Bye, Blogspot!

This might be my last blog using this site. I'll be honest. I love blogging, but don't like blogspot and never really have. I've made numerous attempts over my eight year history with it to search other blogs, search for readers, promote my own writing, all to no avail. The tools are confusing and while admittedly coming up short in the marketing skills, I think it's just a dead end. The highlight of this blog's history was the comment on the 'Trees Falling on a Writer' entry. To anonymous, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Simple things like that cause me to WANT to write on this in the first place.

I will continue blogging though (just so anonymous doesn't think I'm heading off to kill myself or something). It is the following URL:

irritablepoet.wordpress.com

My wife uses Wordpress. I was also told by sources at both a writing conference and in several guides that Wordpress is the way to go. Even at the first gander, it's easier to find others blogs and to navigate. Eventually, I'd like to start my own website for stories (I don't write for profit???), especially the more mature ones because I've no doubt they would stir controversy. That being said, I'm going to do a run-through of any blogs on here I like enough to transfer over and pass them off as a modern one.

So to all who have read or not over the years, thank you. If you're out there, do visit the new website or comment on this entry. I'll receive it. Blessings.

Andy

Fembots!

     Internet trolls can kiss the foulest parts of my body. Self-appointed critics are as the infected toe I had in seventh grade which resulted in permanent nail removal. Online bullies can drive head-first into a ditch and be sprayed by a passing skunk as they make sense of the situation. Let me be clear: the world is filled with critics and I proactively ignore them, especially online commenting and such. Once in a while, though, something catches and clings to me.

     I enjoy movie culture, so I browse reviews and make an attempt to garner serious critiques for a good range of perspective. IMDB is an excellent website with much to offer, including useful templates for writers when it comes to making effective taglines and brief descriptions of a work. Needless to say, the forums are always interesting. I occasionally put a thought, usually about a performance or something humorous and pointless. But recently, I browsed the board of a decent indie film which was on one of the three clear channels I have at my house. I have only three channels. Did I mention that?

     I'll refrain from mentioning the movie title or full comment in reference. The movie was about the lives of several women and their circumstances, most of them somewhat tragic: a divorcee single mom and her son growing up, new love versus old, a lover dying of cancer, etc. The director/writer of the movie was a man. The board commentator was presumably female. Whatever. But the comment was directed toward the fact that a male attempted to write a story centered on female lives. The commentator took issue with this, posing the question ‘How could a man possibly do a film about women?’ While this may be considered a fair question, I consider it a hypocritical and, quite frankly, offensive question.

     Initially, I was unaware of a male having directed it and assumed it was a woman’s movie made by women for women. Therefore, I was surprised and impressed because the topics were treated with sensitivity, dialogue was believable, and the actors seemed to respect their roles. Like Katherine Bigelow who directed films like Point Break and The Hurt Locker, I found it befitting that a female attempted to give fresh perspective in filmmaking for a work directed toward her opposing demographic (violence and war = MEN!). It takes guts and role-playing and heavy attention to detail to pull this off, and directors like these are the creative types I look up to and aspire to be. Personally, I eschew a lot of testosterone and gravitate toward romance when I write, romance being a field DOMINATED by women. I also love the standard formula of boy meets girl, conflict arises, conflict is overcome, and couple lives happily ever after. But in this industry, men are a bit of bacon in a fine bowl of grits. If you don’t like bacon in grits, I’m not sure you should continue reading because it’s difficult for me to respect you as a person. For a Jewish person, substitute turkey bacon.

     The attitude of this commentator, I hope, represents a minority. Regardless, the thought of such a wing of feminists espousing this view disturbs me. If you proclaim feminism, fine. I assume it means you’re for equality. I’m for equality, too. I’m all for women like Katherine Bigelow making damn, damn good movies like Point Break and The Hurt Locker without abandon that honestly, are so much better than so many other films. I have a little girl and would get all emotional if years down the road she says, “Daddy, I want to make a Terminator meets Robocop movie a reality!” (Actually, I’d have a crying fit). I’m all for it, like I’m for the two women who, as of this writing, just finished the Army Ranger program and could be potentially gutting some ISIS bastards and choking them with their own entrails in the desert this year. So when a female comes to me screaming about my newly published romance novel about a woman as the central character, and the same character happens to be, say…a rape victim, and says how dare I attempt to enter the perspective of a female and write about it while claiming equality for all...it gets personal. Judge the work based on its merit, not the reproductive organ of its creator. That's the way it works, sister. Part of the challenge in reaching across the great societal divides, be it different race, gender, faiths, orientations, whatever, is to enter the opposing perspective. This doesn’t mean role-play (God help us if it does). It does mean we empathize with our fellow man when needs be. Study their history. Befriend them. Relate. Talk. Listen. Have them listen back. Interact. Connect. I daresay become friends. That’s where it begins. So to this young lady having a problem with a man tackling a film about women as the central focus, let me iterate these points…

     : Consider the male director who chose to tackle the subject of women’s lives when he could’ve stuck to violence, sex, or robots from the future.

     : Consider the producers who felt it prudent to finance and distribute the film, obviously feeling the subject was worthy.

     : Consider the actors (all famous women) who signed on for it.

     : Consider the sound of castigating a man writing stories about women while lavishing praise on a woman writing stories about men (which I’m sure you do).

     : Be objective. Was the film good? Were the characters believable? What was offensive? As a man, I truly believed this was a WOMAN behind the scenes making the film. It fooled me, and I’m perceptive to this sort.

     At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a person resorting to writing on IMDB boards or worse, writing this blog, then you’ve no cause to worry. It’s not like people care. Otherwise, we’d be getting paid. So let’s just quiet ourselves and enjoy a damned movie.

Cemetery Reflections

     The cemetery was a scary place as a child.

     Tombstones were symbols of what could never be undone. For a child, they were little more than reminders of the reality of the bogeyman, staring back in the shape of a grey rectangle or pentagon. Pastor Frank used to talk about it a lot at the end of service, usually as he opened the altar for repentance. If we were to die on the way home, he said, would we be ready for Heaven? Because once we were in the cemetery, we’d be there forever and ever and ever and ever. A million years was nothing because in a million years and then some, we’d still be in that plot off Highway 41.

     A time or two, I went to the altar. That’s not true. I went lots of times. The reasons weren’t always the same. Sometimes, it was for lies told at school or being disrespectful to authority. Most of the time, I prayed for my family. My dad never went to church. He liked beer and screamed in a deafening voice about so many stupid, ridiculous things. Still, I prayed for him. I prayed for my siblings. I prayed for my mom in her predicament with a man who could shake paint on walls with his damned tenor. All the time, people watched me kneel at that altar. After braving the aisle between two hundred souls on either side, all perched in communion like parakeets in traditional suits, I prayed while they watched. Even though the pastor said no one looked, that it was just you and the Lord, most eyes was drawn to the lanky kid with the wayward dad and bad habit of drawing cartoon puppies during worship. It’s okay, though…I watched them whenever they went to the altar, too. Every kid knows God hears altar prayers better than private prayers. I still say so.

     Still, the cemetery bore itself into mind during those altar calls. I knelt before the prayer bench, knowing I knelt at the same place newlyweds uttered vows and babies were dedicated. Pastor Frank stood nearby behind the tombstone-shaped podium.

     Come ye and repent, saith the holy banner above him. Repent. Repent. The cemetery awaits. The cemetery is a scary place.

     In the fifteen mile-trip to church, we passed several cemeteries. There was Spring Hill Cemetery about a mile from our house where the dominant clans of Dividing Ridge Road were laid to rest, including members of my own family. There was the big cemetery by the church. Mr. Bill, the one who shot himself when I was five, was there. Chad was there. Pastor Frank said to be ready, though, regardless of the cemetery which held us one day, we had to go.

                                                                             *

     Cemeteries became less scary.

     At sixteen, me and my younger brother’s friend Chad died in a car accident. Prom night, he took a curve too fast. Sixteen years old. It was the first time I encountered death by somebody I knew well. I remember how different his face looked in the coffin, too. It wasn’t like old people I’d seen in their coffins at distant relatives’ funerals, where they always looked familiar, in spite of a plasticizing of the skin. Seeing Chad, though, was like seeing the woods in my backyard in the summer before I went to bed and then waking up to see winter time. He was a transfigured being and it ached my guts into jelly. It still does. I went out to the cemetery to see him a lot. I still do. Most people don’t know that. The cemetery was a less scary place after Chad died, though, since someone I knew well was there.

*

     Cemeteries became familiar.

     More people I knew went there. Among them was my friend Tiffany, who shot herself while I was away in the Army. There were all kinds of people buried there. There were old, old people who lived to be a hundred; there were babies who never saw it past a day, an hour even; there were people my age; there were veterans who served in every foreign war since the nineteenth century; there were people married for seventy years and people who were virgins. There were people who had a verse or poem engraved and those whose life was defined by their name and two dates. I was always saddened by the withholding of information, the barer tombstones.

     I found great solitude in cemeteries, too. Whether I knew the burieds or not, I enjoyed the unfamiliarity of names and mysterious ages to which they bore witness. Such things seemed unfair to me. State laws should require a paragraph for every soul laid to rest, and they damn well should considering the cost of dying. Regardless, it’s impossible to gauge the measure of a buried’s existence on account of a fancy etching, so being a little creative is required.

     In the cemetery, give the dead the benefit of the doubt, I say. There is more mystery beneath graveyard acreage than a library. Willard Buchanan* (1957 – 2006) may have been a wife-beating drunk half his life, or very well have chronicled the War in Iraq before dying of lung cancer. Janie McDoogan* (1923 – 1943) may have been a miserable lassie who ran away and joined a brothel in Memphis, or died of a broken heart after learning her husband was killed fighting Rommel in North Africa. Joseph Rollins* (1981 – 2013) may have been in a car wreck, died of leukemia, or shot himself. Cemeteries are where the undignified are given a plaque in the imagination of the passersby, and where the accomplished are debased to the level of the meth-head. A journey through the rows of Gethsemane or the mausoleum is one through the library of the unwritten.

*

     The cemetery became a place of discovery.

     I’ll never forget when I was visiting my friend Tiffany to be inspired to write a poem about her on the anniversary of her death when a few tombstones down, I recognized a name. It was a boy named Dennis I’d known since I was a kid. He’d been dead for nine months. The grass seedlings over his grave were still fresh in their sprouts and the ground even seemed soft. I left that day, feeling I owed him a poem. It wasn’t the only time, finding out one was dead long after the matter. Among other friends waiting for a poem of remembrance are Amanda, Shawn, Jessica, Justin, and Jason…and those are just the ones from high school, mind you. Not a social media update, a call, or an email. To visit one years after the matter is offensive. I guess the lesson was that even in dying, the living have a propensity to not give a rat’s ass.

*

     The cemetery became the place of listening.

     I go to the cemetery and talk to my loved ones. While they know nothing, this is not to say they are incapable of listening. Perhaps Ecclesiastes 9:5 (“…the dead know nothing.”) has reciprocal meaning, and the only reason they know nothing is because their world is different. Perhaps they’re just better listeners. Needless to say, it’s quiet there and I go there because I like the quiet more with each passing year. I hear things there I can nowhere else: the grass, the breeze even if there isn’t one touching me, and the passage of time. I go there because I’m rendered deaf in a world where the noise hurts. Even when a eulogy is being delivered under the tent at a funeral, the surrounding tombstones seem to glare at those gathered to get on with it and get out. I go there because the dead, even though they know nothing, still listen. They listen, in all their deference, to he who strolls above them, as long as he’s minding the grass where he steps.

*Names and dates are made up

SEX: A Sunday blog

     The writer’s bag of goodies: grammatical foundation, originality, character development, healthy protagonist/antagonist balance, plot advancement, plot device, narrative, dialogue, plausibility, sex.

      

    Sex.

    I recently acquired a used book from a going-out-of-business mom and pop shop for a $1, titled Best American Short Stories – 1998. It caught my eye because first, the author selection was diverse and two, it was edited by Garrison Keillor. The short story has been an evasive critter for me ever since I took a creative writing course in college. They’re one of those things I can’t explain, other than to say I either enjoyed reading it or did not and why I did or why I didn’t enjoy reading it. In writing short stories, however, I am not alone when I conclude they can be a greater challenge than novel-writing since the author is attempting to compress as much in a few pages as others do for hundreds. Many instructors and writers I’ve heard reiterate this point. So the reason I bring this up and cite this particular book is one reason…why does every damn story have to have some ubiquitous reference to sex? I’m six stories in the twenty story compilation and all of them (except for one, which still had an adultery reference) have contained sexual intercourse as a theme.

          

     Sex is common in modern and ancient literature, transcending cultures with some exceptions. It’s mentioned in mythology, the Kama Sutra, the Bible, Native American folklore, medieval literature, and almost every genre put out in the last three centuries. Even during times of censorship, wily authors found a way to use metaphor when referring to the exchange of bodily fluids. This makes sense because, like violence or death, sex is as integrated into the human experience as food. We do it for both pleasure and survival. My question is, though, in something like a short story, is it not plausible to simply make a point without requiring intercourse between two bodies being mentioned? Are there not enough tangents on the slope of creative output to write a story without it? Can an erotic author write a short story about a bank robbery without sex?

          

     The answer to all three is an emphatic ‘yes.’

     

     I don’t care about sex being in the story. Within context, sex away. I DO care about it being in every one of them. Sure, I like a good bump scene as good as any hot-blooded, mid-thirties male who has to ask his wife on a daily basis if he’s still attractive to her. But I’m not reading literotica or ‘Where the Britches End.’ I’m reading literary fiction.

          

     Perhaps my random book choice was a poor example. Besides, I’m not even halfway through. Regardless, the first story involved three girls talking about sex; the second contained a girl getting molested by her father; the third involved extramarital affairs; the fourth lacked it as a theme, but still did not abstain from childhood hormones or wandering adult eyes; the fifth involved an elderly Indian man banging a slutty neighbor; the sixth involved a depressed lesbian who even banged her friend for comfort. Again, perhaps my book was a bad example, perhaps it was something else.

          

     It was published in 1998, after all, and contained selections from U.S. and Canadian publications. Maybe the context of the year means everything. The Clinton-Lewinsky affair was bursting the news apart, so sex was everywhere. The sitcom Friends (which I like) was glamorizing the use of hormonal surge into millions of American homes by way of six beautiful people who seemed to never suffer the consequences. Jerry Springer, albeit a poor example, was a preview of the raucous interest in society’s bottom dwellers which would come to dominate half of shock-TV in basic cable outlets which devolves to the present day. Does the year matter? Yes, no, maybe…I don’t think I give much of a shit.

          

     Another point I’m loathe to consider: the guest editor himself. I love Garrison Keillor. Ever since I discovered the brain tingles his voice triggered inside of me when listening to his Sunday afternoon rebroadcasts of Prairie Home Companion, I’ve been a fan, fifteen years and counting. I love the sketches and music: Guy Noire, Lives of the Cowboys, Rhubarb Pie, Coffee, News from Lake Wobegan…the man’s preservation of Midwest humor and penchant for giving homage to his Lutheran-Norwegian culture makes him a folk hero. But I’ve also read his books and the differences between his family-theme broadcasts cannot go unmentioned. He really seems to have an appreciation for sexuality in his books, especially the action between older folks. This is understandable, considering he’s in his seventies and is still married with children. He has that right. So as the editor of the particular compilation in question, does Mr. Keillor simply prefer this medium? Did he even select them? I don’t know and if I ever get to meet him, I’ll never pose the question. As I said, the man’s a genius.

          The subject of sex in literature dwarfs any attempt to blog, being more fit for the nonfiction shelves and reference sections for any real attempt to probe. I’ve little trust for cultural historians these days, too, as many can’t refrain from turning the subject at hand into their own tasteless critique of Judeo-Christian culture’s attempt to repress every mention of the word penis or vagina. Who the hell is trying to oppress you? Where is it illegal to buy literature about sex these days? It’s available to ten-year olds over the internet now! To those writers, get the hell over your own insecurities and write about the subject at hand and don’t worry about Judeo-Christian boogeyman’s opinion anymore. We live in a secularist nation. The wind is at your back. The right faces more censorship than the left does now. And surprise...conservative bigots and rednecks and Bible-thumpers and gun-lovers have sex, too. And surprise…they enjoy it.

          

     Since I tire already, I’ll conclude with this: I enjoy a diversity of the human experience in the literature I both read and write. I write about sex, too. My unpublished manuscripts contain difficult subject matter, and sex is not neglected (the balance between gratuitousness and context is for another day). I realize, should I desire a squeaky clean book then to check out books in the squeaky clean section. I don’t want the squeaky-clean section. I like books with honesty and truth, free from whitewash and free from censorship. I only wonder if I’ve been under a rock for so long, as I’ve devoted myself to the classics for several years in attempts to note the common appeal which made them classic, that I missed that evolution in literature. But in the genre of short story, with respect to the editors who select them, is there an industry-set ratio of sex-in-the-story in which I need to be aware?

          

     Please tell me, because there’s a heaping crap-ton of virgins in my manuscripts who are in for a rude awakening.

Beep

​“I’m here again and I don’t know why,” I say.

​The sky is still dark at ten minutes til five. It always is. Thatmakes sense in other parts of the world. Not here, though. Here,the sky is dark all the time. Sometimes when I leave, it’s still dark.

​I avoid the cigarette smoke. Nasty people. Critters. It kills you and you know it kills you. Of all directions it could go, it blows over here to where I am. I’m bitter about the cigarettes. They never helped my grandmother. She died this year. But I’m bitter about the cigarettes because it’s bad enough that I have to be here when the sky is dark. Humans were never meant to do these things, walking in darkness or breathing in smoke or blowing smoke onto other people who don’t want to breathe in the smoke.

​I’m here again and I don’t know why. My audible words are now thoughts since I’m too chicken-shit to say what I think around people. 

​Part two begins. I feel like a robot during part two. Maybe I am a robot.

​“Beep,” says the time clock. 

​It’s like the Army used to do, greeting me by my last name. This isn’t the Army. Why do they do that? I have a first name and prefer it. It’s personal. First names are important. They usethem on birth certificates, tombstones, and it’s what you’re teacher made you write on your homework. I miss school. There was a robot march there, too, but it was colorful and it smelled good, like erasers, fresh paper that looks like snow but smells like wood, and the fresh clothing smell of new backpacks. Old buildings smelled good, too. Not this one. This is an old building, but it smells like sick people, cigarettes, and stained things from the bathroom door when it opens as I pass it. I have to pass it because it lives right behind the time clock which says, “Beep.”

​Coffee is good. There is a place I go to get it after I’m greeted by the time clock. The robot march continues, but this time is splits like arteries down hard floors gathering wood dust that makes your eyes tingle. Some of us go to get coffee, others go to the bathroom, and others go to their workstations across the gauntlet of dust because that’s the whole point of the time clock saying, “Beep.” 

​Part three begins. 

​We’re machines, moving through an artery. That’s why it feels like arteries, because we’re part machine-part blood. We’re part machine because we move like them and accept command functions and need maintenance. We’re part blood because we have blood inside of us and we move in all directions like red blood cells in arteries, and because we’re disgusted by things like cigarette smoke and being up when it’s dark. My artery takes me to the coffee, because coffee is one of the best things for a robot. Coffee goes to the blood and expands the arteries of the robot.

​“Good mornin’,” says Ron, the kind one who opens the door for everybody.

​Ron is a good one. It hurts him to walk because he was hurt a long time ago by evil people who go to Hell for doing those sorts of things. Ron isn’t a robot. The hurt ones like him aren’t robots because they make you feel things, and feelings are irrelevant in robots. He never smiles when the time clock says, “Beep.”

​“Hey, what’s up!” says Tico, the man from somewhere in Pennsylvania. 

​Tico is nice. He’s a robot though, because that’s his program. For fourteen years, his CPU programs him to say, “Hey, what’s up!” Even though he’s a robot, I like Tico. There are other programs in his CPU, but I’m not allowed to know what they command. Our colors are different. Maybe that’s why. He smiles when the time clock says, “Beep.”

​ “Pray for me,” says Matthew. 

​Matthew’s a half-robot, half-blood. They’re the hardest to understand, unless you’re a half-robot, half-blood, too. He repeats things a lot, but has feelings when he says them. Sometimes he gives massages to the old women who suffer neck pain. I’ve seen Matthew sitting silently by the computer at the desk in the warehouse praying. He mixes music on laptops. I cannot say more about Matthew, because the half-robot, half-bloods are hard to read.

​I am one of them, but do not know which. It isn’t my place to know. That has always been the dilemma of coming to the factory. You receive instructions, and are free to interact along the robot lines and the arteries of all robots, bloods, and in-between; they receive theirs. They know what I am, but I do not know what they are. That doesn’t bother me, except for the ones who blow their fucking cigarette smoke across my face at the dark time of day. 

​Now I’m at my station. This is the time of day I know my place. I’m a robot.

​“Beep,” says the time clock.

​Part four begins. 

​I’m no longer a robot. I still don’t know what I am. I walk outside to my car and get in, praying it will start. Praying.Praying is a sign of the blood. Robots do not pray. My car starts, so I can get back home. I go home. My dogs say hello. I love my dogs. Love. Love is a sign of the blood, too. If robots cannot pray, there is no way they can love. My pregnant wife says hello when she gets home. I’m excited about meeting the baby when she comes. Excited. Of all things, robots do not get excited. Even more than love, excitement does not pertain to a robot. Even the ones that move fastest and get the most done, they aren’t excited. But my wife and I are excited. 

​We have dinner. It tastes delicious since I’ve been practicing good chili recipes. Delicious. That’s a good one that only bloods possess. If robots ever find out what tasting is, Hell will come to earth. Maybe Hell has come to earth and the robots really can taste. But we have dinner and watch small amounts of television or read a book. Have dinner and watch television – robots can do those things. Nothing is said during those times, and robots say nothing. Perhaps my wife and I are robots then. We make love or laugh with our dogs, maybe. Make love. Laugh. Robots don’t do those things. 

​I choose to believe at my house, I’m a blood. Still, the robot part is always there. Maybe I’m half-blood, half-robot. It hurts to think now. I’m tired because I have to get up in the dark.

​It’s time for wine. Wine helps because it resets the CPU. Wine makes me a robot because it helps the images slow. Images need to slow. All things, living or machine, need images to slow. If robots could have wine, there would be no need for bloods. But the wine is the greatest thing of all. It erases the CPU so things can start over.

​I go to sleep with some trouble. As I set my alarm, I realize there is one thing in the world that wine cannot reset.

​“Beep,” says the clock.

The Four Seasons

I am a sod of earth.
I cascade down the hill
On waves of weed and dirt.
There is no time to still.

The spring rains, they do find me.
I am filled with sweet
Chlorophyll and sunlight.
My sex is ripe with seed.

Summer comes like mortgage.
I hate its humid guts
And wish to die with mercy;
The nights, they give me some.

Foliage is manna.
Colors kiss my face
And fill me with their fluids.
Fall is best when late.

Here I find my ending.
The winter is my friend
And cold is my last lover.
It helps it all to end.

Creationists, you are!

    We have the right to create.

    Worldbuilding is as much a God-given right as questioning authority, drinking too much coffee, or saying that Walking Dead has run its course and needs resolution or cancellation. People might assume that a preposterous thing to say, worldbuilding being under fire.

    “Who said you can’t worldbuild…wait. What is worldbuild?”

    They say it through their expectations, though. From the time we received the letters E for excellent or S for satisfactory for grades, we were told to dream big. We dreamt big and made good grades. We made good grades so we could go to college. We went to college so we could earn the paper. We earned the paper so we could, hopefully, qualify for a good means of living in a good economy. If the economy was bad, then we dreamt big for naught. Many, many, many, many a child with an E-filled report card dreamt for naught.
     
    So, no, we are not encouraged to exercise our right to worldbuild. I remember worldbuilding in school. I did it through art. I would draw a cartoon cat or a cartoon dog fighting, maybe a superhero with steroid abs that looked like a ripoff between a WWF wrestler and a hulking Wolverine. In the background was the landscape, the other planet, the ship, the secret military base, or whatever ecosystem was preferable. A rainforest where there was nothing but desert sand beneath the buttress roots? Yes. So what. 

    That was wrong, though. The teacher gave me detention for worldbuilding once. Once, I had to take it home and have it signed to show my mom I was worldbuilding and not paying attention.

    “Pay attention.” The mantra of the correct.

    Eventually, drawing evolved into musical expression. Guitar worked well. It was portable, light, aesthetically pleasing like a coffee table without the weight and with magic flowing out of its lacquered surface. The sounds of nineties alternative and hard rock allowed worldbuilding to be translated to six-note polyphonies or searing melodies with trills and bends and flutters (if you had a whammy bar). If one truly desired to worldbuild, you joined a band.

    That, too, was for naught. Since digressing from this writing to expound on the things teachers say and think about high school kids who want to be in bands is a waste of good space, I’ll renege. Suffice it to say, it was frowned upon more than the doodling.

    We are therefore forced to write. We are forced to something. Worldbuilding is innate, like the way a baby’s mouth cleaves to the mother’s teat like a suckerfish (sorry…I’m a new dad and find it fascinating). Our brains, creative or dulled like a pencil, build a world that exists within and without. We don't have to be creative to create. A kid on a farmhouse where yearly rotations of corn, soy, and alfalfa grass are the way of life is able to see himself waking up one morning with a pain in his gut, before realizing he is turning into a sizeable monster who leaves the farm, rampages through the school, tossing busses like toys, flinging bullies a mile away into the woods, wrecking the four walls, making his teachers piss themselves and flee, and getting the girl he likes to kiss him in front of all his friends. A girl who lives in an apartment with her single mom in the inner city projects where her brother was shot walking home one time can establish herself as the no-bullshit heroine who beats up men who beat women, becomes one of the first female Army Rangers, becomes a fighter pilot, goes to war, comes back, has a family or none, and buys her mom a house and owns a dog. Maybe there’s a girl or boy who want to just build a world where it’s still okay to get married young – and stay that way – and have kids and still make love at sixty. Maybe there's some who grow old just to die alone and love it every inch of the way. Maybe there’s even a kid who doesn’t give a hamster’s ass about those things and is content to just think about worldbuilding without being told it’s futile, fruitless, dumb, a waste of time and energy, doesn’t pay the bills, isn’t good for culture, isn’t politically correct, doesn’t line up with twentieth century thinking, or isn’t practical to math or science like it is to the Chinese who are kicking our occidental asses.

    Still, we are forced to reply to such mean-spirited rebukes coming from the same world which told us to dream big from the beginning. We write because English failed us in a great irony, teaching us grammatical posture but telling us to work hard for that STEM scholarship. We found difficulty explaining why we'd rather be imagining life on another earthlike planet, since this one has politicians, climate change, and ISIS roaming its scabbed surface. I write now, not because I planned on doing it from the time I was young, but because I’ve been rerouted to do it in a way beyond my control. I like it, true; but like a circuit board of misguided data, I’m putting things into story form because the stories are not welcome in the capacitors which enabled it in the first place.

    Stories are fantasy. Fantasy isn’t real. That which isn’t real is speculative. Speculation can be dangerous. Sure, it can be dangerous. But it can be fun when allowed to entertain.  

    Let there be a constitutional amendment to create. The right to free expression, as written, is not what it seems. In this progressive age, the freedom of expression means the right to be offended by every damned thing that’s uttered from an opposing party’s talking point. It means politics. It means religion. It does not mean real expression. It may as well be modified to mean, ‘in the absence of offenses…be offended by absence!’

    Let it spell out, in plain and simple language, this thing: leave those freaks who talk dialogue to themselves while they should be doing their job alone. Tell them to do their job, but let them talk. Just because the voices talk back does not make them schizophrenic…

    It means they’re alive.

 

    Enjoy another creation...

Ode to my Black Pug

Thou art as sweet as sweet can be
Like honey from the worker bees.
Yet, mean thou art as eighties' beasts
Like Gremlins, Critters, Jaws 3-D.
Yet kisses for thy master will
Ye give...and master's wife as well.
Black for night; fat for lard
And tender for black piglet's heart.

Ode to my Fawn Pug

Snorted, shorted, fur of rain
Shedding like wind o'er grain
"You stink! You stink!" the stranger cries,
For doth thy stink, like bugs, it flies.
But loving, laughing, is thy face;

Your master smiles, your master plays.
So snort and stink and shed away
Ye know I'll scoop thy mess today.

Ode to my Chocolate

Brown and tempested art thy back;
Brown and sharpened art thy tail;
Brown and wintered art thy nose;
Brown and tapping are thy nails;
Brown and flapping art thy ears;
Brown and narrow art thy jaw;
Brown above and brown beneath;
Brown and loving art mine dog.

Selah.

Trees Falling on a Writer

   I'm at my first Writer's Conference. It's halfway over. Right now, I'm blogging because I have a chance to. My wife and I had our baby in February, so time has changed it's meaning. The baby owns it now. Anyways, this is an entry about blogging.
  
   I love to blog - always have. Ever since I found out you could put your thoughts into the digital, it had the appeal of fresh pizza. The problem, though, is the same problem I have with all writing, the same with all music, the same with all art...the same with  CREATIVITY!

   If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

   If I blog and no one reads it, why blog? If I can't sell a book, why write it? If no one is there to hear my music, why play it? So on. The answers are usually quick as a car wreck: Market yourself! Sell yourself! Make yourself somethin' everybody wants to read! Here's the God's truth...I hate marketing in words that neither English, French, Latin, Arabic, and possibly Mandarin can express. It sounds like I'm damning myself, but honesty is the beginning for many-a-thing in the ways of self-confidence. If you detest honesty, cease reading at this point.

   There is a simple reason I'm a factory worker right now. It's because I do well as a cog in a machine who is given a command to yield a daily quota without straying from that point. I am a function. A diode. A capacitor. Something pretty on a circuit board. I dislike it greatly. Maybe I even detest it, but it's how I am wired. I do not do sales. Sales come as well to me as the Squeeze Theorem of Calculus. It's always been about that bad customer. Whether it be book stores, gas station attendant, or grocery clerk, I do not cope with the bad customer. If I have one hundred customers and five are bad, rather than focus on the good ninety-five percent, those five bastards have clouded the forefront of my conscience instead. Pessimism runs in my blood. Only now do I question whether pessimism and self-confidence have been rolled into one. If it has, I need serious help.
  
   But there is a genuine feature within me that selling things both within and without of myself was never in the cards. Now, here at the Clarksville Writer's Conference 2015, it is obvious. I pay the price now. I am not successful at authoring because I have not tried. Can I write? Yes. Can I create stuff? Yes. I am proficient in art, music, and the craft of story-telling with excellent grammatical quality. If there is a creative venue I am interested in, I can learn it. But selling it to others? (crickets with an occasional frog croak and an interstate passerby)
  
   As a dualistic anecdote for myself, I'm trying to see if this entry yields results. I have to admit, this conference has been pretty motivating. There is an impression that writers all over struggle with what I do. That really, really, really helps to know you aren't alone. It's cliché, but I'll say it: misery loves company. In this case, misery loves company tenfold. But what I meant when I said I'm trying to see results is that I would love to have some comments or input. I'll have to experiment and get some followers.
  
   This is new - not particularly exciting, but the prospect of someone hearing the tree falling certainly helps.

   Trees falling in the woods deserve to be heard.

Nicole: A Short Story

           Nicole was the first doll I ever bought. I’ll never forget her. Granted, I’m a married man, endowed with masculinity. It behooves me to say that I do not, nor have I ever, nor do I plan to begin collecting dolls. I drink alcohol, eat steak, watch sports, ogle women, and hate musicals. With Nicole, however, it was different.

            I bought her when my wife was pregnant for the first time. I can’t explain it, but Nicole just peered out at me with those shady eyelashes and braided auburn hair, like the adoring French ladies who welcomed the American GIs with puckering kisses when they liberated Paris. The pink hoodie and chic jeans she wore made her look terribly out of place in that hideous corporate packaging she was trapped in at the mom-and-pop toy shop. My wife didn’t think too much of her, believing it premature since we didn't even know the gender. Such negativity irked me, although she had a good point. Regardless, my gut said we were having a little girl, so I stored Nicole up in the attic.          

            In the meantime, we experienced a miscarriage.

***

            It was January, several months following the miscarriage when I was going through the attic one night. There was ice on the roads outside and I had taken the day off work because I sought to avoid inexperienced, wintery drivers of the south. My wife was also pregnant again and wanted me to go through old baby stuff. That was where I came across the brown box labeled BABY and found Nicole, having forgotten all about her. I took her out and studied her form, freezing in my boxer shorts. Normally, any association with our first baby would have depressed the utter hell out of me, but I was damn drunk.

            “How old are you, Nicole?” I slurred. Those were my first words to her.

            I imagined Nicole being annoyed because I had cheap merlot on my breath. My wife hated that I drank so much since our miscarriage, but it was the way I dealt with it. Regardless, we were expecting again and I planned to quit drinking when the baby came. I thought about those things, forgot why I’d come up there, and set Nicole back into the box.

            We had another miscarriage, too.

***

            Another year went by, and I was sifting through the attic in January – again. It wasn’t icy outside like the year before, but was cold and raining with temperatures somewhere in the mid-thirties. My wife was also pregnant again, as I was drunk again. At this point, a vicious cycle was in motion. Whenever we lost a baby, I became a drunk; whenever we were expecting, I promised to stop drinking. This time I was very drunk, though. I was so drunk, I forgot that I was up there to look for baby things and began looking over my old shotgun instead. It was a Christmas gift as a teenager from my older brother, but never grew accustomed to using. Other than the possibility of using it to ward off a varmint from the garbage, or self-terminate, I found no purpose in it so I put it back. I did, however, see the baby box with Nicole.

            “Where you at, Nicole?” I said aloud, reaching into the box and pulling her out. For whatever reason, I felt a pang of guilt as if I’d hurt her so I cradled her plastic body in my arm like a real baby and ran my index finger along the nylon strands of hair. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said, stroking her pretty face. “I didn’t mean to do that. Here, let me straighten your hoodie.”

            “It’s okay,” she said. “I know you’re not like that.”

            It may or may not have been the first time I  heard her speak. Since I was so drunk, I’ll never know whether they were audible or extrasensory words, but she communicated. She also did not speak with the voice of a little girl; rather, she spoke with the confident, sultry voice of a seductress.

            “Really?” I asked, continuing to cradle her.

            “Yes. Hey, is everything okay?”

            “Eh. It’s been another one of those years.”

            “I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re up here with me, though. It gets lonely.”

            “I can imagine.”

            “I like it when you cradle me like this, by the way.”

            “I enjoy doing it.”

            “You can cradle me like this whenever you want, you know. It makes me feel warm in places.”

            I grinned, “Now, now, Nicole…my wife might not appreciate that.”

            “She doesn’t have to know.”

            “Wait a minute. How old are you?”

            “You asked me that last year.”

            “Hmm…I don’t recollect. Will you tell me now?”

            “I’m old enough.”

            “That’s not an answer, Nicole. If I’m going to cradle you like this, you have to be an acceptable age.”

            In the next moment, I cannot recall of certainty, but I perceived Nicole smiling at me like a seductress would. It was the kind of smile which calms the craziest of nerves – not that I knew what it was like to have fully endowed women stare at me.

            “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Promise to cradle me at least once within the next year and you’ll learn my age.”

            “Just once?”

            “Yes.”

            “Geez, I’m pretty sloshed. It’d be tough to remember.”

            “You’ll do fine, cutie.”

            I blushed. “I’ll try my best. By the way, Nicole, you’ve got a very pretty smile.”

            She flashed me one more, flirtatious, well-endowed-woman smile before I set her back.

***

            The cycle continued. We lost the third baby, too. Doctors had no answers. We no longer tried and I no longer cared. My wife said she couldn’t take a fourth pregnancy loss, although she still wanted a family. I no longer did. I was numb. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her, because I did, but hoping for a family after experiencing three miscarriages is like hoping to play guitar again after three fingers have already been chopped away from your left hand. It’s one of those things, far from simple. I kept the shotgun in the corner of our bedroom on a regular basis, not always sure of why I did. Needless to say, I went into the attic.

            There was neither ice nor rain outside this time. It was just a painful, five degrees Fahrenheit. For a southerner such as myself, that’s a frigid nightmare. Faucets dripped downstairs just in case. The house was quiet, too, since my wife was staying with her mother because of something bad I’d done. In September, I’d met a twenty-three year old woman at the dog park and was spotted having coffee with her that evening by a work acquaintance of my wife’s. Nothing happened with the woman, except that we cuddled on a park bench and she kissed me on the cheek (although I’d be lying if I didn't want her to do it on the mouth since she smelled so incredibly good up close). Long story short, my wife demanded marital counseling. I refused, so she went to live with her mother until my head was clear again. Fast forward, I found myself dangerously drunk and in the attic again in January, talking to Nicole. It was an appropriate tradition, I thought, going into the attic after these types of events. When I found the box, I took her out. Like I remembered, she was beautiful and it was good to see her.

            “Hey, Nicole,” I said.

            “Hey. I’ve missed you.”

            “I’ve missed you, too.”

            “Is everything okay? You look sad again.”

            “We lost our third baby and my wife has gone away this time.”

            “That isn’t nice of her.”

            “No, it’s okay. She didn’t do anything wrong. I did.”

            Nicole gave me one of those looks, bordering on a ‘that bitch’ and an ‘I’m-here-for-you’ look. Regardless, she was offering her shoulder to cry on and I took it. “What did you do you poor thing?” she asked.

            “I got a bit flirty with a girl at the dog park.”

            “Why’d you do that?”

            “I don’t know. Lonely, I guess. We’re not trying for kids anymore, so I wasn’t thinking. She was pretty and I couldn’t help it. She liked my dog, my cologne, said I was a nice guy. Maybe it was what I needed to hear. My wife, bless her heart, is just in a bad way after all we’ve been through. Anyways, we cuddled and kissed on the cheek, and had some coffee.”

            “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

            “When you’re a married man, it is.”

            “You thought she was pretty, though?”

            I was surprised Nicole gravitated so toward the subject of the girl and not my extramarital quandary. “Well, of course she was.”

            “How pretty was she?”

            “Pretty enough to be an actress…prettier than a lot of actresses, actually. Auburn hair like yours.”

            Nicole blushed, “I can see why she liked you.”

            “I’m talking to a doll right now.”

            “I’ll bet she would still give you a chance.”

            “I’m fucking losing it.”

            “In fact, I’ll bet if she were here, she would say that she’d never, ever leave you like your wife did. You could be together forever with a girl like that.”

            “Counseling,” I said, scrunching my forehead with my fingers. “I should’ve done counseling a long, long time ago.”           

            “Why don’t you go back to the dog park on Saturday? I think she’ll be there. Tell her all those things you told me, and she’ll love you forever. Don’t even worry that you didn’t come up here and cradle me this past year.”

            “Hell with this,” I said. “I’m calling my wife.”

            I put Nicole back into her box and knew that was it for the vicious cycle I’d embedded myself in. My wife needed me and I was being selfish. I was an asshole of a royal order. Although I didn’t want to deal with her mother, my wife was there and we had our vows. The miscarriages had taken their toll, but they were speed bumps in an otherwise good marriage. Counseling made sense. I even believed we could consider adopting again. I set the box in the corner, along with the shotgun from downstairs, and planned on getting rid of those things on Saturday, assuming everything went okay with my wife the next day.

***

            Saturday morning, I was drunk. My wife told me she wanted a divorce the night before. An old flame  ran into her at the grocery store a week earlier and heard her story. Of course, the guy became a shoulder to cry on while I had procrastinated too long in my decision to seek counseling. I didn’t really yell or curse. As a matter of fact, I told her I didn’t blame her. I apologized for all I’d put her through and hoped one day she could have a family like she dreamed about. For what it was worth, I think I took it pretty well. I got pretty blue the next day, though. I still had my chocolate Labrador retriever. My wife would never have parted me with my dog because she knew I’d need him for the days to come. Below the surface, I'm sure he reminded her of the dog park anyways, which was where everything had unraveled in our marriage.

            “The dog park,” I said to myself as I came out my stupor on the couch. I put a half-a-pot of coffee into me and waited until I was sober enough to drive. I forgot about my plans to junk the box and the shotgun. I had no recollections of the night in the attic, nor did I even think about Nicole. In fact, I only remembered that I once talked to a doll. For that reason alone, it needed to go.

***

            Saturday evolved into a much better day. I went to the park, let my dog run around with the others, and cajoled with other dog owners for about an hour. Then I saw her – the girl I’d come close to engaging in a full-blown affair with in September. I was nervous, which she seemed to adore. She was as lovely as I remembered, but something was different about her. For one, she didn’t even have her dog. I couldn’t figure it out, but her face was as if I’d known her much longer. It was also as if she knew every sordid detail of what went wrong in my life over the last three years. Before I knew it, though, we were catching up over a bite to eat. Then we went for coffee. Eventually, I asked to go to her place.

            “No,” she said. “Let’s go to yours.”

            I shrugged and took us back. Besides, my dog needed to be at home since he was tired. She and I sat down to watch The Truman Show. We cuddled throughout. We kissed before the movie was a third of the way through. We held each other and may or may not have touched when it was halfway over. We had a lot to drink, too – a lot. I don’t even remember what happened afterward, but I’ve pieced it together since. I must have taken her up on her advice to make love to her in the attic. Not that it was a bad thing, because the deep freeze had lifted and a few blankets up stairs sufficed quite fine. I was depressed and turned on. But I know now that I must have taken her up there and done something significant.

                                                                           ***

            My wife came up here to see me the other day. She didn’t find me. I could see her glancing around in the attic, and heard her calling my name, but she left again. I guess she took the dog with her. There have been other visitors, including friends, family, coworkers, investigators, reporters, and even some moving guys. It’s been a while. Nicole is still here next to me in the box. She’s as pretty as I remember, talks to me a lot, and I talk back when I feel like it. Neither of us move much, and I doubt we’re ever supposed to. It’s a quiet life, it is.