near to the dark

I've escaped the forest--at least in the physical. My temperament seems stuck in the same rut: isolation . . .

Now I am living in a township of five times the population, yet the feeling of change hasn't settled in. There is a whisper in the wind but I can't help but see it as fantasy.

The move went well, more or less. This I am happy to report. However now I am left managing a half-dozen long-range plans, uncomfortably indecisive as reality looms as sword-blade ever lowering above my fettered body.

Where am I? Physically elsewhere than mentally, this much I fathom. I think I might need help but don't know how to ask. What help? How could anyone offer the help I need?

I would deceive you if you asked. I would say everything is fine. I would say I believe in my plans, that life will find a way and I am strong. That I believe everything will work out for the best, even if almost everything is unclear right now. I would blind you with a false-optimism and you would believe me. I've learned to smile.

But would you see it in my eyes? Would you look closely enough for the hidden twitch, the soundless sigh?

Right now I feel that no one will save me. I must save myself, as always. But I'm not sure I want to this time.

Annihilated

At some point this space disappeared--consumed in the ether of digitation manifesting intransigently through electricity and thin wafer-discs of harddrive. I don't know when. I can't remember checking the space since my last post.

Since then I have continued reading. My writing slows and lurches and winds itself about itself; I am almost onto chapter 37 of 50. If I can continue with the same progress I will finish the first draft "this summer," which I vaguely recall as the outer-edge of my self-imposed deadline.

There is too much to detail. Fragments spread, small pieces on Facebook, Xanga, INTJForum and elsewhere, but I have lapsed in recording my thoughts reliably in any one place or form.

And really I have very little motivation to do so right now, right here; this is merely because I noticed Dragonfort must have died, though I was happily able to resuscitate this blog.

The title reflects my deeper mood: these woods are destroying me, much as predicted. I'll let you call it self-fulfilling prophecy--it won't change anything. I continue to feel lost in paralyzing moments of isolation, in the grip of a worldless terror that inspires new ideas but paid for in life-force. I hate it here and no one will save me but me.

Intentions

I had intended on pointing myself back towards Chicago to catch Kid, You'll Move Mountains' concert in Geneva tonight, but found myself drearily drowsy after my 8th consecutive cashiering shift such that I am delaying my visit, hoping the KYMM will play again next month. I've scattered some messages with hopes that friends less than 300 miles from Geneva will go in my steed, but in five years of concert-going I can only recall one instance where a friend told me he/she went to a show I couldn't attend thanks to my suggestion.

It's not all bad . . . I'm making a living wage for the time being, for the first time in my life. I am stuck in my off hours under my parents' roof, mostly, but with the long-term plot to stash away most of my money, as it rolls in (possibly for less than a full month), to allow for some percolating escape plans.

I've drafted 15 of 50 planned chapters of my (hopeful) first novel, and mean to be through 25 before the middle of next month. The further I progress, the more frequent my delusions of success are becoming--perhaps this is a bad thing. Perhaps this is a terrible thing. If I finish my manuscript and it proves to be "unpublishable," for whatever reason, I can't imagine what else there is for me to pursue . . . I won't willingly buckle to the pressures of society to continue a meaningless job as that which I've recently landed for any lengthy period. I can slave away for a few months, tops, but then will need to fly off elsewhere . . . or else I'll wither.

This continues to be an increasingly stressful phase of my life--kicking around on the doorstep of artistic validation, knocking occasionally, almost praying (of all things!) for someone to let me in. I'm not sure where precisely I'm going from here--where I'll be in one month, in five, in sixteen . . .

The good news is I am writing. Consistently. Consistently enough to have exceeding faith that I will achieve my personal deadline goals. So, if nothing else, there's that . . .

lines lies lines lines lines

stranger's stares and grass footsteps--

so strange how new music can smell like
a toothy whiskey-soaked grin.

i am poised to journey to Minneapolis for the second time ever tomorrow
or not
to (perhaps) see Black Moth Super Rainbow
(it's a maybe since i'm only familiar with their first album, and it would be a 5+ hour round-trip).

also, divining secrets of resumes
with the thought of submitting to job lists in New York
to become an "editorial assistant."

maybe.

truth is,
i am writing more consistently than i ever have--
only about a thousand words a week, but also revising with my perfectionistic habits.

still on the periphery of moving forward with my novel,
once it starts i expect to flow like clouds assaulting mountains.

how are my similes? last night, i finished dinner with my parents somewhat upset
for calling the winning american idol (as far as i could gather) "generic."
my father quipped angrily about my pretension,
and

what could i say?

nothing that would help. so i locked my door and let the turmoil pour over me:
i do not particularly want to be here.
i do not particularly want to start a professional career, either.
what i want is to have the space to perfect my art--
but then, so does every other artist, and most of them don't mind pretending they are career-oriented.

i thought:
i could ride off into these dark forests,
i could disappear for a week or two--

but that won't work either. too impractical.

so i just keep dreaming wearily, my eyes altogether strangely tired for every sunset.

what i would most like to do is to say . . .
something these lips won't whisper here.

Possibility

I am contemplating attempting the path towards becoming a professional Lovecraft scholar. The more I dig into his mythology, the more I realize how earnestly his horror speaks to me--antiquated, by now, but peering into all the doors of subconscious terror that have always thrilled me.

In his worlds, the uncertainty of life draws incomprehensibly close--it grasps his protagonists and shakes them until nothing is left, merely to entertain the gawking spectators who could never hope to survive even half such misfortune. The Universe is humanity's enemy, armed with nuclear blade, and we can only face off against it unclothed.

My own work is obsessed with imagining the "impossible"--only a few doors down from Lovecraft's "unnameable," or "that which should not exist yet somehow does." My own work seeks to make fully understood that security is society's greatest lie--much as Lovecraft warns of secret knowledge that unhinges life, sometimes even for those who never open their eyes.

It could be a passing fancy, a short-lived phase that will disappear long before I'm sending in my second-attempt grad school applications. But perhaps it's the middle-ground I've been looking for unwittingly, a way to balance my own creative mission while working within society such that I'm never homeless.

With some hundred pages consumed, I feel a creative kinship with Lovecraft much like Nietzsche resonates philosophically. There is more to explore before making any solid decisions, but the presence of his mythology the last few months has almost been as uncanny as those Eldritch languages and ethereal geometries . . .

Two weeks

Two weeks from now this room will be boxes. My life, as I have lived for the last nine months, will be packaged (unlabeled) and delivered to a forest I learned to hate last year.

One's environment is what one makes of it. If I learn again to loathe the stuffy woods and smokey barrooms, it will be my own fault. But what else can I make of it? I am a collection of memories and experiences propelled by a list of future aspirations--almost none of which can possibly come true where I'm going.

Technically, there is enough green-stuff stashed in pockets that I could set out on my own. Technically, I could move just about anywhere in this country and live comfortably with two or three months to secure a source of more green-stuff.

But then I would be even more alone.

I have learned precisely how slowly I become accustomed to new surroundings. It takes months just to begin trusting the common roads, and further months before I can hope to begin uncovering the secret places that could sing for me. It will take a year before I can forge even a shakey friendship, and by then I hope I will be packing again, only this time to go somewhere with some promise.

Two weeks and the University community that has seen to the blooming of my philosophical life will no longer house me. I will kiss away the lagoon, the cracked sidewalks, the strange cement structure with the word "DREAM" scrawled in careless graffiti. The last few months I've felt increasingly unwelcome in the standard structures, with a thousand young faces I'll never meet speeding by just to wish they could leave.

Forgive my wistfulness--it's already been two years since I last saw Jennifer, yet I've somehow kept moving forward. I'll live, surely . . . and in fact I'm convinced all the negative energy pressing down on me will be something I can overcome and use to fuel the art that keeps my heart beating with the knowledge she never felt the same way.

In a meta way, this post disgusts me--this is how I've been writing since my first blind experiments: some landmark beginning with a steady spiraling horror, and then a flicker pretending to be strong enough to overcome. Honestly, I don't know what'll happen. It might not be alright, and your saying otherwise will never change that.

What I know is in two weeks I'll no longer cringe from the obnoxious bass beats blaring from custom sound-systems. I'll no longer curse the white-skinned 'thug' living above me for yelling at his girlfriend or stomping around as un-ninja-ly as a man can. I'll no longer feel like a local outcast at ever concert, play, and performance, surrounded by peers that seem to know everyone's name but mine.

In two weeks I'll move away--and perhaps I'll move on.

Lovecraft and Jiri Barta

A few weeks ago I picked up a short-story collection and posthumously-published novella by H. P. Lovecraft. For a while I had been knocking off the shorter works, but found myself distracted by the more personal horrors of waiting for grad-school responses. Nearing what looks to be a realization of the most cynical end to this process, I picked up The Lurker at the Threshold last night and read through my first legitimate 100+ page Lovecraftian work.

Feeling slightly querulous at having read so much smallish print, I just finished another artful stint having taken up a DVD of animated shorts by 'legendary' animator Jiri Barta, moments ago walking away from the television after viewing his Pied Piper of Hamelin.

In short, my imagination is filled with a tilted twisty darkness that has me awash in (figuratively) awry smiles.

Though Barta's work proved more alien (strangely enough) than Lovecraft's, I've felt a kinship to both unlike most works I've picked up over the last few years. Especially tantalizing were the multiple descriptions of abstract imaginings in Lovecraft that, after my first glance, appear uncannily parallel to many of the anchorings of my own artistry; particularly, an attraction to ideas that toy with expanding the boundaries of imagination.

And also though I found much wanting in Lovecraft's prose, particularly finding his overuse of the word "which" to be unfortunately damaging, the ideas that I've for a long time vaguely been familiar with proved wondrous in their own right.

My immediate future darkens with the playful grimaces of Cartesian demons. Probably, I am trapped, for a few months at least, in a region I found myself much loathing a year ago. Probably, I must take up a 'standard' low-level job for the majority of this duration. But then, the hope on the horizon: probably, I will have a lot more to show for myself this time one year from now, especially if I can convince myself to run forward with the 'full time' project I should be working on more productively.