Talk

Has it been so long?

Ten days gone between lovers is the end of a tryst, so thank God we're merely friends--Writer and reader; tongue and ears, the oldest relation in history, or so this teller would have you hear.

I am here to comfort your lonely mind, sit and palaver. I don't know how many words I have left today, or much of them you'd like to hear, but maybe we'll surprise each other.

I'm so tired. You should know this, before we continue. Lest my weary words be judged by the lonely likes of you.

I can't believe it's almost November. This has been the most important year in my life since I was born. And it's almost over.

why do we restart on January? Did the world start on January? I'm sorry--I don't want this to become a rhetorical question fest. Though I suppose the T-shirts would look good.

Rhetorical Question fest!
October 28th 2009
...Where You There?
(Don't answer)

I gave up comedy this year, at least for a little while. I say "gave up" because I never really went after it. I piddled around on a keyboard and shot some videos with my friends. It was never my intention to be a comedian. not until I was making my friends laugh, and I found myself in the middle of a comedy group. getting attention from people. Then, yes, I thought, maybe I want to be a comedian.

But I gave it up, after a year. It wasn't fulfilling, and--they say, life's too short, but their wrong, it's much too much too long.--I couldn't waste any more time not spending that long life pursuing the things which I loved. Dreams, I suppose we'll call them. But I don't really want to get all Lisa Frank, here.

I'm tired, so I'm typing. It feels good. It feels like I'm swimming, but kind of drunk, do you know that feeling?

--That's why I married Sarah, I realized life was happening, and I couldn't bear to have it happen without her any longer. That's why I quit comedy too..I wanted to be a writer...and life is so short...so long....Why wouldn't I want to spend the rest of my days with this girl and a handful of stories? Why put effort towards anything else?

Here we are, back at Rhetorical Fest.

So I spent this year turning 25, marrying Sarah, and writing novels. I don't know how I would have gotten as far as I have without marrying Sarah first, come to think of it. Everything happened this year in just the right order. It almost killed me, but maybe I was only drowning so the flames wouldn't get me, I dunno.

I've been sick for like three months now, it actually slowed me down. I'd been on overdrive since--well, I don't know. Since I met Sarah, maybe? Perhaps she was that missing thing--the puzzle piece I needed to see the rest of the picture. I certainly think so. And once I saw the picture...

Everything else just sort of fell apart. All the wrong directions were suddenly fallen and overgrown. Once bright paths of glittering sugar, now grown foul and repulsive. There was a new path, an old one I'd been glancing at through the trees. Mana from heaven and gingerbread crumbs--helpful signs with funny slogans.

I never felt lost. After I met Sarah. I guess that's what all these words are pushing toward.

I had no idea, but then again, I'm tired.
Just swimming drunk in a pool of words.
Because it's fun.


-mE.


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Cold Water

And so now I realize why I haven't written as steadfastedly as I used to, why I haven't felt much like going out, and Why I add the suffix -edly to various words without thinking.

I have The mono.

I have spent the majority of the majority of this past week upon a couch of illness, half asleep in a gondola on the most boring river of Hades.

I cannot write. I have tried. In evidence I present to you that last paragraph, or, alternately, this blog entry which was started--no joke,--nine hours ago.

I do have ideas though, little fireworks which fly up into the sky, brilliant and bright...only to flare behind clouds of rumbling and impenetrable darkness.

But I have a Moleskine notebook with me, and I wrote some of them down with a maniacal and wavering Sanskrit. Jotting them down like rare and confusing words of prophecy.

I also drew pictures.

-mE!

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An Update From The Front Lines

I just woke up, Sarah just fell asleep.

It's six O'clock on our four month anniversary. The White Plague of Illness has spread across our lands like waves of sea foam. It seems now, that I must have been sick for almost two months. The fever rising and falling, like the tide of some damnable ocean.

Let's see, I have been meaning to write for some time.

I'm still in the middle of the same chapter I was a month ago. A miserable place bereft of kindness or sunlight. I tried to explain it to Sarah just last night: It feels as though I have "leveled up", as a Reader and Writer. That I have reached a new standard height of abilities. Words look different to me now, sentences seem constructed in a deeper and yet simpler fashion than I ever noticed before.

I was reading The Two Towers, and it felt as though, only a week before, chapters which were obviously delicious sticks of clear radish are now--quite obviously!--Building materials which I have been tearing apart and mashing for no specific reason but gluttony.

I wonder if such a Fraggle-lish metaphor makes sense to you; what I'm trying to say is...whatever sort of reader/writer person I was before, I am that much better, seemingly overnight, and it has effected my work. In a good way; yes, of course. But it has slowed me down.

Such is the way of learning, I suppose...

That, and the aforementioned mystery illness which climbs through my guts and lungs as if it were a Prince and my body were Persia.

***

A few weeks ago, I was asked by a friend to write a comic for her to draw. Two days ago it was Sunday, and I decided to sit down and Write It. It is the first comic I have written since last February, and so it was somewhat nervously that I finished the thing and sent it off for the judgment of another.
Later, as we drove around town on a Oh My Gosh We're Married This is Awesome date, Sarah read me aloud (for I was the one driving) an email from the artist telling me that she loved it. which was, a very huge relief.

She sent it to the publisher, and I wondered what would happen next. After all, if he said yes, I would almost and probably assuredly have written a real, living, breathing comic.

The next morning the publisher agreed to publish it, and so now the artist (Weshoyot Alvitre) and I have a comic which will be featured in some unknown-to-me-as-of-yet anthology.

Yes, it is exciting.

-mE.

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On a Train

Oh God.

Where were we? It doesn't matter, I suppose. It's been days, and in future-internet-skip time that's literal ages.

Do you our previous correspondence? Our adventures together? They are much the same. All that's changed is everything. Perhaps a new setting for this, my latest letter to you?

A train, I think. yes. Let's be traveling on a train. There is a window behind us, and I think something must be wrong with the train, or the world, or the rate that we're travelling across it. Sometimes it seems like Spring, other times I fear the snow will kill us all. We've only been on the train a few minutes, yet the seasons have changed so quickly. I must have spent years looking out this window.

A bottle of something, perhaps?

The waiter is dark, and unsettling. His mustache is nothing less then vile, and his smile is sinister. He holds a chain, and along the chain are various bottles.

"I'll have the typo champagne" I tell him.

"That's champsne, Sir." he says.

"Yes--of course." I reply, "and my friend here will have the..." (at this point, I motion toward you, and you say:

"I'll have the umm, er--uh ________"

"excellent choice," he sneers, and it seems as if he's making fun of you.

I shoot you a glance and you respond with a smile. The waiter pours out my champagne, (a glass of bubbling water and various misspelled letters) and then produces a dusty glass and sets it before you.

"And for you, of course..." he says, pouring out a full glass of ________ , and not bothering to wipe the dust out of the glass, as is the custom of such a choice in beverage.

As the waiter leaves, we smile and nod, pretending to clink our glasses in a cheer. I stare at the words floating in my champagne, and give your glass a quick look of envy. As I sip, the bubbles tingle, the words catch and scratch in my throat. You laugh and tell me typos are never god on the palate. I smile.

"Their my signature."

Many seasons have passed the window by now, and I sigh and put down my glass, though to be true, I don't know why I sighed. It's one of those social germs you catch and show off like a compulsive tic, like a talent in a competition no one's really judging.

"I have news." I tell you, and you look interested, raising your eyebrows in your own show of social talent. "I have decided not to serialize my serialized novel."

You nod your head, wondering if this is going to be boring.

"I'm going to finish it and get it published...its just grown so much, and I really like it--and I just think I should try and get it published." You nod again, and say something nice. "...I'm on part four right now," I add, as if somehow this is important to my decision. "...it gets crazy."

You smile and say "cool."

I take one last sip as I stare out the window. The sharp edge of typos hit my lips as Spring blossoms in green grass and rainbow everything. By the time I swallow the first snows are erasing everything.

-mE.

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Upon a White Horse

Small scraps and pieces of writing were accomplished. Half formed sculptures of sentences, bereft of grammar and structure now stand frozen along blank pages of manila snow. They are landmarks, twisted screaming statues pointing me in the right direction.

The sickness had spread from my limbs to my head, where it nestled in like a wyrm in a treasure horde. Bathing itself on a heap of golden thoughts. While the sickness held my thoughts captive--pouring my greatest collection of jewels into its mouth and spitting them back out like bathwater--I laid upon the couch, wondering what life was like for the healthy.

I rode a horse of white flakes, and heard tell his name was Pox. Together we callivanted (his term, not my own, I assure you) throughout the house. From room to room. Breathing out the spores which attacked us, before sucking them back in with a decaying hiss. I remember--vaguely--lying upon the bed, stroking the hair as it felt out of his neck in great clumps.

"we must depart" he whispered. His eyes rheumy with pink scabs.

"Why?"

"Into the living room. Quick" he hissed, "the sickness is spreading!"

Together we walked along the fields of my home. Passing unfamiliar walls and decor. A slow clip and clop from beneath me as the horse wheezed and whinnied. The stillness of the once familiar abode was broken only by the horse.

"These are the lands of Plague.." he would say aloud, as if talking to himself.

***

I feel better, today. Slightly. I have moments of life like tenacity.

A new idea was born today, a new story--well, stories. I created something with thoughts, and pen, and paper that I had never thought of before; and it astounded me.

I think it will require a lot of research, for instance: I don't know a damn thing about the Industrial revolution. And how if effected Russia.

But I do know this, I haven't been this excited about an idea in...well, since my last one. That's it. My mind is spent, I shall see you in better days, in better health.

-mE.

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