Friday 8/2/19
Hello. How are you?
It has come to my attention that this blog is kind of hard to navigate. I apologize for that. I can definitely see now how this is true. If you're trying to read a bunch of posts in a sitting, or go back through a lot of them over time, it is a pain right now, because when you hit the back button after you read an individual entry, it brings you back to the top of the overall list, and you lose your place, which is hugely annoying if you were fifty entries down or whatever. I contacted Andrea, the web designer, about a fix. What should happen is that you open each blog entry in a new window, so that you can just close the window when you're done and you won't lose your place. That's being worked on. I know it's a problem. Apologies again.
Walked three miles, climbed the Monument five times. Bit of a kerfuffle/skirmish inside the Monument today. Would make a good bit of chatter on Downtown next week. Why would you wish to hurl verbal invective at the C-Dawg when he politely asks you if he might pass? I guess they don't have means of knowing, right then and there, that their verbal attack is not going to pan out the way they hoped. You're probably going up against the wrong person for that. And then why would you attempt to body check the C-Dawg as he passed again, thus giving him the opportunity--and being able to call it self-defense--of absolutely laying you out with his shoulder, and putting you on your ample rear end before you know what hit you? Ah, some people. What are you going to do? Anyway. Planning what I'll discuss in the main; I'll talk about the debut albums by the Stone Roses and Joy Division, Robinson Crusoe and the nutso sequel (RC returns to England, marries, then says to his wife, "Sorry, baby girl! I miss my island! RC out!" and sets off again, island-bound, with Friday, who gets assassinated, and ultimately ends up in Russia), which also came out 300 years ago; and the film D.O.A. from 1949, with a detour--noir pun!--into Ida Lupino's The Bigamist, which also stars Edmond O'Brien.
I gave a lot of myself today--finished "Staycation." Or, rather, it's in manuscript. I'm sitting here in my post-workout sweat working on it still, combing through. That will still take a bit of doing. But to roll off of "Fitty" and hit another story that is at the same level, and that, to the same degree, the same bloody degree, weaves itself into the societal fabric of right now, articulating things in ways that no one has been able to, is both awesome and maddening, because these people are not just going to cut off their noses to spite their faces; they're going to gouge out their eyes, chop away their ears, slices their nostrils, melt their lips, because it is that important to them to keep this from the world, to not let themselves look good, make money, bolster their brand, put themselves ahead, if it includes putting me ahead. At some point, "Fitty" will be discussed before lawmakers. It's a story to save lives. And "Staycation" is as good, it's main character is a person with a job that no one is tackling in fiction right now, no one could, and no one could portray in this light, which is a perfectly valid and accurate light with this character and this family.
You give so much of your emotion to the story, to the characters, to this art that can live forever, and that is a sacrifice you, the artist, make; and you can get rewarded for that, with plaudits, money, recognition, a lifestyle; but there is a second kind of giving right now, for me, without the rewards following from the first kind, so that it's a double-giving, and that is doing this while realizing that it's going to be held back right now. You're just doing it with the faith, or the faith you try to have, that its time is going to come, hopefully while you are still young, and can do so much more in following. But to create it, to watch what is going to happen to it happen to it, to share it with people you know who are going to be floored, again, like every time, by it, who will know what it is, who will feel angry themselves, and awful, and depressed, and rip shit, and sad, and gutted, for you and for the world, that people are trying to stand between this work and the world. They'll say that the time is coming. You will hope they are correct. Even if they are correct, you don't know that for sure, and you still have to deal with the pain and frustration of that suppression born of hate, fear, envy, discrimination, as a corrupt a system as there has ever been, anywhere, period, a system that stands against truth, beauty, equity, salubrity, entertainment, human nature and human causes. But one day, on one single day, with one single thing, it can all change. So you try to keep going, and you keep creating work that leaves no doubt as to what it is, and can, and will, do.
Susan invited me to Rhode Island again, but I can't go. I need to stop being lazy and a coward and fight. I need to get stronger, and work harder. You are here to change the world to the good more than anyone has, and you are not losing to these people. Figure it out. Susan and Emma went to Susan's parents' house today. Emma texted me and told me her grandparents love me. I have been unofficially adopted as unconventional grandson--I think there is more than one meaning there--and back in Boston with things I've been officially invited for Christmas. I will probably be alone on Christmas, unless things have changed by then. I am serious--they could literally change any day. But if not, the pain is just too great. My love of the day and season, and what it was, and what I want it to be again, and to be as something even better, is too great. I have not spoken a word to anyone on Christmas since I was in my house with Molly, in 2011.
When I climb the Monument, I think of her, not with any less or with greater focus than I thought of her when she put her intricate, detailed, heartlessly engineered, worse than Gone Girl plan of evil into motion in 2012. I think of that memoir, about how I lived through what I managed to live through, what was surgically, sadistically done; just like I think of a different memoir I will write when I have the power to put it out, that exposes every last level of publishing and how it really works, or, "worked," as the landscape may be entirely different then, because I have helped make it so; I think of when I am finally free and I have my platform, I think of what the world is going to know, about so many things, as it is met with and embraces so many works of art. And the world is going to know the full, singular, hardly believable--save that it happened--story of what that creature did, which is up there, or down there, in the annals of betrayal, abuse.
I bide my time, I work, I stay strong. But I never forget, my focus is always what it needs to be--which is on many things, at the same time, because it can be thus, with the nature of my mind, and my focus and determination and my principles--and I await my time, which I will be more than ready for; I will be in full motion before the report of the starting pistol is complete. Someone else would still be in the starter's block; I'll be halfway down the road by then, with my enormous, unique body of work with me, and my story, too, of what I fought through, what I endured, the responsible parties, what I became, what I did to reach the people I always tried to have the faith I would reach, no matter how extreme my suffering became. I am New Job. Now we just need to get to the second half of the equation. The plagues, the taking, the suffering, the constant pain, the beseeching of God as to why this is all being done, what is the point, all of that, has all been executed in, if not full, pretty damn close to full; now it's time for the good things. Unlike Job, I have so much to give the world. Job had faith. I have had faith. I have a lot more than faith, too.
If something that should happen with "Fitty" happens with "Fitty," that is, if some semblance of what is right and just happens, if the first big thing happens with the story, I am going to take Emma and Susan out to celebrate. What will this entail? It will entail Pizzeria Regina and the Boston Ballet. But it has to be something big, and also appropriately remunerative, the kind of thing that should be happening as the first part of the story's journey into the world, homes, minds, lives, conversations, debates, dialogues, the culture, society, history.
I saw that a young Kennedy overdosed at that mansion they have in Hyannis. My sister died of a heroin overdose. There is only piece of advice when it comes to heroin. I gave it to Emma. Never do it once. If you do it once, you will not be able to stop, and you will die. That's going to be your outcome. That's pretty much guaranteed to be your outcome. It's not something you'll try and step away from. You will not be able to. To do it once, is to chose to die that way. The only way to survive heroin is to not do it once.
And I will sign off with this. I am still sweating from my workout. I need to shower now. I am touching up "Staycation." This was one of the results of that. Compare it to anything out there. Do me the favor and compare it. Let's compete. Let's have the best story win, always. Compete against me. Compete against me fairly. Bring your best, and I'll bring mine. Because this is what I'm coming with.
***
“Walt is going to flip when he sees this,” she had said when she unwrapped the record player. Duncan wondered if she was making a record-based pun. She set the clippers down. Turned up the volume on the Magic Mushrooms’ “It’s a Happening,” a favorite of the boy and the girl. The music slowed, halted, and a voice on the track, coated in echo, like Lennon’s on “Come Together,” sounding quite determined, cabalistic, commanded, “Spray the weed!” as if leading its charges into pesticidal battle, the feedback-soaked clangor resuming again, boy and girl now laughing.
He heard the radio behind him, voices crackling like he was on a stage, fuzzy cloudbursts of recitative emanating from a foldback monitor. They went in and out. He thought of strokes. Rhythms. Brea imploring him for what she said was one last time, then one last time after that—the trickster—and again, to roll back over, position himself once more. “We have started a life, I think,” she had said, after, his chest still heaving.
“You can’t tell.”
“You can tell. I think you can tell. Somebody has earned their Domino’s tonight. Stud…”
“We have…we have a potential shooter. East exit, Carplan High. Facing Granderson Ave.” Static. The rhythm. “Ambulance. Back-up.”
The “ambu” part got clipped, but the “lance” portion perforated the air, a bodkin stabbing through a bedsheet, a comforter, a duvet of oxygen. He thought about how a person says words differently even when they are the exact same sounds and letters after a portion that preceded them has gone missing.
“Suspect. Taking aim. Holding. We are holding fire. Request order.”
Duncan lowered his service revolver. He stepped towards the boy. The words had been in his head for a while. He had never said them.
“When you’re through it, it will be worth it.” Some voices felt like fingers, some voices felt like thumbs. The thumb voice, he thought.
Get out of there. Dunc. Implorations. Why do they always seem to come too late? The heart wants what the heart—
The boy brought the gun level with the center of his chest, which made it level with Duncan’s chest.
“Spray him,” came the command from back at the line, where the Walkies had gone silent.
“No. No.” He turned his back on the boy, repeated. “No. There is nothing like that going to happen here.” He forgot his training. He remembered Brea. Catching his breath. “Do you really think you can really tell?”
“Yes, I really think I can really tell.”
He had pondered this. It didn’t seem likely. Then again—
His breath more even now, as it had been then, sheets wadded, rolled, curved into bed-topping tubular forms. They always fucked the linen into horseshoe patterns. What is sweat, what is seed. What is drool? All goes to broth. Some call it life, some call it Wednesday. Pivoting once more, full turn. The men who were with him, now at his back. The boy closer, full view. The boy no longer alone. Joined.
The word that he tried to say sounded like “oh,” but that was because it, too, had been clipped. Lanced like ambulance. He tried again.
“Coe.”
“Daddy. Please don’t hurt him.”
The static voices on the Walkies resumed, the voices at his back resumed.
Crackling, choric.
“Different situation now,” he heard one of them say.
