your head even when everyone else is loosing their's and blaming you. "Are you going to travel through space on a fraction? What are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths?" Have you lived a third of you life? By 18, 22, 35 - do the math, and then tell me. It's the past man, your past man!

Or maybe, it's raining frogs, and the past, the past, we're through with the past, no, we're through the past, and we'll be back after this short commercial break, but the past ain't through with us.

And so maybe it's a weird night, a night that is happening again and again, always happening, like the restaurant at the end of the universe, a perennial blooming and blooming and maybe because time is a whole and doesn't come in slices. Maybe it's a Rolo, and you can tick off the bits of it and pop then in your mouth. But it's hard to say that it has been a weird night if it's still the same night - yet to become 'has been' - and it is the same night it has always been, when it is all kinds of full of the past and the future, and the past might be the future, and we maybe want the past and the future to meet so that we can feel like we are off the hook for a change.

So if I remember your name, what past can there be for someone who doesn't forget? And if "blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better of their blunders," well what then? Where do all blessings lie? Does this one in his time play many parts too, if his time curls up into a ball, the end always somewhere near the beginning, the feet always near the face. All the world staged in one act.

But then too, onto the last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, in second childishness and mere oblivion. Who is that we speak of in our legacy, whose legacy do we speak? What's left?

Am I having the past over for dinner? Is the past having me for dinner?

The Proust Questionaire

Cribbing a post from Snobber because I read an interview yesterday with Alan Moore which got me thinking I might be done for some self-analysis, a little self-reflection, since I have a lot of self-referential writing to worry as we enter the heavy grant and literary contest season.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A peaceful life surrounded by people I love, and a house on a lake somewhere to get away to.

What is your greatest fear?
Locusts, the biblical kinds. And being a burden on people.

What historical figure do you most identify with?
I am trying for the Buddha, but Gandhi is up there as well. Also a big fan of Einstein.

Which living person do you most admire?
My mom and Norman Borlaug. One raised two kids on her own, the other saved a billion people from starvation, and both of those feats seem herculean. My mom doesn't have a website so no link for you.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
My lack of follow-through.

What is the trait you most despise in others?
A lack of purpose.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Living in Brooklyn.

On what occasion do you lie?
When I don't know what the truth is.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
El guttock. Just can't strip that last 20 pounds.

Which living person do you most despise?
Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Verily. I've got a Wisconson in here. I'm comin' outta tha hoos!

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I wouldn't be in debt, or that I wouldn't feel I was so unlucky.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
I'd want to have the money to help them more.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My MFA.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
A Bodhisattva.

Who are your favorite writers?
Kurt Vonnegut, Jeanette Winterson, Thomas Pynchon, Frank O'Hara, Flannery O'Connor, Italo Calvino, Alan Moore

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Constantine Levin (Anna Karenin)

What is your most treasured possession?
My Sandman Hardcovers and things my friends and family have given me over the years.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
To be unable to gaze in awe at the world around us -I think Einstein said it, and its pretty close to the mark.

Where would you like to live?
Somewhere on the New England or Pacific Northwest coast.

What is your most marked characteristic?
My devil's brow.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Having enough reason to realize life is very unreasonable and that happiness is made out of little balls of gas conjured out of the air.

What is your greatest regret?
That I did not find a way to be both a scientist and a writer. That I let myself be forced to make a choice of one or the other.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Good question.

If there is a Heaven what would you like to hear God say when you arrive?
Well if this isn't nice, what is?