Alone and palely loitering.

I wish I had a watch. We’re obviously late in lifting off, and Alex is waiting back home to pick me up. What time is it? I should ask someone…Maybe I should ask the stranger sitting next to me with the cowboy hat…I’ve always trumpeted my wholesome relationship to Wisconsin and its “peoples,” so now would be a good time not to be elitist. Excuse me, sir–Yes?–Sorry, I was just wondering if you had the time–’Sure,’ he says, ‘it’s 3:30′–’Hey,’ I say smiling, ‘thanks; I appreciate it.’ He smiles and nods his acknowledgement and then hesitates–I see this out of the corner of my eye as I’m RIGHT about to put my headphones on–Where you from?–’Wisconsin,’ I say, ‘you?’

Link to my hypertext story (complete)

http://community.middlebury.edu/~canderso/Lobotomy/

…Straight-A student, if you are then you think too much…

To begin with, I liked hypertext stories. I thought they were minimalist, un-flashy and lent themselves to telling stories nontraditionally. My story was the story of a boy whose stepmother hates him, whose father is still grieving over the loss of his first wife (the boy’s mother) and whose situation becomes more and more precarious because of malice (and indecision) between the characters. I set it up journalistically, with the boy writing Before and After the operation, and with different colors (of backgrounds) and tones serving as the backdrop for his change. Hypertext allows that because it’s meant to be tangential—like journal entries are—and the structure of links is such that, after clicking on a “keyword” (some phrase that pertains to some tangential thought) one is redirected to a clarifying example.

I’ll dial down the bullshit language and just say that it worked for me. A lot of the other mediums seemed like “flashy” mediums—mediums whose purpose it was to LOOK really good (sumptuous and technical) and express their contents through peripheral forms. And I like those forms…for a different story, I would have LOVED to have written a script for a video, or a dialogue between characters recorded with sound.

With my story, though, it didn’t feel right.

I wrote my script in a short amount of time (initially it took an hour and a half, and since then, I’ve edited it more extensively), and I knew what it had to be from its immediate structure. I knew that words like “cunt” would pop (be offensive) and draw the reader in, and that putting a link there would entice someone. I knew that when they clicked on it, they wouldn’t know what to expect—and I liked that a funny (and morbid) poem followed it.

I started playing with color in the background of my “slides,” and developed a motif: “Before” pages (those entries before the operation) would be vibrant red, and the others (those after) would be a dull gray. “In-between” in time (near the end of the actual “slide-show”), the vibrant reds would fade to black as the main character’s situation became more bleak. I did this TECHNICALLY by altering RGB color values (really, just red values) by a constant factor (-40/page).

I should note that my hypertext story is perhaps unlike other hypertexts in an important way: others seem to be more free-flowing, with circular structures or undefined directions—pages leading to other pages going back to the same pages, etc.—whereas mine follows a definite path. My goal wasn’t interaction so much as it was…having the user pay attention to the words in the links and in which direction they were led. I did vary the chronological structure for effect (going back and forth and whatnot), but that has little to do with the hypertexting itself.

–

It’s funny: in workshop, people laughed at strange things. I think my tone was more ironic than I gave it credit for being, and I also think that I shone through in a maybe-dangerous way. This is self-critical, but…I don’t like to be the center of a story too often. And though this relates in NO way to events that have transpired in my life (nor to people I have known), I feel like our (unnamed) narrator speaks like me and thinks like me, and maybe my distance from him wasn’t sufficiently large not to taint him. Once I’d like to write from the perspective of a dumbass (wow arrogant).

There are difficulties in writing a character like this as…briefly as I did. I think I could have (maybe SHOULD have) taken more time to develop his character, but I was charmed by the rapidity of change and the disquieting tone that came from it. There’s a certain fast descent to shit that makes me smile when I read it.

I think I’m most dissatisfied with his realization of impending doom. Initially it was really corny “I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS! I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. I CAN’T—CAN’T BELIEVE IT.” but I felt the stresses were too pronounced, and so I tried to dial it back for the sake of honesty. I never wanted it to descend into caricature, and I was careful to take it seriously as I was writing it. I was surprisingly un-self-conscious when I did. Now I think of it, really only one moment struck me as I was writing it (one moment of complete self-consciousness) and it didn’t even come during the writing, but right after—right after the first poem that appears in the narrative. I thought to myself, “This is very Stephen King. This is very Stephen King in On Writing when he’s talking about Carrie and the mean girls throwing tampons at Carrie in the bathroom.” I know that’s strange, but it struck me. After that, I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the writing, so I took a break and continued later.

I’ll say that I’m proud of the piece for its narrative structure, for its completeness, for its characters (even the names of characters, which were intentional) and for the fact that it was a traditional narrative given breadth by a nontraditional form.

That doesn’t help, though, those nagging feelings of “it could be better,” and the going back and waking up and revising some small phrase because it “plays better” that way, and the whole piece could REST on the matter of “from it” or “out of it” in a sequence of who cares? I’ve been so neurotic in the past few days because of it…in some ways, I’m glad it’s “shipping out.”

I’ll ALSO say that this is based on a true story. If you go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy, and read some of the anecdotes on Doctor Freeman (the real doctor who popularized the lobotomy in the US—and also owned the “lobotomobile”) and you find this guy (I forget his name) who got one when he was young that didn’t totally alter him, you’ll find it. His stepmother hated him. He was a normal boy who was grieving for his mom—who didn’t get along with the NEW one…and she convinced his father to get him a lobotomy. Sadly, I was reading this of my own volition one day and it struck me and I thought about it as I was brainstorming for ideas for this.

–

I don’t know that I loved this unit, but I didn’t dislike it, and I certainly saw the merit in most of the exercises, which were (incidentally) the best part for me. I’ve been a purveyor of the internet for a very long time (since before I built my first computer) and I’ve found it fascinating. To some extent, I’ve “cultured” myself from it—familiarized myself with fanfiction, which I find fascinating (the ideas of adding onto worlds or playing with tones and characters and new situations unique to the minds of its readers); PostSecret (and places like it), which I think are incredible examples of “new media”; blogs, and viral videos and online comics and etc. So I’m trying to say that I wasn’t shocked by much of it. And even more than “shocked” (because this class isn’t a circus) I wasn’t…it was fun to write in these forms, but I’ve seen a lot of their parameters before: limitations and extensions from older forms, and whatever else.

I want to be clear: I’m not denouncing it, and I get the value of it (I do); it’s just that the best things I got from this unit weren’t multimedia-related. The New York School of Poetry exercise; the “glass” exercise; the look-at-these-pictures-and-invent-a-story exercise—all of these things that forced me into writing something—no matter how persistent the thought of “Oh, this is going to sound like dogshit—they were great.

I feel good about this. I feel enriched by the kinds of things I’d NEVER have done on my own, and I get the feeling that this is a “beginning” to something. These exercises are making me stronger. My critical self (so constantly aware of faults and better people) is…resting. I liked that about Unit One. I really hope it continues into Units Two-Four.

In-class GLASS exercise

You broke the glass with your hand in anger, and you wonder if it will be recycled as your blood swirls down the drain and you pick the glass out of your skin; you know the bloody water will be.

The glass that they pick off the dead man hit by the speeding bus (a suicide) is made from beer bottles and stained glass, and you think it’s funny that Jesus was ever acquainted with Michelob as they pull the glass from out of his head.

The man slams his glass down on the bar and his words come bubbling out of his chest like the bubbles in the glass frothing up near the top, and he’s talking of killing himself and he says he dreams of Heaven like a big glass greenhouse—warm and always sweet with air that’s fresh.

“How fast was he going when he hit him?” they ask, but it wasn’t that fast—certainly not faster than the rush of his thoughts as he stepped in front of the bus and thought of Heaven.

Heaven is not a greenhouse. Heaven is a frat house, and everyone is wasted sticking shots in their glasses for Jägerbombs.

I’m shamelessly plugging my review in The Campus…

…but it’s writing.

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” William Shakespeare got it right in talking of “Michael Clayton.” The movie, directed by Tony Gilroy, is concerned with questions of morality, suffering and the insidious corporate greed that blurs those things into nothingness—into a cheaper amalgam more pressingly concerned with profit margins. The underpinnings of this greed are explored in the first three minutes by a character named Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), who delivers a monologue so righteous and fierce that one might think him manic…indeed, there is a fervor to it that borders on insanity.

Arthur is an attorney who represents a giant agricultural company called U-North. He is defending them from the claim that their formula has tainted farmers’ groundwater. He is a brilliant lawyer with a knack for this kind of work (defending the guilty)…and he has suddenly developed a conscience. U-North and their legal counsel, led by Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), are left scrambling, frantic to rein him in or shut him up. They are aided by a man they know nothing about.

His name is Michael Clayton, and he is played to great effect by George Clooney. He is (as he calls himself) a “janitor,” cleaning up the bigger disasters his firm’s clients commit. And when its attorneys commit the biggest ones, he is also called in. Such is the case of Arthur, who “goes crazy” during a deposition in Milwaukee. Stripping off his clothing, he denounces the corporation he is defending, and proclaims his love for one of the plaintiffs. Clayton is brought in to bail him out, clean him up, get him ready for future proceedings, and back on his meds (he is a manic depressive) so he might litigate again. This is problem enough for U-North, who is close to reaching a settlement with the opposition. However—as in all movies of this type—Arthur knows more than he’s telling, and U-North should be more concerned with that.

And though the movie is about that, it’s also…not really about that. It’s about pressure: the kind we put on ourselves, on other people, to crack a case, to get what we want, and to maybe do something great. It’s about morality—it is transparently about morality—and the magnitude of good and evil, and how pervasive both can be in different contexts.
It’s about “which kind of greatness does Michael possess?” Or is Michael great? He is 45 and 80k in debt and divorced with a kid who loves him but is also wary of him… He is a failed restaurateur with a gambling problem, and with a bum brother who ruined their chance at success.

He is certainly a richer character for it. And I enjoy these characters—these types like Michael—who are so powerful in one sphere (he is called a “miracle worker” by one of his colleagues), and so diminished in the next. In one shot at home, his sister says he looks tired, and it’s funny, because of course he’s tired—he has been since the film commenced.

Worthy of acclaim are Clooney, Wilkinson and Swinton, the three principal actors in the film. Each was nominated in a best acting category (Swinton for Supporting Actress, Clooney for Best Actor and Wilkinson for Best Supporting Actor), and it’s clear to see why. Clooney strikes the perfect balance of grim and powerful, and Wilkinson’s mania belies a kind of moral sanity and intelligence. And Swinton is equal parts neurotic and determined, an ambitious woman in a corporate environment whose better characteristics don’t justify her worse ones. All are forceful, and each makes you believe in the world they inhabit. Also worthy of acclaim is Tony Gilroy, the director, who crafted a film devoid of body fat—where each frame and each lingering shot (there are many)—is necessary to the feeling of the film. In this film, the actors achieved greatness, the characters aspired toward it, and the film itself just was.

mini-narratives

The first time I felt comfortable posting these:

A Moment Beyond Me:

It took a “me” event to realize things beyond me. We’d just broken up, and all the time I
was realizing what went wrong between us. For being “so smart,” it should’ve been easy to figure out. And then I dreamt of her. And I thought of all my failings, and how I’d built the foundation of the relationship–the shoddy foundation made of fear and recrimination and doubt–and she was not so culpable. She just tore it down, and spectacularly. I remember in the shower thinking “this is what sadness is,” and it was–nothing like histronics (no terrible dramatics) and little screaming and banging on the walls…just melancholy one couldn’t shake off like the cold. A “getting through the day,” but ONLY getting through–only getting by and not excelling. Being tired.

It was in the small things that I noticed sadness. It was in peripheral actions that I
understood that most people COPE. And suddenly I couldn’t begrudge my mother her stupid Lifetime channel, with all its man-hating cliches and ridiculous premises…all the same, all tawdry. I couldn’t begrudge a man a beer (or four, or ten). I couldn’t “hate” this or that person for this or that reason, because THEIRS was a mechanism for getting by. I
couldn’t judge anyone for a long time, because I suddenly felt like a part of the world. And
through all of the horrible pain that came with it, I wonder, now, whether all of it was
worth it just for THAT.

My Father:

I remember a time when my dad asked me what his best quality was, and it was hard to answer.

This was at a time when I was still verbose, and one quality–one word–wouldn’t suffice to fill a description of my dad. I worshipped my father and it was hard enough to qualify him as a man as it was to get the niggling thought out of my head that “Dad doesn’t often ask these kinds of questions.” My father is a “humble” person, without being humble. He’s kind without being overtly kind. He’s something indefinable by the way he just does things, and does them without complaint–without undue whining, but with some kind of inner strength that all his kids just marvel at. So when he asked me what I’d call him, what I’d boil him down to in essence, it was impossible for me to answer. I think I said something like, “It’s the fact that, even when times are hard and life seems to push down just on you, you find a way to be happy and make the others AROUND you that much happier.” And he smiled and said thanks, but I wondered why he asked. He said, “If *I* had to say what it was, I think it’d be my introspection. Even when I’m down and out–especially then–I can be BRUTALLY honest with myself. I’ve always had that.”

It’s funny that we seem to reach a stage in our lives when our parents want to confide in
us. It’s an honor indefinable–like the traits that make them up. But sometimes they confide in us, and all that matters–beyond the cerebral retelling–is that they did, and that the love and trust that informed their decision is bound to us forever.

My Bedroom:

My bedroom–where we shook our balls around. My bedroom–a place for first times. My
bedroom–a sanctuary in good and bad times. My bedroom–a quiet place disturbed by rumblings of kindness–”Would you like some breakfast, Christopher?” My bedroom was square–cubic, I guess, with equal dimensions for width and height. It contained a desk and a chair (a cushy plush chair borrowed from the downstairs–one I would have to return to there when guests “dined” over) and a bed and a bureau and a long buffet-style dresser. And tons of shit in it. My bedroom where we’d “lock” the door (there was no lock) and languish in the bed and be two different people MUCH older than 16 and share intimate moments (the likes of which a lot of older people have forgotten) and promise things we’d abandon in old age. My bedroom, where we’d order pizza and play videogames and write “collaborative” stories and fantasize about lifestyles we might never attain and fame we might never fully realize. My bedroom where happiness was. My bedroom where hope could be found. My bedroom where childhood and adulthood converged–the meeting of prepubescent and adolescent and “adult.”

I look back to that place and I can still smell it–clean, because my mother would have
changed the sheets and opened the windows–and I think that something is there in that room (some kind of spirit that resides in it) that made me wholesome. And though I may have lost it long ago, every time I visit it I feel it crawl inside me for a time.

My Crowd:

“Zero-6, zero-6, zero-zero-zero-6!” I can hear the chants of the names of our classes,
because they’re coming out of my mouth. I’m clapping my upper arm like a beast, and chanting my class name, and looking at the “Zero-fives” with disdain and thinking, “We’re going to kick your ass in tug-of-war.” And then the tug-of-war comes, and big guys stationed at the back of the line as anchors are putting their feet in the ground and pulling with their upper bodies (which is WRONG! As Joe Anglehart would have told them if they’d taken his Physics class and realized that Force Normal…) and suddenly I’m eating crow. Oh well. It’s Olympic Week at Central and it’s all in good fun, and it’s not TOO often that the normal humdrum day gets diffused and becomes a celebration of the school’s “history” and dissolves into games where even Staff compete. All throughout the week he thinks of kids chugging root beer at lunch events, and eating doughnuts (or Hamburgers from Hardee’s across the street), etc. I look around me at the bleachers in the indoor gym (not Sutton, but named something else–I forget), and I’m thinking that we won’t be here for long, and soon we’ll be in the “real world,” or at least the “college world,” and then we’ll be…maybe reunited five years later–maybe–if everyone decides to show up for our reunion. I’m looking at the cliques that will vanish, and the people who will lose touch. I’m looking at the ones who might die of heart disease, and the ones who might kill themselves. I’m looking at these people and waiting for tragedies, where there might be none. Then suddenly, in this mass of humanity, sweating and yelling and having my sides crushed by a bigger guy (a football player) who’s descending from the bleachers for the latest game, I’m thinking “Who the fuck cares? It’s Olympic Week!”

The Bluffs:

I liked driving across the bluffs. I like motion. Freed from the restraints of stationery
thought, I was able to open up to go to places I might normally abhor. When a brain flies by at 100 miles an hour, its synapses fire that much faster. At 100 miles an hour, inhibition gives way to blank euphoria. Molecules divide like fission and start to decompose, and thoughts aren’t thoughts but fragments of themselves in white phosphorous clouds, sticky and sweet like fluff. I drove across the bluffs for peace of mind, and I drove too fast because I didn’t care if I crashed or not. At least I told myself I didn’t care but really–REALLY–my parents wouldn’t have recovered (my mother especially) and my friends would have hated me for it, and I knew–as I’d always known, whenever the thought struck–that killing myself was selfish and stupid, and anyway, wasn’t it just a LITTLE melodramatic? I wasn’t sad so much as lazy, and (looking back) times were pretty good. I drove too fast because I’d never done 100 in our Lincoln over the bluffs, and once I wanted to try. So I drove screaming over awkward turns in a higher elevation, overlooking valleys of cornfields and grazing cattle, and I thought “This kind of mindlessness is just what I need.” So it was.

I liked driving over the bluffs because no one can hear you when you sing or scream. I liked it because it was the only place I could clear my head–certainly not in my bedroom with constant interruptions, and nowhere else in my house with noise and loudness, and not in a coffee shop because there are people there and nowhere else, because i might be
recognized–so I chose the bluffs, where nature seemed for once to do its job and stand
there as a canvas on which I could paint.

Porn

Every spine-chilling novel he’d read couldn’t compare to this. Every burn he’d endured, or injury sustained, or cut
or bruise or fabulous pain–nothing could compare to this feeling of. Every shiver he’d felt, and sticky hot sweet
sex clawing dangerously at the part of his brain that came and WOW and then she did that with her–oh. And every
hand he’d held and chest he’d groped and mind he’d fucked and shell he’d husked–nothing could compare to
THIS–it–Oh! Because now, with the hair that tickled his, coarse and curled and dark–with every wild bucking of
her hips and stupid unrestrained desire–now, with sweat and silent moans and heated bodies like bodies in orbit,
bodies entering atmosphere–now, with mouths that didn’t talk and tongues that didn’t articulate–now, with arched
eyebrows and secret moles and freckles that used to be cute but now could never be “cute” again–now, with motions
never practiced, only “known,” with pants and fingernails in backs and nipping biting sucking licking (things he
used to say he’d like to do)–NOW, he could be honest with himself. He felt the world swell up inside him, and
filter out his pores like soothing cream. He cupped her breast and pressed against her back and fell asleep.

Hallelujah

How am I going to get through this year? I’m asking myself this as I sit in a coffee shop at Noon, and I’m thinking “When did I become the guy who sits at coffee shops?” Pretty soon I’ll be listening to Ani DiFranco and calling my servers “Baristas.” I’m also thinking about something someone said recently–I’d seen him about to run and asked, “Aren’t you going to stretch?” He said, “Does a cheetah stretch?” and he ran away. I guess they don’t.

“Wear a condom,” or you’ll end up in a kitchen ten years later with a Chimichanga and a mean wife and a kid–that’s being beholden to something. I’d rather go to England, or Manila (in the Philippines), or even Lincoln Avenue, where home tastes sweet.

I clutch my scarf as I enter the bus, and I think of us all on fire–all hurtling down a street like madmen engulfed in flame, enclosed in a speeding death trap–aluminum, titanium and flesh.

I’m asking myself, “How old do I feel?”

2 pictures (and a girl and a pizza place)

What we did in class. Based on the first sentence of an essay: “Still, you saw what you came to see.” I love second-person.

–

Still, you saw what you came to see. The lake is stocked with fish, and Derek lay beside you, and you saw what you came to see: simplicity. A dreary afternoon with a boring countenance; green trees looking black in the shade at dusk, and placid water undisturbed. You saw.

Later–many years later–when Grace looks at the picture and asks, “Mom–who was this man you were with?” you won’t remember. “Donny,” you’ll say, “or Eric–oh, sweetheart, I don’t know. There were so many, and it was so long ago.” But you’ll remember the lake, and the lane that swept around it like a derby. You’d half-expected horses to come cantering along the lane, but none had. It had been quiet. You’d seen what you’d come to see.

Older works (things I’ve done before)

“Being an Adult Means Being Happy with Being Fine”

Where do you find time for specific sad laments?
Memories of old regrets and things that “could have been.”
I hardly have time to balance my checkbook,
Let alone dwell in fantasy dreamworlds of misery and pain.

I guess that’s a right reserved for coffee-shop intellectuals,
Turtlenecks with disembodied heads singing
“We know the way.”
Thank God they do (those sensitive heroes),
Affirming our humanity through tear-laden monologues
and heavy cream;
Without them we’d be lost
And damned to ignorance,
Shells of our former ideal glory
Left wanting.

And “melancholy” states of mind—
“I don’t know why I’m sad; I just am.”
Well, I know why I am—
I had fifteen reasons written down this morning
Under “Monthly Obligations” and “Weekly Duties.”

We wonder how the other side lives.

Anorexia is not widespread in Africa,
But sadness is—justified sadness—
The kind that comes from being too hungry and poor,
And dying.
We invent sicknesses to cure boredom;
So too do we manufacture melancholy
To supplement idle hearts.

–

Untitled

I want to write poetry like translated French,
With exaggerated phrases like “Such love has never been known.”
Like I was totally un-self-conscious
And saying exactly what I meant.

I want to write poetry that people call comically-earnest,
Like it matters—like it’s subtlety makes the world go ‘round;
Like anyone’s ever won someone else over with vague allusions.
(Not me; probably not you.)

I want to find someone who inspires me like blue inspired Picasso,
And someone who fits me like a glove—
Whose perfect love is REAL love;
Someone who “understands.”

And I want to immortalize it
(Perfect love)
Put down on paper what it means to feel you

Quiver
Shake
Sob
Sleep

Kiss me.

I want that.

And if I settle for less,
Let me be the basest and most craven kind of solitary man.

–

“A Not Unhappy Dream”

In his dream, he died—
And a Cadillac supported by invisible wires
Ushered him to the sky
To an eternal heavenly palace.

The palace’s walls were smooth and wrought of marble,
And he gaped in wonder at the place he knew no man could ever craft;
He wondered at his strange and lonely death,
And the fire in the sky,
And its casual portent of looming disaster
And his solitary cry.

He wondered how many moments each part comprised:
Before and After,
The Living and the Dying.
But mostly he wondered at his strange and lonely death,
And how casual disaster seemed more inviting
Than the bare and lonely palace.

–

This is the only of my pieces that I haven’t edited. I wrote it last night as a free-write to start my “creative process.” I’m including it because it’s technically a “Work in Progress,” and this might give you an idea of what comes out of my brain in 30 minutes.

My thoughts were too jumbled to put to prose,
So I went to a more immediate medium—
A place where jangled nerves and broken sentences
Are welcome and encouraged.

Even if I write without rhyme (or reason),
I can space my thoughts into tiny little segments
That invite analysis of the “writer’s state of mind.”
I hope they can’t figure me out, though—
I can’t, and it seems unfair that someone
Else should “get me” so succinctly when I don’t.

If memories are firing synapses,
Then mine are laced with edges of broken bottles
And dynamite.
Mine are hollow point bullets,
Exploding upon impact into the fleshy
Ridges of my gray brain matter.
Mine ricochet in shards like burning shrapnel
In the searing desert wind.
Mine are depraved.

Somehow the point has been obscured
And the purpose of this exercise razed
to the ground amongst the rubble of a
Building collapsed whose thoughts were dazed—
Collapsed because the conceit of the thing
Was too much for the thing to bear;
So it fell.

All of us are covered by the same blanket
Of mysticism and dogma
Protected by the warmth of belief or disbelief;
Some prefer the warmth and burrow deeper,
Nestled next to others in a pew;
Others require a cool breeze and lift the blanket
From their heads and breathe the air
That’s suddenly sweet.

And some prefer both.

Poem – Re: Molly Giles

She thought she understood the world
Because her harsh words and clipped tones
Conveyed meanings other people seemed to get.
He knew otherwise.

Loud and “lively” and exotic
She was the shining star everyone else gravitated toward…
He favored the moon–
Quiet and unblinking and holding little sway
But over the tides.

Light reflects off her sweaty skin–her
ruddy skin–
And she tells the world her stories
And everyone listens
Blindly.

He favors the moon
Though he’d never tell her that.