Random Notebook #13 - Exploring Fictional Settings and Scene Formatting

You were supposed to think all was fine when you met her at that bookstore’s café. When she quoted that epigram from the book she had just picked up from the shelve, and the epigram, when she shared it with you, turned out to be the same passage of the Bible you had just read the night before, and, because of this, you took it upon yourself to believe this a miracle of sorts, to elevate a simple coincidence to higher ground where only your interpretation is valid. That, in itself, is something you must dismantle not only for your own good, but for the good of whatever future you may have with another woman. But isn’t it ironic, and I hate to be the one to point this out to you, that the essence of that little epigram was exactly what she used to you it was over. You may not want to face this, but the fact is you must: the same excitement that made her yours, eventually gave her the ammunition to kill the relationship. You will say that I am full of it, that I am no better than you and that I am connecting circumstantial variables to come to the same conclusion you did. You further accuse me of using facts to hurt you, but I ask you, what else could I use against the indefensible position you have entrenched yourself in? What else but facts; what else but the very reality you have consciously decided to ignore? Shall I remind you what you said to me when she walked out on you that day at the bookstore? You said that seeing her bum as she walked out, paused for a moment before pushing the door to the outside, was the last image of her you were left with. Her bum! Are you serious? No doubt you will manage to make some mystical connection or some spiritual interpretation of her bum. Perhaps you could write a book, (or a short story; really, I am not sure you could sustain this any longer than a few pages), that will end up in the canon of people with obsessions with bums. Your book may become a cult favorite; a must for the bum connoisseur par excellence, or at the very least, you may find a readership among the enthusiasts. If it sounds like I am trying to diminish and discard (dismiss) your position, I am sorry. I am only doing it for your own good. For you to wallow on your sad feelings is an affront to manhood. You gambled, my friend and you lost. What else could you even demand from that woman? What else but what else she had already given you? She could give no more, and you suffocated her with your romantic parlance. Sadness didn’t “dry [her] bones,” as the epigram said, your game of cavalier did. It’s fine if you do not want to speak to me. Frankly, it’s fine if you want to end this friendship right here, right now; just think about this event as another sign that what you are doing doesn’t work, and that ultimately the only person you have to blame in the end is yourself. No, of course, I am not telling you to be a complete asshole to women (although I have to point out, for your benefit that there are many women who truly desire that in a man). It’s simply a matter of balance, of not trying so hard to please others. I’m not asking you to not be yourself, but not to be yourself at the expense of your life, your REAL life, not the one in your head. Consider all of the pain you’ve experienced in the last few years—you can’t tell me that all of it was created by others, women who made it their lives to hurt someone like you for the mere sake of seeking revenge for some wrong done to them in the past. (Although, I must admit, not only is the idea valid, but serious consideration must be given to it no matter how many varieties or forms one might encounter). It’s your life—you are free to do with it what you please, but it strikes me as a real waste if you allow life to “dry your bones.” You are in command of the rest of your life. The change you wish is up to you and you alone.

Random Notebook #12 -- Finding New Paths

  It may seem ridiculous for me to change color when what I have is only 25 more pages to go in this notebook, but if the truth be told, I have quite a few of the Y&C Gel Stylists and I need to use some of that in what is left here as space.  This may be a mundane change, but my heart tells me that a little variation of color might do me good.  To keep using these pens, and having to dip the fill in hot water to soften the gel ink is not a problem to me—it actually allows me a few minutes to compose my mind while I drink my coffee if there’s coffee to be had.  After finishing this notebook, I really have to hit the Visconti with all I’ve got because time is of the essence.  Who knows what might happen in all of this mess, and one has to live like today might be the last day.  As unfortunate as it might appear, life has to be lived in that way because in the most fundamental view of things, death lurks in the unknown.  Go to bed tonight and make plans for tomorrow, next week, next month, or even five years down the road and you will play the fool’s hand.  It is true—it is as Hamlet says, “the undiscover’d country from whose boundaries no traveler returns,” then the difference between that type of death and the other is that the death under faith means eternal life. 

There’s no catch, not one at all—cross the street and get hit by a bus, have a terminal heart attack, die in a commercial airline crash, or even fall into a sea of molten lava and depending on which side of the equation you are, the event might or might not be a surprise to you.  But I am rambling.  I began to think that way after April of last year, and even though I believed I had lost faith, I was able to regain it a few weeks before the world collapsed around me.  If at any time I doubted, it was simply because of the environment I was living in day in and day out.  Although that is an easy excuse, faith is a thing within one’s self and if one has confidence on one’s own inner strength, faith will not waver even if one lives among the biggest idiots in the universe.  My problem, as I have had time to reflect, was that I took everything literally, down to the last word.  I had what I began to define as supreme confidence in the people in charge, perhaps a remnant of my time in the military.

Random Notebook #11 - Finding a Place for Ideas

 Six years is a great deal of time and even now I am not quite sure I am calculating the gap of time correctly.  I haven’t written on this notebook for what seems another one of my lifetimes—a segment of time defined by events beyond my control.  Throughout this time, I can chronicle the start and/or failure of relationships, world events of immense calamity; the shaping of my life with decisions made that at the time seemed innocent and pure.  I will never be able to understand or piece together the interlocking scramble of symbols that led to so much pain.  Why things turned out the way they did is as much my fault as it is circumstance.  How I came to be from 1992 to flying over the Berring Strait on my way to China is a wonder to me, a marvel of chapters, one after another, although not always chronologically—the story of how I came to be—how I paid (to be continued on a different notebook page—what follows is a break from page 2 to 3).  Don’t know where to begin, but a couple of days ago, while in to separate conversations with different friends I was a little over the top.  I’ve had some time to think about what the attorney said and even as early as that same evening I had already begun to take a new path.  M. felt the same way, and despite my reach to M.H.’s email, and the complete mental exhaustion of the last few days things are starting to normalize.  And I say this with the complete knowledge that “normalization” means things can get really terrible now—in the last few days especially, and with all that is about to take place, normalcy is a pipedream.  Right at this moment, I have no idea what is happening at H.  I thought it was going to be a simple day, but I feel that all this week had been leading to this.  (another break from page 3 to 4 in the notebook—seems like no more breaks until a few pages later).  Work on descriptions.  I want to scream loud.  Most of the days I spend here I have wasted without discrimination.  I have plenty of things I could do, yet absolutely no discipline to carry things along.  Just now I stopped momentarily and pushed this notebook away.  I have picked up several books to read and have put them back on the shelves.

            It isn’t because I don’t have things to do—I have plenty of ideas to develop, plenty of good things to say.  Perhaps what I need is a clock in front of me.  Try to write for an hour straight, non-stop and see where it leads.  All right, I’ve decided that that is what I will do.  For all the stories I have tried to tell, not one actually has gained clarity.  It all seems well enough in my mind, but on paper it all feels and looks incredibly silly.  I shouldn’t judge.  That’s the worst thing.  Sometimes one wants the first draft to be so perfect and that is the worst expectation one could actually hope for.  Three minutes and I feel like putting this down again.  I had a little success last week when I decided to write about my father who is dying.  For one, there was a level of discovery; I had never seen my father in the light of dying before.  Secondly, I found out something about my own past that brought to light some things for which I am irrevocably responsible; this involved having done something incredibly stupid, coming out scot free, but tarnishing another life forever.  Guilt is a value judgment and to share this with other people would mean to hear the lecture regarding guilt, because everyone seems to have an opinion there be a time when people are no longer good; by and by the majority might still be good, but the one’s without scruples, or sense of trustworthiness, is no doubt in the increase.  I pause at this and question myself in what side of the equation do I find myself?  Because one can claim all sorts of things but if one’s actions do not match one’s beliefs then there’s very little to say on one’s defense regarding this.  The other day I was writing about making a change in one’s life.  I believe I argued that some times that change never comes and we are blamed for the “character flaws” that invade our personalities. 

Random Notebook #10

 Wait patiently for this week to end up ruining and uprooting my world and turning everything into a misery beyond understanding.  But I will pray things work out this week with prayer and meditation.  Of course I will try my best to keep my writing to a maximum even if it’s just to keep the hand moving—and the reading, too, for God knows where life or death will take me, and whether or not there will be a desk and a library there.  In all of this there’s a mystery.  The mystery of the books I have not read yet—the mystery of all those empty notebooks clamoring to be filled with the ink of my mind and soul.  How deserted will they feel by the end of this week, by next month, by next year?  But God knows that despite my manly slips into sin, I try to turn the other cheek, to be meek and humble, to recognize at the moment the path to follow that is based in the faith that, deep inside, like Ann Frank said, people are good.  Could say the word forgiveness and mean it.  I know I have the power to stay away from this horrific darkness that blurs my way.  So, here I am about to finish another notebook.  I think I have finally learned what it means to be a writer, to embody that Kafka quote.  It took me years to unlearn the laziness and lack of discipline but once one finds one’s self on the other side of that border, one is surely never to go back to where one once was.  Writing is not dissimilar to meditation; one examines how one’s brain empties through the nib of the pen striking the page, as one would empty one’s mind and spirit through the act of breathing.  And like in meditation, there are a great number of hindrances that can take one’s mind somewhere else—God keeps us in the here and now, in eternal life.

Random Notebook #9: Transitionals, part 002

I’ve had the strange sensation that despite the fact that I have thrown away a magnificent amount of time, the fact remains that I have also done a great deal of work; all of this, despite the fact that there are other things that beg for my attention.  I’ve been lucky, more than lucky, to understand the same rigmarole of the days that go in and out of my life.  I know that the feeling that my end is near is just that, a feeling.  There are times, however, when I see all of it quite clear in my mind, and I can’t get over the fact that life is good aside from all this.  I don’t know what mechanisms are at work in my mind when I ultimately believe it may all end soon, but factors that led me to where I am today I understand all too clearly.  And if all of this leads me to lose myself by creating these fictions, these stories, these plots that go nowhere, then at least I am keeping alive by means of those words of my imagination.  Like, for example, how did I predict these events on that plot I came up with in 1995-1996 but never followed through?  I wish I had had more insight, more vision to pursue that plot when I originally struck the vein.  No crying over spilt milk, really.  What I will do now is continue to think about those men on that isolated post and their questioning (not challenging) of their leadership.  What good would a post like that do?  So far from the rear, clearly out of artillery range, impossible, even at times, to call in air support?  What good, really, is the sitting around, going out on patrol, taking the casualties they did?  What good are the replacements straight out of boot camp?  One hundred years from now, when all of us are gone, who would remember this post, these hills, and these fighting holes we dug?  Fifty years from now, when whatever we leave behind rusts to deformity, and all that is left are the faint scars we carved upon the earth itself, who would really care about what we did here?  What consolation is it to the men that died, to their families?  Certainly, this is a mission, and the mission is more important than any of our opinions, or worse, our own feelings and lives.  I would like to believe that there are things more important than the mission, but the idealism that goes behind believing what our superiors say to us leads me to believe that all of that is obligatory rhetoric, a form of appeasement.  I believe it infinitely more believable and productive to listen to the rest of the men when they speak genuinely, that meaning when their words are the meaning they all hold close to their hearts.  Ironically, it is these young “boots” opinions that one must listen to the most.  Coming back from patrol, whether or not we had made contact with the enemy, the look on the faces of these young “boots” makes it clear to us, men who have been out here for the better part of a year, that this post is madness, that the patrols are simply nothing short of suicide runs, and that the only reason why are here is because this relentless enemy doesn’t fear us, but rather seems to find meaning in simply toying with us.  Imagine if the enemy, in their clear capacity to overrun this post, wiped us out of the map completely?  They couldn’t possibly do that, could they?  In reality, they could.  Conceptually, for the enemy to overrun and take over this stupid hill would be to simply invalidate the meaning of their so-called jihad.  One comes to a very awkward realization—the Taliban needs us here more than our own high command does.  But these are things one writes down and speaks not of.  This was something we all secretly agreed upon, and woe be unto the man who broke this silence.  “Keep it bottled up, Jack… no real need to talk about it.”  Deep inside the absurdity of the mission became a joke we all enjoyed, perhaps sadistically (especially when we take wounded and they die in route to the rear).  I know I wasn’t far off the mark when we captured a man walking barefoot and half naked on ____ valley one fine afternoon in the month of October (description here).  ×  And this was only 30 minutes.  I wanted to write for a longer time but the lack of focus was terrible. 

Random Notebook #8: Transitional Narratives, From Here to There

I feel as if I had abandoned better thoughts or things to write about due to, perhaps, a lack of focus.  But in all of this nonsense there is a hidden lesson: I dare any of those “professionals” I left behind to match my writing, even then I was finishing notebooks left and right.  It really is a whole lot more than simply finishing notebooks; it’s the development of thoughts I might simply browse in the waking hours and days ahead of me, day after day.  I wonder what I would be doing if I never gave a thought or examination to life in general.  Life might be even better.  To live in ignorance of these complex questions and deep examinations of my most basic thoughts; live as if nothing of this mattered but was just entering life and exiting at the other end without having a single existential question, or perhaps thinking about it but not recognizing it as such.  Even in writing about it here, I have a tendency to believe all of this, of course, has been thought and examined before, as if in all the things and their essence nothing about be solely original, but a rethinking or reorganizing of a thought examined years before. 

I have little idea as to why I chose to write on these things.  Like I said, I think they are universal thoughts, and that is all I can think of right now.  Reading “The Deer Park,” by Norman Mailer, but I must have written about this already.  I had a feeling while traveling here, that I should write something based on K.B.’s life.  The girl was raised as a Jehovah Witness and was damaged for life.  I would probably write in the first person, that and talking in the intimate side of telling another person’s life story in a sort of episodic form—traveling from present tense to past as any whim in the story pushes out.  Where to begin?  Perhaps make it contemporary—it was my first college class since being discharged from active duty… Having done four combat tours (three in Afghanistan and one in Iraq), I had had enough of the “brotherhood,” and being “always faithful.”  Of course, there are people that would disagree with me for not re-enlisting, but one has to take opinions like that just like the ones coming from the assholes who hold those same ideas.  I don’t mean to sound like a cynic, but I simply felt it was time to move on.

I enrolled at B. University on a whim.  I saw the name and it sounded good and round and resolute—I never cared about researching anything.  There were officers I disliked for throwing their Ivy League names around, disclosing their privilege backgrounds.  Some earned the respect of their men because they were careful, high-spirited but careful and not subject to “gut feelings” while on patrol.  Those officers were in a microscopic minority to the other so-called “risk takers,” the ones who trusted their gut more than what intelligence reported, never even looked at the GPS and got us lost for hours.  Luckily, the loss of men was small when these idiots came along barking orders to enlisted men who had been in-country for close to a year and a half, gone on hundreds of patrols.  Sometimes, these officers got us in troubles that only the Staff Sergeant and other senior NCOs could get us out of.  Because under fire, and I don’t mean IEDs or insurgent snipers, the Staff Sergeants were the ones in command and when the odd-ball officer saw the NCOs take the initiative, they would sit and watch how it was done.  They would learn this way more than they ever could at the Naval Academy or West Point or whatever sorry ass ROTC programs they came from.  The men knew right away whom to trust and whom to despise.  Only occasionally we would have one of those assholes who, fearing of losing face, would shout out an NCOs plan to get out of an ambush.  Those were the real dangerous ones—the ones with only a handful (or less) patrol experiences but acting as if they knew it all.  I can’t even count the list of men—fine Marines—that dumb officers got either killed or wounded, just on the strength of pushing around their lieutenant bar.  The more moderate ones listened to the NCOs and watched carefully at how masterfully these lower rank men pin-pointed locations, called in air support and medical evacuations as needed; all of this while still engaging the enemy and directing precise flank movements that, at least in my experience, never failed to get us out of a jam and take the upper-hand from the insurgents.

That was my war.  That’s how I spent my time serving my country.  Maybe even 90% of the time I spent reading the officers, at least the lieutenants.  The captains one could trust because these were a different breed of men; men who had fought in Panama in 1989, Kuwait in 1990-91 and in Somalia in 1993-94, and most of them got field commissions.  Other older brass had been part of the Beirut “peace keepers” that got blown to bits in 1983.  We trusted these men as we distrusted the “pale-faced,” which was what we began calling them because as green as they were their faces would be pale-white even into their fourth or fifth patrol.

Random Notebook #7: Heaven or Hell, You Decide

Not much to write today, other than I ran some errands and got a copy of “Camus at Combat.”  It wasn’t so much an impulse buying, since I considered for nearly an hour.  What is beginning to appeal to me at the present seems to be the sort of “Journals of…” or “The Collected Letters of…”  The reason behind this is, of course, the way I am ruminating on this journal, as if I had the interesting life of these accomplished people.  All I have done, really, is lose things—that’s what I am good at.  A cover of a magazine also got my attention this week, and I ended up (again, not on impulse) buying this magazine right off the rack.  The cover story is “First Love, First Loss: How Early Experience Shapes You.”  When I think of this, I think of that first couple of times, interestingly enough, how many of those experiences over so many years have been with people whose name began with the letter M.  Perhaps it is a coincidence, or the manifest of some undercurrent in my mind.  With this I mean something deploy embedded in my mind.  But I haven’t read the magazine article and I am already speculating on idiotic premises.  Crazy things happen for a reason—I remember how, while helping my sister clean a Catholic church back home, I sort of fell in love with the face of the Virgin Mary in one of the statues in the backroom where my sister took her lunch.  Why was this wonderful and beautiful statue in the backroom, I will never know.  Years later, while reading “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James Joyce, I would return to those moments when I stood mesmerized by the statue’s beautiful face.  Of course I am no Stephen Dedalus, and my fixation was not as terrible as his, but it is a wonder every time we discover that experiences we consider our very own (especially when they are this distorted), end up being as universal as birth and dead and taxes.  And then we don’t feel so special.  Then, the only thing we can do is to feel the sadness at our lack of originality, but soon we feel kinship with the so many others that are still with us, or came before us.  I know this is overly complex; I could simply say that every time this has happened it has simply been a coincidence.  Of course, one also begins to think of human existence in general—that is to say, when we read about the Romans and how they lived so many thousands of years ago, and how they all died, one begins to doubt.  Where do all of those souls go?  How many are in heaven and how many are in hell?  But those dichotomies do not answer even the most fundamental of all questions—could it actually be that the end is the end, and not one thing or the other?  For if we, by faith, stipulate the direction our souls take then who is to say that perhaps a person has decided not to stick to the dichotomy of the one or the other?  For example, a man who lives a life of extreme sexual lust might want to direct his soul in a way where he ends up living eternity in a personal harem with endless women of infinite variety, per secula seculorum.  Another example is the person who wants more than anything to encounter his family in the afterlife.  Couldn’t he or she determine in some way, out of sheer desire?  I suppose that that specific desire (of reuniting with family members for eternity) might not be of much interest today.  I say that humorously, of course, and I could keep an interminable line of examples, each as unique as that who desires it, but perhaps I have already proven my point at least partially.  And I mean partially because who really knows where we go?

Random Notebook #6: To Rant or Not to Rant... Not the Question.

I am not at a loss for what to write—it’s simply that most of all of this is taking a lot of energy from me.  Sure, it is easy to blame distraction.  It is easier to blame the stress, and mood, and overall disposition, but I can’t continue to do this and avoid doing this work—the work that somehow keeps me at my desk, at a bare minimum (at least) it keeps me engaged.  And writing kept many other things alive.  I can’t imagine right now where all of this is taking me, but I must (damn that word again) keep writing and putting it all down on paper.  How I wish I could leave my world of worries behind.  All I do here is rant, aside from the sporadic plot that surfaces every now and then.  I have been reading Mailer’s “The Deer Park” with little or no motivation at all.  I think I was influenced by C.I.’s opinion about the book.  Right now, I am a little under half of the book and the motivation to finish it slip out of me as quickly as I am determined to read on.  I am reading, but the pages lag on slowly and I tire of it quickly.  It’s not the book, I am certain.  Every book has its merits, independent of whether or not it is a good book.  I have been inclined to think this way since I began to collect my library.  I feel responsible for finishing a book despite of how “good” or “bad” it is.  Every book has both elements, I am sure.  For example, “Stations of Solitude” by Alice Kohler was a book I read shortly after moving back to Ohio from Washington DC.  I picked up the book used on the strength of its title.  But I kept at it, and if for nothing else, the feeling of accomplishment I get from finishing a book.  Writing should be the same, but I find so many obstacles, most of them, of course, self-imposed.  If and when I do get down to writing like this, it is very hard for me to pass beyond the rant, and most of what I write sounds repetitive as a result.  But I feel good writing nonetheless.  My brain is always turning in so many directions, it is hard to see and evaluate what I should or should not write about; that is why I put it all here.  If I ever become a father, then when I am gone my children will get to keep a piece of my mind here—somewhat more permanent than my own corporeal self.  And, if the end is in fact so near, then all the better to put all of this down.  I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but I have to face the reality of these days and the events that are unfolding as the hours pass.  Perhaps it is a bit ridiculous to think this way, but one must (damn that word again) be open to all the scenarios this might bring.  It’s more than simply coping, but rather the fact that there’s little.  No fantasy world will ever over-compensate for what is going on today, right now, at this very second, while the music plays in the background and I put pen to paper.  But in the interest of leaving this reality and this obsessions behind, I have to construct the fictions that make up the other part of my life.  The world of the imagination is supposed to take over, it is, if for the lack of a better term, an obligation I owe myself for the stress and downright suffering these days have brought me.  I have, for some odd reason, neglected the Visconti and the pleasure of that instrument in my hand, however mundane happens to be what I write about.  A new fascination—the Nixon tapes online at the National Archives site.  Why?  I have no idea.  Right here, right now, Beethoven’s Ninth playing on the CD player.  Nothing matters other than keeping the hand moving and writing about whatever.  I understand all of the emotions; I know where they come from.

Random Notebook #5: Genesis of Nothing, Start of All

 All of this may come with some facility to me but when it happens, I have to take quick advantage of it, lest I lose the thread.  At any rate, it is fun to simply write freely and without care.  To write about whatever I care about.  To write about whatever strikes me.  I do pray and hope that things do not come down to ranting, and I must be aware of what I am doing all of the time so as not to ruin the time I am investing on this.  It is difficult because there’s still so much anger inside of me, anger that is begging for some outlet.  It is not a waste of time to think that my rants lead nowhere.  I try and that is all I can do.  Even the best published authors do not have it all figured out.  They begin where I begin, do the same things I do, but with much better discipline than I.  They also have a lot of help from editors and people who make suggestions and corrections.  Nevertheless, I know I can do this at this level and with some talent and working on my discipline as much as I can.  The past has to remain behind.  There cannot be any more wasting time, this time that is so valuable.  What M has offered me has been a dream come true, and I feel I have wasted much of that time.  There’s much to do about discipline—the timer helps, and there’s a great deal of joy in finishing the time allotted for this.  Yet, I have to do more—I can put pressure on myself and fail tremendously, or I can simply do what I did yesterday and the day before.  Think effortlessly.  Think smoothly about the plot, no pressure, just type, print, and craft.  Repeat as necessary.  Of course, the plots sitting at home also need to be looked at.  There are many things I’ve tried that have not worked—others that I simply wonder where they came from.  There are hints of talent and gift, but I get discouraged too quickly and there’s the issue that discipline must (I swore I would not use that word) correct with time.  It’s a matter of really thinking about it and knowing that unless I push myself, nothing will come of this.  So there.  It’s time to begin the game of suppose.  First, decide on a topic/emotion/root of the plot.  Man or woman?  Okay.   A man from a small town.  He owns a hardware store on one of those picturesque American Main Streets in Anytown.  He is married.  Seemingly enjoying the perfect life.  His name is Norman, Norman Grant (yes, I knew that name was in my head for some purpose—here it is).  Norman Grant.  Small business owner and respected member of his community.  Esteemed in his church, a veteran of the Great War.  So, the plot must take place between 1981—1925 or thereabouts.  His wife, Selma Grant comes from Puritan stock, her repression (emotional and sexual) eventually leads to the crisis of the plot.  Okay, how about this: the big secret, the great mystery comes from this—Norman has extravagant sexual desires that he cannot engage in with his repressed wife.  She finds him sick, distorted and downright evil.  For years, he imposed his will on her, violently and damagingly.  But the sick thrill of using Selma for his games becomes too much an effort for him to make constantly, and therefore he abandons the conjugal bed and opens his sexual desires to other roads of perdition.  By an act of conscience, Norman finds a willing partner.  The woman, Rose Platt, is the town preacher’s wife.  Before I can write about the affair, I have to figure out a way for them—Norman and Rose—to find they have a common interest in their perversity.  Think, think, think.  How does Norman find Rose’s sexual deviance?  Okay, suppose that Norman has what I could call a “purveyor” of filth, of explicit illustrations that comes into the hardware store from time to time.  During one of his visits, the man brings in what he calls the best stock of photos he’d ever had to offer.  The men go back and forth about the price as Norman goes through the material.  A series of 10 photos catches his eye because of the theme explored.  In the series, a woman is tied to a chair.  She is kneeling on top, her upper body immobilized by ropes wrapped around her shoulders; her legs are tied to the legs of the chair.  This is a very awkward position—the woman’s bare buttocks are prominent, two perfect spheres, Norman thinks.  Norman goes through the entire contents of the box but he’s not sure he wants to buy the entire stock.  He wants to haggle on the price of the set that caught his attention, but the man would not let it go alone—he had to purchase the entire stock, or nothing.  Among the photos, Norman sees a face he recognizes; it is Rose Platt, the preacher’s wife.  He’s baffled.  He studies the photograph closely.  It had to be her.  Of course, there’s no way of telling if it’s simply a look alike, or if his eyes are not betraying the similarity.  Norman is sure now that he wants the photographs, but he needs to bring the price down.  One thing he knew was that if he acted disinterested, the purveyor would be less likely to come down on the price.  He acts hesitantly, unimpressed, casual about the set he wants or the Rose Platt photo.  He goes through the photos again with even less interest.  “I don’t know,” he says, “price is a bit over my budget.”  “But they’re good photos, Norman… unique.”  “Let me think about it,” Norman says with an air of indifference and starting towards the front of the store as if to indicate he is through.  “Okay, Norman,” the purveyor says, “make me an offer, but be fair.”  They haggle a bit longer for the price.  “I’m sorry,” Norman says, “I’m not going to keep you.  If we can’t come to an agreement over a few pennies, it’s no use keeping you here.  I am sure you have other people to visit.”  The purveyor gives in and the transaction is quickly done.  The purveyor leaves.  Norman looks at his watch, it’s still half an hour before lunch.  Should he put the sign for lunch up, or should he make himself suffer with his uncontrollable desire to look at his new collection?

            Again, he thinks of the woman in the picture.  The resemblance was too close—good heavens, could it be her, he thinks.  But even if it was, how could he ever approach her, show her the photo?  Could he, he paused, get some mileage out of these photos?  In his eyes, it would not be black mail, but rather an agreement between two people who share a common interest.  He became obsessed and could think of nothing else.  He needed to confirm that the woman in the photo was indeed Rose Platt.  He couldn’t certainly come up to her and ask her, could he?  What if it’s just a coincidence?  What if she accuses him of immorality?  Is it worth the risk?  He tried not to think about.  He counted the minutes before he could put up the sigh “out to lunch” and go up to the attic to “study” these pictures closely.  His excitement was desperate.  He couldn’t wait any longer.  He went to the front door, the turned the sign over, and with the envelope containing the photos he went up to the attic to have “some time” with his new acquisition.  × This came fast and furious, and I almost forget where I was on what I was doing.  Perhaps the best way to go is the library, but beyond that, the fact that one can make a fiction out of just about anything one can come up with.  That is what I will look for from now on—the thing that really clicks, the one plot that makes all things flow.

Moleskine #004 -- Fighting Insecurity and Plot Crafting for Fun

 But nothing is really moving in any direction, and the extreme possibility of recognizing that ultimate emotion that was to bring it all very much together became some sort of ridiculous pursuit.  But no, you hold on, you continue to hunt because to you it all makes sense.  You will find the strength to pull yourself together, and know for the first time that things were never all of that flowery stuff you highly spoke about so many times.  Hood is asking you to push the limits of what you know as emotions, but you know deep inside that it is only desperation that you know best.  Your emotions all stem from that—from a severe case of knowing or rather not knowing what exactly is hitting you until it is right in front of your face.  Too many things happen in an inordinate amount of time and there’s little or no way for you to access where everything is coming from.  And this is precisely what you should transfer into J.’s character.  All that confusion that leads to the irrational action—that is what you should convey to J. and, in the process, make him as real as any other character ever conceived.  He is real and with your desperation in trying to make sense of your emotions he will become real to the reader.  The trick that you must learn is to not make things autobiographical.  Hood explains this well and you should pay careful attention to all of this.  ×

            You must keep trying to remind yourself to stay low and not stick out.  This is the best way to see yourself from a perspective that will no doubt help your writing.  Surrender yourself once more to the blessing; this time, however, become even more deep into what you are trying to achieve with J.  He is, after all, betrayed by others, taken advantage of, and used as a scapegoat to carry the blame for everything.  So, give him all of those same attributes that coincide with all the things you have gone through.  Think about how D. wants to make J. believe it is all his fault and that regardless of whether or not he was making a move on his woman, he should have never broken that line.  What line precisely J. didn’t know, but the entire thing began to stink to high heaven and J. knew that when the casualty list began to elongate, his name would find a way to the stacked bodies.  He was sure of this as he was sure of S.’s infidelity before she’d come out clean and told him.  Truly a shame, he thought, and went to his office to see if he could concentrate on some work.  Fifteen minutes later, he realized he couldn’t do any work.

Moleskine #003 -- Writing Exercises and Developing Discipline

 These are the type of experiences that tell you you could do this professionally.  All that material stored in your mind can indeed come in handy at times like these.  This is one exercise you should really concentrate on for J.—show the emotion through events rather than simply make him say explicitly what his emotion is.  Arch those emotions.  For example, that sense of him resigning to his lover’s decision creates later a gamut of emotions with both sadness and desperation at the center of it, but never really anger.  He is sad and by thinking too much about it, it progresses into desperation; that inherent inability to control himself or his thoughts that ultimately culminates with him turning into a stalker of sorts.  Then, of course, is humiliation, complete, collective, irrevocable.  Now all of the emotions continue to boil.  He’s caught in the threshold of insanity and all that is required now is for one more single push that will “nail the coffin” for him.  That nail comes next day when, in the morning, during what he considered a valiant effort to regain normalcy, he shows up at work to find D. waiting for him in the lobby.  They go to the boardroom where the other partners are gathered.

You may or may not have the time to go into detail now about how the meeting develops.  That’s not the point right now.  At the end of the meeting, J. is completely out of control.  He leaves the building in a daze of confusion.  The only difference is that the proverbial tunnel, slow-motion that populates the senses similar to this one do not appear in front of J.  Of course he knows this is not a movie, but he felt disappointment nevertheless.  In a sudden burst of sacrilege and existential angst, he wonders whether God is, to use his words, “fucking with him.”  J. was sure this was not the case, but wondered nevertheless what sort of explanation he could put together right now. 

This of course was not for S.’s benefit but rather for himself.  How could a chain of events sparked by something so simple as an affair lead to such an apocalyptic result.  Is this what happens to all people who have affairs?  Is this what eventually will happen to S. and I.?  No, he seriously doubted that.  There seems to be two outcomes for cases of infidelity.  In his case, lack of careful management of the affair (that is to say, his own inability to keep his emotions in check) had brought all of this about.  No, of course it could not be.  People have affairs all of the time and not all of them came to the catastrophic conclusions his did.  Imagine, with so many affairs taking place in the confines of the business world, if even 50% of affairs ended the way this one did, we would be living in an economic collapse of Biblical proportions.  Lives ruined by illicit love affairs would eventually impact American business leadership to such a degree that the trickle-down effect would leave millions unemployed, houses will foreclose, banks would be forced to close down for lack of liquidity, the streets would be filled with the discontented, riots and civil war will envelop the country, the government will be overthrown and anarchy will be the way of the world.  J. knows that all of this is a terrible slippery slope, and that it will never happen; or rather, he knew that the source of all the things leading to that will not be marital infidelity.  And now he hated the fact that the entire idea of the affair wasn’t entirely his own.  Didn’t S. advocate this?  (This is the scene where everything is passing by him in NYC).  He walks half of the edge of Central Park, but doesn’t know where to go from here… the pause makes him think of something and he goes into a long memory scene that takes him back to (       ).

Moleskine #002 -- The Return and the Gift of Creative Writing

 So, now you’ve picked up precisely where you left off about a week ago.  The trip went its own way, the plane didn’t crash, and you are home again.  You begin again where the path is clear and full of possibilities.  You don’t feel pressure, but you know that you have less than one week to finish this notebook.  You’ve discovered it really isn’t that bad a timeline because you can always whip out an exercise out of one of the books and write the quota out of that.  The problem, of course, is that you haven’t even begun reading the book and even if you did now it would take longer than a week.  But it’s fine, it really is.  Last week was something else.  Some nostalgias came to the forefront, and you weren’t sure or even ready to have them so present.  On the other hand, there were other memories that simply appeared as part of a past so long ago, even the places seemed like old stage sets, as if you were an actor returning to play a part on some abandoned theatre.  Sure, it all sounds over-dramatic, but these are the things you can conjure up when one of your characters is under similar circumstances and subject to the same emotion.  

Now on to better things: write about Sandee more.  Figure out what to do with Daniel and the other plot.  Look into the violinist’s plot and outline it all.  All of that must be sort out clearly.  So then, you can see all that this notebook is time; time devoted to it will be well spent and very profitable.  Like you’ve said, all of this stuff will be used some day.  Nothing here is lost or wasted.  Again, you also think of the blessing, of all those things that have come to you.  This past week you were too busy, but your reading was very good.  And now, you must make time for work and for writing.  You must do honor to the blessing and stop wasting all of that time like you did Saturday and Sunday.  Not that it wasn’t all wasted and it helped you relax and all that, but it was way too long a time and it could have been half that time and you could’ve used the other half to write or read.  So, now you must work on discipline which is not as bad a thing because it is ever a lasting struggle to overcome, not just with writing but with any other thing you wish to correct.  Work with this by looking at the clock more often and divide your time wisely.  You will know when it is time.  You will feel the moment to write is the most important time you could ever employ outside of prayer and communion with God.

Moleskine #001 - Being Home or Lost in Place and Listening to People at a Cafe

 These are the first words you have written here, lost in this mess, this cultural wilderness.  You’ve not come here to find yourself or to put pieces together.  You’ve come here only to observe and to listen closely to all that is around you.  This is the place where people want to continue putting you in the position of being home, and that’s not even faintly true.  Imagine how little of what you consider home really is (in some way, shape or form) any form of spiritual or physical connection for you.  This is not home, not at all.  This place is not home any more than that other place (the place you now call home) is home.  This is not an artificially flavored polemic, or synthetic soul searching—it is just the way it is.  No excuses and no fake justifications.  This is the reality that you embody at this moment.  Now that you are reading Eco on the semantics of “being” you have a better understanding of this situation and the feeling that overcome you today and in the next few days.  You suspect that things will be better when you leave here, but it is not to be.  When you return, you will do some work, but also you will think about all of this and then try to theorize or formulate a language real enough to convey all of this.  

Yesterday, you overheard a couple in crisis.  It was about breaking up, or something of that sort, but you weren’t completely sure.  There was another man involved, a so-called friend, against whom the young man last night had had an issue with.  Things you overheard—that, according to young man #1, the other man only wanted to befriend her to take advantage of her.  Now, it does sound terribly jealous and extremely machista; however, one simple look at the girl and one would have to give some validity to what the young man #1 was saying.  She was a beautiful and tall, very slender and a body that most men in this place will kill their own flesh and blood over.  She was voluptuous and curious, with lips that simply begged to be kissed.  Her face was exquisite, although she wasn’t made up.  This was more an outing; they were determining the fate of their affair.

Birth of a New Project -- The Past is Now the Present

 Looking over to my left from where I sit at my desk, there is a pile of Moleskine notebooks too numerous to count.  These are notebooks I have filled in the last nine to ten years since I found my first Moleskine notebook at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Washington DC in 1997 or 1998.  I cannot remember accurately, but I do remember finishing the notebook and starting a new one the very same day.  I guess I had a lot to "say" or write down then.

Over the course of many years, and as I played around the disaster that can be "hypergraphia," I never stopped for a second to think of the emotional benefits or the psychological damage I was inflicting on myself.  Writing always seems like the perfect blend of a justifiable activity (look, I am not wasting my time. I am doing something productive), and idling hours away that could be put to better use.  That tinge of guilt that comes from two hours of not putting the pen down is constant and not abating.  On the other hand, the pleasure of filling another notebook (or I should say, notebook after notebook after notebook) is one of incomparable accomplishment.  Either way, this is the way we doom ourselves to this activity of writing.

I have decided to put the text inside those notebooks to good work by publishing parts of it here.  I have already typed most of those notebooks into Word files, often printing them when  I have access to a "free" printer, ink and paper (yes, those are department perks), but I never go back and read them.  The act of typing those notebooks up becomes the act of reading them without the weight of censorship or any other judgment.  I type as the words are on paper and never change or fix anything.  What will be presented here are parts that I found non-compromising, not giving away identity, and/or not jeopardizing anyone's privacy.  Some of them will be random pickings, while other will be passages that I deem appropriate or valuable in some way to me. 

The entries will be without date, as my notebooks are not diaries but rather reflections of what I think, read and observe.  I confess to going into sprees of useless rambling and will try to keep those away from the posts.  In order to keep some semblance of sanity, I will number the entries and will add a short line on the title to give it a sense of direction or thematic meaning.

I hope the long-time readers of this blog enjoy this new venture.  Of course the other posts will continue between Moleskine notebook posts, and those will be titled appropriately.

Old Musings on Books and Bookstores

 I found this in a very old Moleskine notebook I wrote over 15 years ago.  It is an old musing, the type that come to me when I am writing for the single and most "useless" exercise of simply moving my hand to put things down on paper. 

Books stand for some many things that I could not being to imagine the same type of responsibility placed on a human being.  They symbolize the capacity of a society to tolerate other’s ideas, the permanence of knowledge, art, thoughts, feelings and emotions—and they sit quietly and nobly on shelves of libraries, waiting for us, more loyal than any dog waiting his master’s attention.  I don’t have anything against books, nor do I demand (like Milosz) to know everything.  I know that I have in my library more books than I could ever be possible to devour in a lifetime (although I must credit the fact that I have done a fairly good job of it).  But there is something lovely to those silent sentinels, an irrepressible call beckoning me to a world of knowledge—albeit so limited—and that is what Milosz misses in his quote. 

If we cannot simply love our books for what they represent, how could we ever appreciate the knowledge they contain?  I would think it highly selfish to purchase a book for only what it can offer me objectively.  A book can offer aesthetic comfort by just resting on a desk; it cries out its function, its purpose, just as a baseball begs to be thrown.

And then this little part about bookstores that made me remember the "old ways."

A bookstore is the grandest of all candy stories for book lovers.  And I am not only referring to the mega-stores with millions of titles, but also of the limited stock “mom and pop” shops which, in their ever-decreasing numbers, never go out of style.  Budgeting for book purchases every month is part of the book lover’s existence.  Unwrapping a cellophane copy of a new title (as they are often wrapped in Europe) can be one of the biggest thrills for a devoted reader.  Reading living writers can also add to the excitement.  Every time my favorite contemporary author publishes a new book my excitement borders on mania.  What would the first sentence be like?  What kind of plot or interesting twists will he/she dare to take next?  There are probably those who would accuse me of escapism; I can’t deal with the real world, they say, and therefore I seek to avoid it.  But there are all kinds of devices for escapism in society today.  Compared to video games and pornography, I hardly think reading a bad addiction, or as a choice to building our perfect place.  Read for enjoyment.  Knowledge should be, at best, an insignificant by-product.