symbolic 39: liz kimbrel

I'm living with these people now. The characters of the BOOK OF LIES having taken up residence in my head and are starting to peer through my eyes. I can hear their voices during the day. I'm the guy sitting on the bench in the park having a full conversation with himself. They're starting to talk through me, which is that delightful schizophrenia in which writers get to revel.

I mentioned Liz briefly in the last entry, mentioned her as being attracted to the ideal space of a hotel in downtown Seattle, and probably did so in such an off the cuff manner that it didn't occur to me until later the next day that not everyone may be as familiar with Liz as am I. Maybe it is time to introduce some of my new friends to the world. We'll start with Liz. Here are two bits from the earliest draft:

"Her hair was short and curly, a brown darker than the rich earth piled next to the grave. Her face was full and round and the dark sunglasses hid her eyes from Jack. She wore a long black coat, open at the throat to highlight the large stone suspended at the base of her neck. It looked like a piece of polished glass."

"They were hazel, her eyes, a light green fringe around the darker center, and her minimal makeup accentuated the distaff coloration of her irises. She had a solid smile, make unique by the protruding shape of her lower canines. The rest of her teeth were straight and white, but the two tearing teeth were slightly thicker than the rest. Her lips were never quite closed. Any other time, Jack would have been quite taken by the persistent hesitation which adorned that mouth."

I had a secret about Liz; I knew something about her which no one else -- not even she -- knew. Now I find that my secret may actually be one of the lies. I don't want to spill it quite yet, I may still use it and I'd like to have a few surprises for you, but if it is an untruth about Liz, I realize that I don't know her as well as I thought. In fact, the above two quotes may be all that I know about Liz too.

Regardless, this is Liz. She may wander in to the conversations.

« « little fictions || 04.28.2003 @ 11:11 PM

symbolic 38: dream chic

It's 7.00am and I'm sitting in a comfy chair at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle. The place is done up in modern chic -- all dark woods, chrome, simple geometric designs, and primary colors. The music is charmingly downtempo and Brazilian in flavor, and there is just a whiff of smoked turkey in the air (though that may be from the banquet setup in the next room). The architecture is tight and cozy, very articulated, and yet without sharp edges, and it wraps around you and clearly partitions you into a nested space.

It is quiet at this time of the morning. So quiet I can hear the HVAC system whirring in the ceiling. The thick burgundy curtain next to me is drifting in the breeze. In fact, all of the velvet curtains on this side of the room are dancing, gently shimmying like elegant ladies in tight cocktail dresses who consider a twitch of the hip to be full-tilt boogie.

I'm not sure I would be able to find my way out of here again, even if I wanted to. But not in that "fucking hell, get me out of this maze!" panic that is the nightmare labyrinth of IKEA. The embrace of the W Hotel whispers that you shouldn't think about the rest of the world. They don't want you to worry about leaving; when it is time, someone will be round to escort you to your vehicle. Until then, it is just you and the simple geometry and the swaying curtains. It is a place of carefully calculated atmosphere. It exudes serenity and sex and alcohol in crystal glasses. It is a place that says, "I am more sleek and graceful in my Sterile Deco design than you can ever hope for, but I will accept you anyway." It is a place that -- if you are plain -- you can disappear; and -- if you are dazzling -- it will be your adoring backdrop.

This is the place where Liz Kimbrel dreams of staying.

I wonder what the rooms are like.

« « little fictions || 04.25.2003 @ 08:04 AM

symbolic 37: a whore for that special rhythm

I am a music whore. Such a pronouncement shouldn't surprise any of you, but I need to say it aloud once in awhile to remind myself. Though today the phrase which came to my lips was: "I'm a music bastard." When I'm not daydreaming about the novels that I'm not working on, I'm speed-slamming music. I did the math a few years ago and realized I have enough music on the shelves to go 24/7 nearly two months and never repeat a disc. It's a statistic that I say with embarrassment and befuddlement rather than with macho "I got more stuff than you" pride. The reason: it isn't enough. New records come out on Tuesday here in the States and I've already given thought twice to which CD store I could hit over lunch to check what's new. It's not that I'm looking for anything; it's not that I don't have a stack of discs on the shelf back home that I haven't listened to yet. What drives me to these thoughts and actions is the idea of something NEW.

And this is why I am a whore. I devour music. I crack jewel cases when I open them; I lick liner notes, sniff the tray inserts on the off-chance that they are scratch-n-sniff, and listen to the CD with my finger fidgeting near the 'track advance' button. Why? Because I so desperately need to have my life completely altered by SOUND. I want to have my brain imploded by a blast of distorted drums; I want to fall in love with a singer's voice. I want my crotch to explode with yearning for that wild and innocent guitar howl. I want lyrics that will make me think that poetry is a living serpent whispering in my ear. I want to be transformed, transfixed, and transported. I want a lot, frankly. Sure, what whore doesn't? Who doesn't want the blushingly innocent rapture of their first joyous orgasm all over again?

This doesn't apply to just music, you know. It could be anything: movies, clothes, books, online fori, websites, fetish gear, japanese anime, transhuman modifications, military hardware, young virginal boys, whatever obsesses you. The need to touchtastehearsmellswallow becomes so strong that the only thing that matters is the acquisition of your obsession. Enjoying it is for some other monster; you've just got to HAVE IT. All other considerations are extraneous.

Rich Amtower and I were talking about music this morning and he was sharing with me some of his thoughts about Mago's Definitions of raw moments from a different perspective. We both took home copies of it from the same show less than two weeks ago. Rich has been listening to it, breaking it down, picking it apart -- enjoying it -- since then. Me? I've already forgotten that I bought it. It's still in the plastic wrap on my shelf. I've moved on.

Yeah, "bastard" is the correct word. The monkey is not on my back; I am the monkey.

We, in the West, know Kali Ma more as the Goddess of death and destruction -- as the devourer of worlds. We forget that she has three faces: creation, protection, and destruction. We see only the end and forget the beginning. If you spend all your time running, you never realize that the world is indeed curved and that you can't run away from the beginning, you can only get to the end faster.

"So rested he neath a tum tum tree / and stood a while in thought." No wonder Buddha got off the road.

« « little fictions || 04.22.2003 @ 10:27 AM

symbolic 36: recovery through ancient ceremonies

I am in need of a regenerative ritual.

These past few weeks have knocked me out of my comfort zone. I took this last week off to coincide with my wife's spring break vacation and we had planned to get away for awhile, see the sights, and generally not think once about all the things in our lives which were piling up. Plans didn't work the way we would have liked: a recent decaffeination has left me sluggish and tired, the day job called mid-week and needed to see me, and our cat, Ernie, got squooshed by a car. It's Friday and every time I have plunked my ass in front of the keyboard, my fingers have curled up like sun-baked earthworms and refused to work.

I guess you could call this writer's block.

In the past, I just haven't felt like working and have stayed away, knowing that anything laid down during these times was going to be shit and not worth keeping. You might as well spend your time building balsa wood airplanes or learning how to bake pies. But this feels like there is a huge plug in my skull which is keeping everything from flowing. There are words in my head which want to come out, but the internal editor has lowered a grate over the entrance and quarantined my creative process. It's like part of my brain has been diagnosed with SARS and it can't play with the rest until the antibodies kick in.

But what do you use to dissolve this mental block? What antibodies are there for rescuing the sequestered portion of your brain?

I'm listening to This Morn' Omina's 7 Years of Famine right now, an explosive piece of ritual music. Part techno, part industrial, part ambient, and part rhythmic noise, 7 Years of Famine is a spiritual whirlwind of these genres along with Middle Eastern and African rhythms, everything spun into a orgiastic nocturnal ceremony. It shouldn't work, and even as I describe it, it sounds impossible. But this is what This Morn' Omina is all about: making ritual music with any element they desire. They don't cling to conventions; they laugh at genre boundaries. They are building powerful ceremonies to forgotten pantheons, striving to shake the sand from buried statues and to ring the heavens with their sound. They want to release the bound and captive energies of mankind by striping away pretense and self-imposed limitations.

I've tracked down and ordered their entire back catalog after hearing 7 Years of Famine. Sure, it is a junkie's reaction, but only because I have this desperate faith in what music will do for me. I have to. The walls are coming down, one way or another.

-----

This Morn' Omina website: http://www.hegira.be.
7 Years of Famine is out on Ant-Zen.

« « little fictions || 04.18.2003 @ 11:30 PM

symbolic 35: holes

Ernie became part of our household nearly three years ago. A dear friend of my wife was moving to Alaska and was told that the wilds of the north aren't the best place for small felines. We were living in a tiny apartment at the time with barely enough room for both of us and the stacks of books I hadn't bothered to read yet, and I wasn't quite sure what was missing from that mix was a cat. Still, we drove out to Ellensburg one Sunday afternoon to meet our friend and pick up the cat.

Ernie cried the whole way back. New car, new people, all his old faces and places gone. He was terrified. He didn't stop making noise for three days and, even then, only took it down a notch. "It's the Siamese in him," I was told, "Siamese cats are talkers." "He's orange," I said, "and this isn't talking, this is bitching." Ernie never stops talking and, three years later, I talk back. Full conversations because I know what he is saying.

When we bought a house, we made the decision to allow him to be an indoor/outdoor cat. We thought long and hard about the choice and worried that, having had his front claws taken out, that he would become the neighborhood bitch. During the first spring, he got into a tussle with the yappy dog next door and came home with bloodstains on his head. We called him "Massive Head Wound Harry" for a month. He would sit in the corner of the room and flick his freshly notched ear at us.

The first time we went away for a vacation we worried that. even with a friend who dropped by twice a day to see him, he would not deal well with us being gone. As it turns out, Ernie waited for about an hour after we left to make sure we were really gone before heading over to the other neighbor's house. He moved in there while we were away, coming back twice a day to be around when the cat-sitter dropped by in order to soak up as much pity affection as he could sweat out of her. The neighbor told us that more than once she would wake up in the morning and find Ernie on her couch. "What?" he would appear to say as she looked at him. "You forgot to let me out last night."

I don't know the people who live behind us, but I've heard them talking to Ernie when he walks the fence line and wanders into their yard to see what they are doing. He falls over when you look at him; the easier it is for you to rub him. Everyone loves Ernie because that is all he ever asked you to do.

And when he got hit by a car last night, it was the neighbors who turned out to take care of him. We came home to find out that they had taken him to the local animal hospital where the vets had to tell them that there wasn't anything that could be done for Ernie. His back was broken.

I've got to go to the animal hospital in a little while and pick up the body. Then I have to go to Home Depot to buy a shovel. Shitty reason to buy a shovel. What I have in common with my neighbors now is loss. Shitty thing to have in common with your neighbors.

I wish I could buy a shovel to fix the hole in my chest.

Miss you, Ernie.

« « little fictions || 04.11.2003 @ 11:15 AM

symbolic 34: show, no telling

I'm not inked. As a rite of passage, I burned an ankh into the back of my left hand on my 21st birthday. I used a fork and a votive candle, and it took awhile to get right. If the light is good, I can see the mark on my hand now. The scar which has no care of the light is on the underside of my left forearm. It's a two inch mark from where I sliced myself with a hand saw when I was 12 or 13. The mountain ridge running across the top of my right foot is the reminder of the surgery it took to find the toothpick which had been lost in my flipper. (Bare feet, quarter-inch pile carpeting, toothpicks: bad combination, let me tell you.) These are the marks I have on my skin.

I worry that a tattoo will fall into the same category: a reminder of rushed action. I point to my flesh and say, "Look, this is where a saw slipped." Or, "This is where I was toppled by a sliver of wood." I don't want to have that same reaction to the ink which has been inscribed into my skin. They are powerful symbols -- tattoos. They tell stories about you that don't require you to speak. They are micro bursts of information. Stamps of personality.

I want to know about your initiation. Go the forum and post me a picture of your first tattoo. Flash me with the first symbol that you had speak for you.

And later you can tell me why.

« « little fictions || 04.06.2003 @ 09:41 PM

writing

BIBLIOGRAPHY
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.

THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.

SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.

LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.