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A couple of weeks ago, my grandfather died. Which has brought not a fullsade of sorrow, tears, and grief as one would expect given the apocalyptic overtones of mortality manifesting itself in one’s life. What it has done to me, is make me think about the ramifications of his life and how it’s been like a specter lingering always over the lives of the family long before his demise. Meaning that, he’s almost always been in the background silently overseeing and moving events in the lives of my family for years. With him gone, nothing feels the same in those households, and they never will again given the unique position of the family hierarchy which was extremely dependent on him to handle everything.
He had to deal with a wife who was becoming increasingly aloof and difficult as she grew older, two adult children who’s marriages ended and forced a semi financial co-dependance on him, and four grand children. One dangerously close to an alcoholic, one with some serious anger and stress issues, one who gave him a great great grandchild, and one who did nothing but fight him tooth and nail for years over everything and anything. Guess which one I was.
All of us, at some point, needed him to get through some tough times, and in spite of the fact that it cost him his retirement to take in our family when my father ran out, he did what he could do to ensure we made it. It may not have been a perfect relationship, and we may not have agreed at times, but I never hated him. The man was selfless, and was the closest thing to a father I’ve had in my adult life. My mother would not have been able to survive taking care of four kids on her own after my father ran out on us when I was twelve, opening old wounds for me because of my adoption and the obvious subtext that implies. She was incapable of normal work due to severe arthritis, so my grandfather helped her get a place for me and my brothers.
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I have a car, a place all my own, and it’s nice.
It’s really really nice.
Frankly the past two years have been extremely trying on my self-esteem and my feeling of self-worth, but I powered through. I have peace and a place to work and I’ve been feeling really good about writing lately. For the first time in five years I’ve really had time and the mental strength to pour out words. It’s been so long since I felt good about myself.
I dumped Kiki.
I moved out for the 3rd and last time.
Feeling pretty good.
A word about Kiki, which I find funny. When I was dating her, near the end I was hoping that she’d find affection from someone else, some other guy would take her away from me because of her condition (being wheel-chair bound and with a crippling and infuriating desire to act like she was still a child) I actually found myself holding back my real feelings about her to spare her feelings. That was a mistake. Frankly, I get sick of being treated like a crutch, and more so, get sick of someone who insists on acting immature because they are too childish or weak willed to grow the fuck up and actually do something with their life other than sit in a chair and get fatter with the passing of each day.
Also, her hygiene went out the window halfway though the relationship, at the beginning she was cute, by the end she was at least 50 pounds overweight (which puts her in a serious health risk due to her condition) her teeth were coated in a delicious yellow slime at all times, and her nether regions smelled like a pile of dead hobos. Not even exaggerating, and when I’d confront her about this she would say “I don’t care.” Obviously. Well guess what? I did. I didn’t want to be embarrassed every time I carted a fat fucking blob in a wheelchair that smelled like shit around in public. People noticed that, everyone thought she smelled awful but that didn’t stop her. Childish, stupid, selfish, disgusting… and I was frankly a year past due dumping her on her ass. Pity only goes so far, when I cease to find the person I’m ‘dating’ attractive or enjoy not being around them at all a really pleasant reality then it’s time to bring down the hammer.
I tried to be nice about it too, but Mrs. Childish did the stereotypical ‘you’re dead to me we’ll never speak again!’ bullshit that all immature people do when a relationship is utterly dysfunctional. She even knew that we weren’t working out and actually asked me near the end ‘why are we even together?’ and my reply was ‘good question.’ Anyway, none of this is the funny part, just the tragic one. The funny part is that she WAS seeing someone on the side! She could have just told me so I could have dumped her guilt-free but no, she had to make me feel like a jerk for dumping a cripple with terrible self-esteem while she was out going on dates with another dude when I wasn’t around! So Kiki, if you’re reading this, you’re a child and I feel sorry for the poor dumb bastard dating you now. Get a fucking therapist you crazy bitch.
But yeah, I moved out again from the family. This is the last time I ever ask them for help in my life, what was supposed to be a three month stay (while I saved money) turned into an almost three year tenure due to them constantly knocking me up for money. I could have been gone in months and they did everything to convince me and nickle and dime me into never getting out of that house. Ridiculous.
So basically, after a long silent stint I’m feeling pretty good, motivated and ready to get back to the world of words, I’ve missed it a lot.
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There was a time in my life, when I had a near-death experience. Though there was no tunnel of light, and the ghosts of my loved ones to greet me or anything quite as dramatic as that. Since I did not actually achieve cardiac arrest, thankfully due to the fact that fortune smiled upon me. For once.
Several years ago, I used to work for a small-time computer wholesaler, and one of my co-workers was this Russian guy named Dmitri. Dmitri’s family was originally from Moscow, they fled the soviet bloc in the 90s due to the political changes taking place and the sudden dramatic rise in the crime rate and corruption, as well as the higher cost of living. That’s all I really knew of his family’s situation. Dmitri himself seemed to wax nostalgic about the good-ole days growing up in Russia. He said ‘it wasn’t that bad.’ He was semi-built, but shorter than me by about seven or eight inches, had brown hair center-part and almost shoulder-length, to give you an idea what he looked like.
Dmitri and I actually had no reason to get along, he was my opposite in terms of what he did for fun and what his hobbies were. He tended to like really heavy rock and metal, either screaming lyrics or dumb shit like Saliva. You know, the guys responsible for that obnoxious ‘click-click boom’ song. He was also a car enthusiast, and would often tell me about his car, which was a Mazda RX-7. One time giving me a ride in his, he managed to achieve a speed of about ninety five miles per hour on the highway adjacent to our building. A ballsy move considering the speed limit was only forty five. Often these fairly one-sided conversations were about the supposed superiority of rotary engines to the standard, and he would often download engine sounds and play them at me, explaining the differences in great detail. To me all I heard was a bunch of obnoxious and loud noise, but his eyes seemed to light up with excitement every time, which I never understood why. In addition he had a tendency to really like clubs, and drinking. Especially drinking.
What we had in common was twofold. First we hated the working conditions we had to put up with at our place of employment. The wages were low for the technicians, even though not everyone could do what we did, but the sales people made about a thousand a week. We were barely making three hundred. We were working for Chinese Jews though, so perhaps some stereotypes can be true on occasion? To give you an idea, the owner was this old Chinese lady, who sat in an office filled with gold and jade statues and wall-hangings, behind a massive mahogany desk that had to at least have cost a small fortune because the top was surfaced with a jade slab. She would pull us in this office and tell us how they could not give us raises whenever we asked for better pay. I myself, worked there for almost four years without even a slight pay increase. They probably still wonder why I stopped showing up on time.
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Over the course of my life I’m made a few mistakes, who hasn’t? The particulars aren’t terribly exciting, and frankly bore me to explain them. Think the typical boy-meets-girl realizes girl is fucking insane and leaves girl (or gets left by said girl) fare. Afterward you kinda feel like the world is over if you’re the one on the other end. It reminds me of a line from a video game, Max Payne. ‘There are only personal apocalypses, and nothing is a cliche when it’s happening to you.’ Oh how true those words are. In all truth, in all these cases it’s my own fault for simply not seeing it coming.
Recently actually the ball started rolling early for once. In other words, I saw the breakup coming like a freight train.
Jeen-o been-o wrote something on her personal blog over on Open Diary (oh how I thought I’d never go back to that place again) speculating about why relationships fail, I then posted the subsequent reply:
“I think in relationships, especially long ones, people tend to believe that they love someone when in fact they only love certain aspects of their personality and so in a very passive-aggressive way try to bend them towards their will. Which leads to friction, which leads to arguing, which if not confronted leads to either a kind of bitter acceptance or total failure of said relationship. Of course that’s just my particular experience on the subject, it also may have something to do with some people being inherently cowardly or unwilling to assert their own will and so succumbs to a sort of domination by the other party.”
I have moments, between my weirdness and internal chatter where thoughts like that just bubble up out of nowhere and hit me like a truck. These moments only seem to come for me when I’m extremely tired. For years I used to intentionally stay up late hoping to be able to calm my defective ADD brain to the point where I could actually produce focused thoughts.
Click to continue reading “‘No Hero’”
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Over the course of the last month several things have been going on in rapid succession that have, in many ways left me scrambled, confused and otherwise ducking for mental cover. Primarily when events spiral out of control I find that writing is the only way to be able to sit down, structure them, and put them in a logical order so that I can understand them. Keep in mind that I have ADD, and being a stubborn bastard I refuse to seek medication or to seek other forms of release, such as therapy. I do this mostly because, well, I feel that ADD is part of who I am, and therefore, being a logical and reasonable person I should be able to adjust or work around it without it destroying my life in the process. The thing about me is that, well, I want to solve my own problems, in my own way.
There are many many article ideas for me right now, and a few that are sitting on the backburner. They will be done, I’m sure, just not sure when exactly. When my mind is focused on too many problems at once it’s difficult for me to be able to process it all. Like, for example, people who may be speaking to me and saying something I find repulsive or terrible won’t realize it right away because I’m still processing it, and when I finally come to a conclusion it shocks them that it was the opposite of whatever it was they thought I was in agreement with. I take my sweet time to consider things and then when I feel I’ve thought of every possible angle, then the decision comes.
This month I almost was fired from my job. You see, what happened was this, at some point during the week I was asked to take the bank deposit for the store, this is a fairly normal operation and usually the bank bag is placed on the counter. In this case, on this day, for whatever reason, after I signed the bank form … I left it on the counter. You see I had other things that they had given me to do as well, and in the process of trying to handle my other duties, I forgot that one. No big deal right? Just swing back and grab the bag I thought.
Well it was gone. Someone stole it.
So yeah, I signed the bank form so guess who nearly hanged for that one? Yours truly.
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Well, I suppose I should inform the general readership of this site as to an important detail that I have neglected to mention for the last three months. While I am aware that the general readership consists of basically friends of the Warden and people to whom I do not wish to associate myself with anymore, nonetheless I figured that I may as well make an announcement regarding the progress of the novel. You see, I told myself that if I was incapable of finishing the first draft by new years eve I’d give up this foolish quest to drag myself out of poverty via literary accomplishment and accept the fact that I’ll be working horrible jobs that I hate till I finally die in my bathtub by drowning in two inches of water as a feeble crazy old man. Sometime in November I realized I was going to actually hit my goal, by mid December I finished it.
What I did was power through the book like a man possessed. When I reached the end I went back and read what I had. Then I read it again and again. I’ve read it 10 times in draft form and it was on New Year’s eve that I tinkered with the ending a little and came up with a tidy resolution that leaves questions unanswered but puts a nice bow around the main plot line. I hadn’t posted these later chapters on the site because I knew as I was writing them, and even when I was writing the ones I DID post, that this draft version was going to be drastically different from the final edit. Since no one comments on this site, well my articles, other than Jeen and the aforementioned people whom I am not interested in the opinions of, I didn’t think anyone would really notice or particularly care one way or another.
I left Adamus staring out a broken frame of glass that used to be a massive bay window at the top of the highest skyscraper uncertain about what will happen next but satisfied in his vengeance. No. I left Adamus standing on the train station to Hamburg to meet a friend he thought was long-dead. No. Adamus and Serra left the city and went to the ruins of the old world and rebuilt a small independent society knowing that in the end the peace they create will not last long. No. It could have been any of those three I suppose but it’s not. The past three months have been a major re-tuning of the framework I created last year in the big push, because I realized something after I had finished.
There was definitely something missing from the narrative. It seemed, to put it mildly, disingenuous; but I couldn’t place my finger on why exactly that was the case until a conversation with a friend of mine that broached the subject of the book’s progress. He looked at me deadpan and said, “this character sounds like he has a lot in common with you.” That’s when it dawned on me. I had been writing this book as though the main character and I were the same person, and therefore his narrative is really my narrative. How I would react to these situations, or at least how I’d like to think I’d react. The problem with the finished draft was the narritive style, it was all wrong for the character and who he was. So this re-tooling has been interesting because now I’m trying to say it like another person would.
So the main character’s a little more cowardly, a little more conflicted, and a little more confused about his role in everything. Outside threats become more ominous, confrontations inspire more dread. Serra’s different too, not just my idealized version of what loyalty should be, she’s more ambiguous now in her motives and plays off Adamus like a fearful element because she’s leading him, in his perspective, to do dangerous and unnecessary things. He’s less connected. Less in control. In other words, more interesting because the situation in the newer version I’m working away at feels like it may have hit the right chord.
Another thing I wasn’t wholly satisfied with was my original idea to kind of have a kinda classic/progressive rock soundtrack to it. Each chapter named after a song, each book named after an album. Which made me try to capture the mood of each song in each chapter, giving the narration a manic and uneven feeling. It’s not layers of plot building up to a final conflict, but many little things adding up to an abrupt end. This version lacks that, chapters aren’t dictated by an invisible soundtrack.
So basically what I have right now is a skeleton I’m applying muscle and organs to in the hopes of zapping it like Frankenstien’s monster thus unleashing it upon the literary public to screams of horror and rage. That’s how I roll, yo.
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In general, people are gloriously uncreative when it comes to provoking others. This is more readily apparent when you factor in my last enemies, ‘organized’ flamers. Frankly, explaining what an organized flamer is or what their site’s are about in detail would bore me to tears. Mostly due to the fact I’ve done it one to many times. Lets just say they are people who put up a front on the internet as a tough guy / airport lounge quality stand up comic and think they are super clever and good at getting under people’s skin.
They aren’t.
That’s because, like many trolls and dumb asses that have long flocked to the internet due to it’s amazing ability to act as a bullet shield from people finding out how pathetic they are in real life, flamers are horribly insecure and thus have to turtle into little safe harbors where they can form cliques and protect themselves from other trolls who smell blood in the water and people who know how to hit them back. This leads to an almost hilarious tendency for them to think that they are bullet proof, their words, being hollow, are often posted condemning their latest targets on their own web sites. I suppose their belief was that by simply saying a version of the truth that is obviously rendered from the point of view of a delusional egomaniac, that they have scored points over people they provoke.
This is also a cowardly two-fold method to keeping their sites active so they don’t get bored. These provocations were posted after any botched ‘invasion’ of another board. Think Pirates, only instead of sinking ships, getting treasure, and murdering the crews of enemy ships; you have about five people basically posting ‘FAGTARDS WE OWN YOU’ till they are banned from said forum. The idea would be, annoy enough people that you flee to your own board where the then invaded forum would feel they had the upper hand and come to your board. Then you’d swarm them, hurl insults and act like retards till they all left and if a couple stayed you’d claim you ‘stole’ members from the other board and integrate the members that stayed into your clique. The whole point was to keep fresh blood coming to these troll forums so that they wouldn’t get bored and turn on each other. Outside targets and occasional members from these boards coming in would keep things active. Then the same basic insults could be used on a whole new group of people, thus keeping things ‘fresh.’
This worked for a while, believe it or not.
Until they met a few people like me.
Click to continue reading “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies – Tales From My Final Web War”
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It’s been a while, and well, that’s a reflection on two things going on at the moment. One is a sort of writer’s block for articles, normally I have a lot of things I want to talk about but lately I’ve been at a loss for words. Just sitting back and absorbing the noise and the world. Digesting it, slowly. Getting the good bits, trying to find the important parts, trying. The other thing is the book.
Monolithic Horizon started a long time ago, when I was around the age of twenty. Sure other stories have come along and I’ve worked on shorts and played with a few chapters here and there for the hell of it, for a break, for whatever. But the end result is that the book was never finished, I just sat on it. I’ve been delaying finishing it since I started writing it because, I’m dreadfully afraid of failure. It seems as though my preference has been been simply to not try. When you don’t try and you fail, at least it’s easier. When you work hard for something, when you… for whatever reason, actually care about something and it slips through your fingers or falls apart then it’s a lot harder to deal with. At least in my case.
My whole life has been like that. It’s something ingrained in me ever since I was a child. So I didn’t finish the book because if I did and it never went anywhere than I could tell myself it will some day, you know… have that little nugget of hope. If I try and fail however, then there’s no excuse. There’s no fallback plan. I’ll have to face a reality of being broke and probably working miserable fucking jobs I hate till I go mad. Though, I have decided to take my own advice. A person can’t live life in fear of something stupid like failure, or anything else for that matter. For all intents and purposes for the large majority of my adult life this cowardly excuse has dominated my rationale to avoid finishing something that could lead to something I desperately want. That’s why I’ve been gone for a month or so from writing here. I’ve been pounding away on the book.
There’s three acts to Monolithic Horizon, each with distinct themes. Act One is about the present. Act Two is the past. Act Three is the future. Well, this is the first time in the constant re-writes, losses, and frustrations I’ve had thinking about, working on, and conceptualizing this damned book that I’ve reached the final act. Normally around the middle of act one I give up and go into an infinite editing look. I’m actually almost done with this god-damn thing. The new method I’ve come up with to power through and resist editing anything till I was done has worked fairly well. Sure once I’m actually at the end I can go through and flesh things out and fix typos, etc, but that’s not the point. My goal was to get the rough draft done by the end of the year so I can do the final final final FINAL edit and then start sending it out.
Then I’ll re-post the first act, as the final edited version starting January next year. It’s been seven long years, a lot of things have changed in my life and in the way I look at things, this book has been sort of like the Sun … the common experience (or object) by which everything else in my life has orbited. In order to truly move on with my life I need to finish this once and for all.
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I took a picture of myself making a stupid face, a hobby of mine when I’m extremely bored. Which, thanks to ADD is almost every waking moment of my life.
This is the picture in question…
I told my girlfriend, that this is the face when I’m behind her… doing, well, you know.
Click to continue reading “Convos From the Dark Side: Mister Repose’s Final Form”
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(Headnote: You’ll have to pardon the relatively dramatic kick the goodship Nonpersons has been on lately, I usually rely on my ally The Warden to counterbalance whatever I’m doing, but with a tidal wave of words from yours truly flooding the site in the last month anything he could do would just end up getting buried into a fusillade of my textual fury.)
During my time on these tubes I have encountered an unusual amount of desperate, lonely, and in some cases, eccentric people. This is because, due to my nature, I tend to avoid websites and such that are extremely large and/or popular. In the more obscure corners these kinds of people thrive. One of the deciding factors for my leaving Open Diary ten years ago stemmed from the fact that the place was outgrowing it’s users. Now, this experience in dealing with these types of people, is that you find out something which I feel is extremely important in life… that your situation is not special or unique. Odds are, someone else has been where you’re going or has just crawled out of where you’ve been. I forget where this quote is from that summarizes that sentiment, but I think it was a video game. I want to say Max Payne, but I’m not sure. Anyway it goes something like this. “There are no apocalypses, just personal ones; and nothing is a cliche when it’s happening to you.”
In the process of moving around on the internet I’ve made several friends that I no longer speak to. That’s always been the way I’ve dealt with my life, in general. I’ll team up with someone for a while but when I feel that whatever bond we shared has been resolved or the common thread is severed I move on. This is a pre-emptive action on my part, since I’ve lived under the fatal assumption that everyone will end up leaving me eventually, so I make the first move. Hit the road, so to speak. Now, it’s not like this assumption is entirely baseless. As a matter of fact, nine times out of ten once someone has gotten what they want out of me, whether it be some advice, an emotional crutch, or simply a friendly ear to listen to them, almost invariably they stop speaking to me when the trouble passes.
This has not made me bitter, believe it or not, since I understand how these things work. Once the situation passes, once the trouble is gone, well what else is there for two people to say to each other? It’s not like I have a lot in common with anyone. In general my outlook is fairly pragmatic in terms of making friends. If they stick around for a long time, if we have a lot in common great, but you know that nothing lasts forever. It’s become increasingly difficult for me to trust anyone, or even get close to people. Instead I look for all sorts of reasons not to. I know that I should not be acting this way, but as much as I seem to enjoy saying ‘good-bye’ to people, one can only take so many partings before it begins to become extremely tiresome. Being left behind can do things to your ego no amount of insults or violence could ever hope to. And you know what? It’s my fault for taking these things personally, but I guess at the time I didn’t quite grasp the situation as clearly as I did then, looking back on it.
Click to continue reading “Light at the End”
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