Month: July 2021

“Peter Choi.” I say as I approach the man in the dirty and torn recycled hospital gown. He has a blanket over his shoulders and people around him who seem very interested in making sure he feels safe. He looks confused, as if he doesn’t know where he is or how he got to be here. When he sees me he looks startled, the way you would if you saw a ghost or say if a Naga materialized and offered you a job. I haven’t seen any ghosts lately.

I hold up my hands, “Listen, I was hired to make sure those goons up top didn’t put you in a situation you didn’t want to be in.”

He blinks really slowly, the way I imagine a fish might blink. I blink back, though mine feels more like a form of confusion seeping into my consciousness. He is in fact blue. Not blue tinged from lack of oxygen or some form of chameleonware. His skin is blue-hued. His fingers are a lot longer than they ought to be and, I notice with some revulsion, he has more of them than he should.

“You’re clearly not from around here.” I say.

“Who are you?” He says.

“Right. I should’ve led with that. My name is Tojiro Mako. I believe someone very close to you sent me to keep you out of trouble.”

Some Thoughts:

1. Yes, I changed the tense. It feels like its more natural this way, but I actually did it to show the shift to this otherworldly place. I wanted it to feel different in every possible way. Not sure the shift is a thing people ought to do.

Real talk: I’m in that space where I am willing to do anything besides write this story. I’m finding mundane tasks to finish. I’m looking for ways to not write this story, because it is hard and because it matters and because I don’t automatically know where I am going with everything. The struggle is real, and as I’ve reported here before, it is similar to what people like to call writer’s block. I am not doing a very good job addressing the problem though. Instead, I am not doing, well, anything and that is causing things to stack up and placing me in exactly the position I did not want to be in entering the new semester.

So, something has to give. After this blog I expect to get out of the house and run some errands. It is better than sitting here and pretending I am going to write when I am not. Then, I am going to write out a more composed to do list and start posting what needs to get done on a daily basis. I have to get in tune and get on schedule quickly.

Some Thoughts:

1. I do in fact believe it is time to move.
2. How and where that fully transpires is a matter of discussion. I’m game though. I am certainly game.
3. Youth Football blacklists are a thing. They are a thing because of parents and I hate to say it but I feel like I am on one–especially with certain teams. There is a chance my son’s team won’t have enough players and if that happens, there is not another team he can go to this season. So, he’ll be done with youth football. That sucks for him. Sad way to end it, but such is the way things may need to be.

Go down the staircase hidden behind the gate in the alley of the Blakemark building. At the bottom of the steps is a door. It is locked; it is always locked. However the code is as well known and common to the right circle of people as the time of day. I know that code. I learned it working undercover. I know these people. At least I used to.

Past the stairwell door is a long hallway filled with pipes that pump out steam from the buildings above. Watch your step and watch your timing because the steam here can be lethal at the wrong time of day; under the right conditions. At the end of the hall is another set of stairs. This goes down again and further. This goes below the train lines to the forgotten parts of the city older than Dutch Manhattan and older still than the Lenape Indians. Long ago they found the natural entrance to these deeper caves and they wondered at what they saw.

The Deep Below is lit by a moss that glows like dying neon. 1000 meters below the earth I can hear the Hudson River roaring high above me. I can make out the beginnings of DeepTown as the stairs transition from concrete to the original rough cut stone and I make the transition from what is to what was. By the time I reach the bottom, faces are materializing out of the darkness around me. They are ork and Troll–some are subspecies I’ve never seen. Some are human. They are all armed.

“Hoi.” I say, holding my arms up in the air. “Anywhere down here a chummer can get some solid Ramen?”

The one nearest to me is a dwarf whose eyes show age wrinkles beyond my few years. She isn’t smiling. She pats me down quickly, and says, “WHo do you know to be down this far?”

“Old Henry Miles.”

“Henry hasn’t been this deep in a few years.” She says, her eyes fixed on me.

“Last time I saw him was five years ago. We ate over there.” My hand slowly drifts down and forward towards a section of the village I’m familiar with. As I point my eyes focus on someone else I am familiar with but never expected to see down here. I cannot hold back the gasp that comes out of me.

Peter Choi is here. He’s still in his hospital robes. He is sitting outside of a small hut cobbled together from recycled siding and drinking from a can fashioned into a cup.

When I can finally pick my jaw up off the floor I say, “Also, I’m with him.”

Some Thoughts:

1. TWIST! That is what makes stories go crazy. I’m going to have to put one together here soon that makes a sort of sense. This might be the start of it.

I’d thought I’d take a look at 818, Reflections on a Tuesday Night this Tuesday night as the sky roars and the winds threaten to push down what little isn’t already held down in the backyard. I am fine, if not a little hot in the office following a period of humidity I haven’t seen in years. So, it felt right to turn back the years to that Tuesday when I wrote, “There are days when I want to wake up in 1991 and have a chance to do things with the effort and vigor I know I am capable of. You can’t go back. Perhaps the truth is that death is merely an cessation of new material and you live everything over and over again, but life is forward. It is the next moment and the moment after that. I didn’t feel that way earlier in my life, but as I age I recognize this fact and the fact that there isn’t really time to waste.”

This random selection of a blog argues the portent of those words. I’ve held steady to the idea that life may indeed be a loop and I may already be looping. I’ve felt a darkness over me every evening that makes it hard to sleep and even harder to have dreams that don’t descend into a nameless ordinary terror that is all but forgotten when I rise save for the feeling that it was there and my self-soul was not pleased.

For all of this–for all of this ill feeling I am outraged at myself. Life now is better than it has been in some time, and perhaps that is the reason my mind worries itself through the night. It is all too good to be true. It is all happening and things are better than I could’ve guessed. Earlier in that blog I wrote about a novel (no idea which one) but now I’ve finished and sold a different novel. I am on to the next (in spite of the pesky bit of avoidance I’ve acquired these past days). I am happy in love and feeling like I can do all the things I want to in life. I suppose part of me is afraid I don’t deserve it, and the universe has already figured out that I don’t.

We all know what happens at the end of those scenarios…

Here is the thing about writer’s block: It is a manifestation of uncertainty and lack of direction in your project. It isn’t a block. It is a symptom of you not knowing what you want to do and feeling stuck and out of answers. I’m feeling that as of late when it comes to my new novel project. It is indeed a tough one. So tough that I allowed myself to take on another quick run project purely to distract myself from what I’m supposed to be writing. It worked–for a couple of days at least. Then, this morning, it took a different turn. I found that this new project had a small hiccup and what I did as a result was turn on Manifest, and add another layer of distraction to the mix. This is how the block works. You (read: me) add on layer after layer of distractions as a way of distancing from the real problem and in that it becomes easier to getaway for a while, but harder and harder to get back to the source.

So, as I am drifting and recognizing the drift, I am discovering the root of it and learning how to write about it, which should help me solve these problems or at least to confront them in the future.

I’m not feeling the bloganovella today. The key is it is mid evening and I am not feeling the words or the worlds at all. I truly think I programmed myself to be a morning writer. I can do other odds and ends like world building (specifically mapmaking) in the eve but I don’t want to write. I rather I didn’t write at all if possible. Instead I’m here sitting in bed and blogging and listening to my kids in the distance debating whether or not Chess is a sport and one of them openly expressing how much more respect he has for a Chess player than a basketball player. It is another one of those odd conversations that show me how much the y value intelligence and how they specifically define what intelligence is/reflects.

Anyhow, I’m not feeling the writing, but I am interested in thinking about the way we do perceive people and what we focus on in our culture. Celebrity, of course, is the pinnacle of success and royalty–no matter how you come by that celebrity status. Some are famous for potential, such as LeBron James’ son (also his legacy status makes him an instant star). Some are famous for being famous like the Kardashians. Others are rich or talented or any number of things that draw people to you. There’s this tik tok dancer Charlie D’melio (not sure of spelling) who has over a hundred million subscribers. Why? I suppose she represents a level of sexuality that people look for. I find it silly. Number 2 on the tik tok list is a dude who cracks jokes. I’m surprised by that.

Anyhow, that’s 10. I’m out.

As a writer I often talk about (and generally feel) that place is an important aspect of the writing headspace. After spending the last 16 days in Seattle and moving through three different hotels/VRBO’s I found that place is a more important construct than previously imagined, but in some ways a virtual construct as well.

Have Laptop, Will Travel
The first thing you need to understand about the writing environment is the tools. I’m a laptop person now. In earlier days I was a typewriter guy or a notebook guy. I wrote out my first major manuscript by hand, and the second on an electronic typewriter the likes of which I, fortunately, never saw again. That second manuscript–the first one that was a complete novel vs. a short and cute novella about an Elf named Horace Treefellow was burned to char in the compactor room of the apartment building where I lived. It was placed there by my mother. Nothing more need be said on that topic. I lost another near complete manuscript to a busted laptop following an unfortunate holiday incident involving champagne. I lost another laptop to the back wheels of my car, because I was stupid. All of that being said, I believe the laptop is the critical part of my writing space and the ‘cloud’ is a huge part of that. I can write anywhere on the laptop and upload it for safekeeping.

That Man’s Headspace
Keeping a head about yourself when you are writing basically boils down to being in a space where you feel comfortable. For me that is either out in public where I am able to people watch and become part of the scenery or in my personally cultivated office, generally alone so I don’t risk getting into conversations with the people I love and finding that to be an all too welcome distraction. I do best at coffee shops when out on the road. I do pretty good at restaurants, but I feel bad about taking a table for that extended period of time, so generally limit myself to an hour at the restaurant and two tops at the coffee spot. For me 3-5 hours is really good for writing time. 3 is a legit minimum for any serious progress, so these outdoor and mobile spots mean a lower quality of writing.

Verdict?
I believe the best writers location is the one you cultivate yourself and return to the way you would an old blanket. My office is that for me. I believe the best sort of outdoor spot is one you can people watch, draw power, and feel good and safe about squatting in for your personal length of writing time. I’ve struggled to find that over the years and I am still searching.

When the powers that be in NYC rebuilt the east end of the city collectively known as the Pit, they relied on a widely known philosophy of ‘do only what we need to do’. In this case that meant only redeveloping as much as was obviously unstable or otherwise corrupted be it through damage, magical intervention, time, etc. This way the areas they didn’t fully rebuild could be marked as classic or historical. That is how Brooklyn wound up being a hipster mecca over half a century ago. There was enough of the repurposed old to wipe that suburban shine off the new and to make it accessible to those new faces coming in. Oh, and they did a bunch of old school redlining to get rid of who they deemed undesirable.

This matters to me because of the fountain on 29th and 2nd. The fountain is a landmark and has been for as long as I’ve been alive, though not for the reasons that most people approach it. The fountain was dedicated to the memory of the 27 metahumans murdered in that part of the city during New York’s version of the Night of Rage. Little known secret: The published 27 number was a lowball account. The police records I came across indicated more than double that number of injuries incurred that turned out to be fatal. Anyway, the fountain was erected to show our connections to metahumanity in a meaningful way. The statue at the center shows a long-limbed troll walking with a human boy holding one of his hands and a human girl holding the other. There is a quote, by Ghandi of all people, etched around the base of the statue that reads, “

“If you want to take revenge and feed your hate, you will never be satisfied. Only love can eradicate hate, not hate by itself”

Weird, right? I thought so. I also did a lot more digging and discovered that the spot where the statue was built just happened to be near a secret entrance to the Manhattan underground that was supposedly concreted over when the the fountain was erected. I say supposedly, because it wasn’t. In fact, the quote was a direct message to the increasingly hostile meta population that, “hey, we got this, so chill okay?”

It did not go well.

Fast forward to the present and the underground still exists and so does that entrance, because it was easier for the city to refurbish that set of blocks into a new hipster haven than it was to tear it all down. So that’s where I went.

Some Thoughts:

1. After drifting for a while, I decided it was important to get back to the key terms and situations of this story. Writing is like that more than it isn’t–you swim around a story, figuring things out in your head or on paper as you move, ever slow dang slowly, towards what is centrally the plot or the theme. I posted mine right at the beginning. I’m starting to make a little progress…

I spent the last 16 days in Seattle and I’m sitting at the airport waiting to board a plane to head home. I miss my kids, but I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to swim back towards a life that is designed around people who are for the most part entitled and think first of themselves and what they have going on. We’ve been enjoying a life that is about us and I’ve been enjoying that too. I’ve been working towards creating a balance where it is not about them all the time and I have a life that is about my partner and myself, but the fact remains that I easily fall into habits and show triggers that make my personal life fall apart all too easily. If feels like that tendency denotated the last few moments of this journey and, in a sense, ruined all the progress brough about by it. That is my fault.

My sense of balance is clearly skewed.

I don’t know what to do about tomorrow or how to start focusing on a life that is not about them and more about us. I need to be a better partner and keep focus on what I am focused on and what is important in the forefront.

Some Thoughts:

1. Doesn’t seem like I am long for AZ. I need to get out soon or I’m going to ruin what I have. I give it a year or two at the most. I need to get right with that fast.

People tend to speak of cities in a mythical way and over the years the city of note shifts. Seattle, Denver, Chicago, and Boston have been the big ones since that quake knocked NY for a loop long ago. Heck, those cities were already poised to be the ‘next big thing’ in one way or another and their rise to fresh prominence felt like an extension of what we already knew. Chicago has always been a drek hole so when it became Bug City it wasn’t too far of a leap. Likewise Seattle being where it is and how it is made it fertile ground for a number of expansions. What always surprised me was how quickly the Underground became the standard for what people thought about a city with an Underground network.

how quickly they forgot about New York.

I spent a fair amount of time in the underground in the early days of becoming a cop, because I had the kind of training that put you right in the middle of trouble and said, ‘figure out a way to deescalate.’ I was never the best suited for police work. Detective work maybe but the uniform didn’t fit my personality. At least that’s what they thought after putting me in those kinds of situations and realizing how quickly I went native.

so, when I was stuck I. The city needing to be both dry and hidden away, I did what I do best. I went native.

some thoughts:

1. Did this one on the phone as I chilled out for ten minutes at the end of a long and wonderful day. Came to me fairly slowly and thinly because I can no longer write at night.