CHOCOLATE MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
It seems to me that the urge to blog can be secondary only to the urge to procreate, I am so juiced. I actually had two potential topics in mind: choclolate, as per the aphorism and loneliness. The loneliness of the long distance blogger. I have had issues with loneliness of late (strike that/reality intrusion). With my shrink's help I wrote a little card for myself which I am to look at when the loneliness becomes intolerable. The first entry is "This is not the end of the world." It was that entry that inspired me to attempt my first ever double blog in a day. I have no idea if such activity is even permitted by the International Blogging Association. Is there such an organization. Are there records for world's fastest blogger; world's most read; world's dumbest; world's most meaningless-- the one record I might have a shot at. But I am going to make a radical postulation that blogging, in time, will be found to be as effective a cure for loneliness and depression as ssri's, which I can't take because they make me want to peel the paint off every ceiling I meet. It doesn't matter whether you really have readers or not. You do in your imagination. You have contact with humanity. So what if it's yourself and the google guy. Lonely people can't be fussy and most intimate relationships fall apart in time anyway. This one may go on forever
When I was much younger I wrote a book called book ((I have a feeling I may be repeating myself but am technologically unable to check). It was 500 pages long and it was about writing a 500 page book. I remember one page where in anger I accosted the reader: "Read that! Now read this!" Does Literal Ally stem from the same impulse-- to write interestingly about nothing. The author who has written five or six books and knows well how hard it is does have the credentials to write a creditable book. I mean something better than toilet paper. Real publishers have published my books. But not book. It sits in a carton. There is no way I will read it. I know it would be an embarrasment. Do I destroy it or leave it to my children who also will not read it. I remember the same impulse and excitement when I wrote that, but I was under the illusion that it was a stroke of genius as opposed to a stroke of misfortune. That was probably 30 years ago and one would think I would have learned something in the intervening three decades to prevent my ploughing over that fallow earth again. But no, along comes this new technology and there I go again.
I am wondering what would have happened if my first entry had not been wiped out by my failure to push the correct button, It had real details about my early publishing career- my first job imparticular, writing for detective magazines. I might have been up to the marketing of paperback books by now. Meanings upon meanings. You might have known all about my genius in the field. And I would have been bored shitless. Leteral Ally has no rules so content is not forbidden. It is just sidestepped whenever possible. Do I feel more or less lonely now than when I started writing this entry. Hard to say, but my fingers sure feel peppier. I think I will opt for the positive option because number 2 on my list is "You have been here before and gotten out."
So I will get out knowing that I have communicated something to someone even if it's really just myself. If a quantum wave dances in the woods and there are no trees around would a fox know the difference?SENTENCE FROM THE FUTURE
Sunday, January 31, 2010
APHORISM (last time I will call APHORISMS APHORISMS. They are not grapefruits. They will just be irrelevant and in capital letters) EVERYTHING THAT COMES INTO OUR CIRCLE HAS COME TO TEACH US WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW.
I think I prefer morning blogging. Sort of like flossing. Prepares you for the day. Amazing how doing this four or five times and I now have a new idiotic habit. Periodically, as right now, my mind goes totally blank and I think; "how the fuck are you going to keep this up?" Pure perversity. Pure conceit, Pure grandiosity. 100 percent pure orange juice with calcium and vitamin c added. Then I think, well, if you don't do this who will? Probably millions of people all over America are already doing this. Solipsism. Do we define that as believing that one is real and everything else is false. We are having a hard time getting a run going this morning, probably because I just wrote my shrink a long email accusing him of misunderstanding me and I used a lot of my creative jism. Now I have really skiied myself into a corner. When blogging this way at your best is such a limited activity which so few will have any desire to read, what can you say when you are off your game? That there was no game to begin with? Lame. You could insult the reader. You could say don't you have anything better to do with your fucking time than to read the solipsistic ravings of a writer between projects or just too lazy to write or making some lame connection between abstract expressionism and abstract expression. Why aren't you doing something useful like buttering your toast, reader? Perhaps you are. Perhaps you prefer this to the op ed page of the New York Times. Let's use the meaningfulness applause meter.How many of you out there think the New York Times Op Ed page is more meaningful than Literal Ally? Now let's here it for literal ally. No contest. Of my two readers, me and the google guy, we both find the op ed page a meaningless aglomeration of stuff whereas literal ally is just pure meaninglessness which gives it much more meaning since it is not pretending to have any. How many times in the course of this blog can I make the same point before I realize it? Willl I one day receive a post that says PLEASE STOP. I CAN'T STOP READING AND YOU ARE DESTROYING MY LIFE AND ABILITY TO EXIST IN THIS SOCIETY? Another reason today's entry may not be up to my usual low standards is that I am hungry. Low blood sugar curdles my adjectives. So I am going to the oatmeal pot right now and not coming back till tomorrow when I promise you the blog to end all blogs. My daughter may get involved in illustrating this. She may even read it. Then all things will start coming together and the world will be a beautiful place.
I think I prefer morning blogging. Sort of like flossing. Prepares you for the day. Amazing how doing this four or five times and I now have a new idiotic habit. Periodically, as right now, my mind goes totally blank and I think; "how the fuck are you going to keep this up?" Pure perversity. Pure conceit, Pure grandiosity. 100 percent pure orange juice with calcium and vitamin c added. Then I think, well, if you don't do this who will? Probably millions of people all over America are already doing this. Solipsism. Do we define that as believing that one is real and everything else is false. We are having a hard time getting a run going this morning, probably because I just wrote my shrink a long email accusing him of misunderstanding me and I used a lot of my creative jism. Now I have really skiied myself into a corner. When blogging this way at your best is such a limited activity which so few will have any desire to read, what can you say when you are off your game? That there was no game to begin with? Lame. You could insult the reader. You could say don't you have anything better to do with your fucking time than to read the solipsistic ravings of a writer between projects or just too lazy to write or making some lame connection between abstract expressionism and abstract expression. Why aren't you doing something useful like buttering your toast, reader? Perhaps you are. Perhaps you prefer this to the op ed page of the New York Times. Let's use the meaningfulness applause meter.How many of you out there think the New York Times Op Ed page is more meaningful than Literal Ally? Now let's here it for literal ally. No contest. Of my two readers, me and the google guy, we both find the op ed page a meaningless aglomeration of stuff whereas literal ally is just pure meaninglessness which gives it much more meaning since it is not pretending to have any. How many times in the course of this blog can I make the same point before I realize it? Willl I one day receive a post that says PLEASE STOP. I CAN'T STOP READING AND YOU ARE DESTROYING MY LIFE AND ABILITY TO EXIST IN THIS SOCIETY? Another reason today's entry may not be up to my usual low standards is that I am hungry. Low blood sugar curdles my adjectives. So I am going to the oatmeal pot right now and not coming back till tomorrow when I promise you the blog to end all blogs. My daughter may get involved in illustrating this. She may even read it. Then all things will start coming together and the world will be a beautiful place.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
morning
APHORISM: IF MORNING IS THAT MOST GLORIOUS SEASON OF THE DAY THEN WHAT ARE PEANUTS?
It is terrifying how eager I am to plunge back into this after working on it (if I may use the expression loosely) less than 12 hours ago. Why and what on earth am I trying to prove? First things first. Why? Because I like to feel my fingers going clickety clack across the keyboard with no regard as to what they are signifying. Why? Because my ego is boundless and I seriously believe on some level that my readership of two (myself and I believe a google technician) is some day going to morph into, say, seven. If I can get my daughter to coherently attach this to my facebook account (please don't ask why I have a facebook account) thereby notifying people who actually no me, my readership might, at least temporarily catapault into the double numbers. What an ego trip. What on earth am I trying to prove? I am not certain yet-- that I can write interestingly with no content, a kind of literary abstract expressionism. That I can write indefinitely and interminably with no readers, a bravura performance of masochism. That the rest of my life is so dull and meaningless that doing a ballet on a toy piano gives me jollies.
But yes and not. The yes part means I am not yet denying what I just wrote. The no part means that there is something else- that I find something inherently curious and meaningful abou this medium which seems to have sprung up spontaneously from the earth (does anyone know who wrote the first blog? Will it be enshrined in the Smithsonian?). Thoughtlessness is a state I aspire to in my morning meditation. Can it be that my blog is a kind of literary mindfulness. That as long as I keep bringing the content back to no content it is giving me a sort of literary peace-- tamping down whatever ambitions I may have in the area without making me work for it? Showing me naked to the world with all my clothes on? Trying to pull off a wacked out tour de force of creating the longest and most beautiful nothing in the world? Pulling a sick joke on whoever, if anyone, may be sick enough to read this by having them compulsively involved in digesting food with no nutrients whatsover, possibly ruining their real appetite for real literature by making the real seem effortful?
One (this one) experiences first and judges after. Though I have said repeatedly that you couldn't get me to read this with a nine foot mole, perhaps I shall peruse a paragraph at some point and either jump up and down on my kitchen chair with enthusiasm, screaming to the refrigerator, "This is fucking brilliant." Or saying, "I will never do that again," but hopefully the process not being so depressing that it stops me from continuing it. Any writer who writes without admitting that he desires readership is a liar, so I must be trying to see how long I can do this before someone catches on and thinks it worth reading. I realize that this blog is visually dull as dishwater (as was that analogy) and I am going to ask my artistically inclined daughter to design it, to jazz itup, as it were, with design and illustration whose irrelevance to what I am saying will underscore the inanity of the project on a completely new level. The Avatar of blogs.
I just scratched the back of my neck because it itched and because I thought I felt a bit of content trying to worm its way in. The neck no longer itches. The content has fled. O Reader, there is so much I would fain tell you about my life in a format that made sense if I could only do so for myself. So we both shall have to settle for this blend of truthfulness and laziness. Of course nothing means anything unless you give it meaning. Plato could have told you that. If Plato had a blog what would it have been like? Would he have abandoned his search for meaning seduced by the klickety klak of the keys and would Western civilization have taken a completely different turn? As a result of the blog Western civilization, or at least literary civilization will take a completely different turn. It is way too late for me to consider myself a pioneer-- more a victim who has just been infected and is now doing a St. Vitrus dance or whatever it is that makes you jump around the room uncontrollably with no thought whatsover as to what you are doing.
It is terrifying how eager I am to plunge back into this after working on it (if I may use the expression loosely) less than 12 hours ago. Why and what on earth am I trying to prove? First things first. Why? Because I like to feel my fingers going clickety clack across the keyboard with no regard as to what they are signifying. Why? Because my ego is boundless and I seriously believe on some level that my readership of two (myself and I believe a google technician) is some day going to morph into, say, seven. If I can get my daughter to coherently attach this to my facebook account (please don't ask why I have a facebook account) thereby notifying people who actually no me, my readership might, at least temporarily catapault into the double numbers. What an ego trip. What on earth am I trying to prove? I am not certain yet-- that I can write interestingly with no content, a kind of literary abstract expressionism. That I can write indefinitely and interminably with no readers, a bravura performance of masochism. That the rest of my life is so dull and meaningless that doing a ballet on a toy piano gives me jollies.
But yes and not. The yes part means I am not yet denying what I just wrote. The no part means that there is something else- that I find something inherently curious and meaningful abou this medium which seems to have sprung up spontaneously from the earth (does anyone know who wrote the first blog? Will it be enshrined in the Smithsonian?). Thoughtlessness is a state I aspire to in my morning meditation. Can it be that my blog is a kind of literary mindfulness. That as long as I keep bringing the content back to no content it is giving me a sort of literary peace-- tamping down whatever ambitions I may have in the area without making me work for it? Showing me naked to the world with all my clothes on? Trying to pull off a wacked out tour de force of creating the longest and most beautiful nothing in the world? Pulling a sick joke on whoever, if anyone, may be sick enough to read this by having them compulsively involved in digesting food with no nutrients whatsover, possibly ruining their real appetite for real literature by making the real seem effortful?
One (this one) experiences first and judges after. Though I have said repeatedly that you couldn't get me to read this with a nine foot mole, perhaps I shall peruse a paragraph at some point and either jump up and down on my kitchen chair with enthusiasm, screaming to the refrigerator, "This is fucking brilliant." Or saying, "I will never do that again," but hopefully the process not being so depressing that it stops me from continuing it. Any writer who writes without admitting that he desires readership is a liar, so I must be trying to see how long I can do this before someone catches on and thinks it worth reading. I realize that this blog is visually dull as dishwater (as was that analogy) and I am going to ask my artistically inclined daughter to design it, to jazz itup, as it were, with design and illustration whose irrelevance to what I am saying will underscore the inanity of the project on a completely new level. The Avatar of blogs.
I just scratched the back of my neck because it itched and because I thought I felt a bit of content trying to worm its way in. The neck no longer itches. The content has fled. O Reader, there is so much I would fain tell you about my life in a format that made sense if I could only do so for myself. So we both shall have to settle for this blend of truthfulness and laziness. Of course nothing means anything unless you give it meaning. Plato could have told you that. If Plato had a blog what would it have been like? Would he have abandoned his search for meaning seduced by the klickety klak of the keys and would Western civilization have taken a completely different turn? As a result of the blog Western civilization, or at least literary civilization will take a completely different turn. It is way too late for me to consider myself a pioneer-- more a victim who has just been infected and is now doing a St. Vitrus dance or whatever it is that makes you jump around the room uncontrollably with no thought whatsover as to what you are doing.
Friday, January 29, 2010
first evening post
APHORISM; NIGHT IS THE BIRD THAT SINGS NOT OF THE DAY.
Of monumental importance to myself and the other solitary soul purporting to read this who is probably a google administrator,how can anyone read something they don't know about and can't find. Millions of Americans with nothing to say are probably asking this very same question. (POST FROM THE FUTURE; EASY, THEY ARE NOT AS STUPID AS YOU)""I want to be read," we cry in unison. "Make my electrons famous electrons>" "Twitter me, Lord." But we are all met with a deafening silence. No one wants to hear our thoughts, our beautiful thoughts which we have taken seconds from our horrendous lives to place in this pocket where THEY can be seen by all. "I am so fucking intresting," we are thinking. "If only they would give me a chance."
Returning by the scruff of my neck, fueled on by a rabid determination to make this the blog of blogs even if there are NO readers, I continue. I continue for the sake of the unborn for they are also the unblogged. I continue for bungee jumpers everywhere. I continue because the alternative is unthinkable-- not continuing. Were I to not continue none of the meaninglessness of these words would MATTER OR not matter any more. I would be deprived of learning how to operate in a new medium-- sort of like driving a Saab. I would be deprived of eventually having to scan some meaning into these pages since I will have run out of nothings to say. But if the blog is to remain a pure medium, it must remain an anonymous one. Texts with subjects belong in books, newspapers and magazines whether on electrons or paper. Subjectless text is the purity of the blog. The only subject is, like the Himalayan snowman, the search for its elusive meaning, a meaning that unlike a text grows more elusive the more you read of it. You wrack your brain to think of a reason for why you are wasting your fucking god given hours listening to someone you don't know write about something he doesn't understand. But perhaps there is something obvious in all this obviousness.9OBVIOUSLY--COULDN'T RESIST) It is the search for non-meaning, a search much more difficult than a search forits positive brother which can avail itself of avocados, gargoyles and all sorts of things and positively spin yarns from them which can actually engage a reader. No avocados or gargoyles will grace these pages, just consciousness, sheer unadulterated rageful consciousness.
I believe I said earlier that content would eventually, inevitably creep in.I withdraw that.I put a fence around my blog to keep all content out. The world is overflowing already with content. It is content that causes trouble and makes writers who should know better give blurbs. But if nothing means anything, then doesn't that nothing mean something, meaning anything? A sophomoronic question with no answer I can think of. Fortunately it was asked by no one of any significance so no one will go home disappointed. Timing is the key. The dosage (DOSAGE OF WHAT/ WHAT THE HELL IS HE ON)must be kept minimal to tempt the reader into thinking that some vestige of sanity will ineveitably slither into this sacred script in spite of the author's wholehearted attempts to keep it out. But is not the author's attempt to keep content out' a but a backdoor way of making non-content content, not to mention continence and continents.(THE AUTHOR OF THE FUTURE HAS READ THESE LAST FEW LINES REPEATEDLY AND CAN MAKE NO SENSE OF THEM).
The discriminating reader already is hooked. She knows that content is dead, It is the desire for content that lives and splashes itself all over everything. The truth is here and only here. I wasn't going to tell you until much much later but this is really the work of God who is feeling right now that evening blogs are substantially stranger than morning ones, regardless of the lack of readers. Will the next entry be a.m. or p.m. or at the stroke of noon? Or will there be a next entry at all? And how will that effect the ultimate destiny of the universe. Big questions for a small (5 ft. 7 inches) man to be asking. But he is up to the fucking godforsaken task. Make no mistake about it.
Of monumental importance to myself and the other solitary soul purporting to read this who is probably a google administrator,how can anyone read something they don't know about and can't find. Millions of Americans with nothing to say are probably asking this very same question. (POST FROM THE FUTURE; EASY, THEY ARE NOT AS STUPID AS YOU)""I want to be read," we cry in unison. "Make my electrons famous electrons>" "Twitter me, Lord." But we are all met with a deafening silence. No one wants to hear our thoughts, our beautiful thoughts which we have taken seconds from our horrendous lives to place in this pocket where THEY can be seen by all. "I am so fucking intresting," we are thinking. "If only they would give me a chance."
Returning by the scruff of my neck, fueled on by a rabid determination to make this the blog of blogs even if there are NO readers, I continue. I continue for the sake of the unborn for they are also the unblogged. I continue for bungee jumpers everywhere. I continue because the alternative is unthinkable-- not continuing. Were I to not continue none of the meaninglessness of these words would MATTER OR not matter any more. I would be deprived of learning how to operate in a new medium-- sort of like driving a Saab. I would be deprived of eventually having to scan some meaning into these pages since I will have run out of nothings to say. But if the blog is to remain a pure medium, it must remain an anonymous one. Texts with subjects belong in books, newspapers and magazines whether on electrons or paper. Subjectless text is the purity of the blog. The only subject is, like the Himalayan snowman, the search for its elusive meaning, a meaning that unlike a text grows more elusive the more you read of it. You wrack your brain to think of a reason for why you are wasting your fucking god given hours listening to someone you don't know write about something he doesn't understand. But perhaps there is something obvious in all this obviousness.9OBVIOUSLY--COULDN'T RESIST) It is the search for non-meaning, a search much more difficult than a search forits positive brother which can avail itself of avocados, gargoyles and all sorts of things and positively spin yarns from them which can actually engage a reader. No avocados or gargoyles will grace these pages, just consciousness, sheer unadulterated rageful consciousness.
I believe I said earlier that content would eventually, inevitably creep in.I withdraw that.I put a fence around my blog to keep all content out. The world is overflowing already with content. It is content that causes trouble and makes writers who should know better give blurbs. But if nothing means anything, then doesn't that nothing mean something, meaning anything? A sophomoronic question with no answer I can think of. Fortunately it was asked by no one of any significance so no one will go home disappointed. Timing is the key. The dosage (DOSAGE OF WHAT/ WHAT THE HELL IS HE ON)must be kept minimal to tempt the reader into thinking that some vestige of sanity will ineveitably slither into this sacred script in spite of the author's wholehearted attempts to keep it out. But is not the author's attempt to keep content out' a but a backdoor way of making non-content content, not to mention continence and continents.(THE AUTHOR OF THE FUTURE HAS READ THESE LAST FEW LINES REPEATEDLY AND CAN MAKE NO SENSE OF THEM).
The discriminating reader already is hooked. She knows that content is dead, It is the desire for content that lives and splashes itself all over everything. The truth is here and only here. I wasn't going to tell you until much much later but this is really the work of God who is feeling right now that evening blogs are substantially stranger than morning ones, regardless of the lack of readers. Will the next entry be a.m. or p.m. or at the stroke of noon? Or will there be a next entry at all? And how will that effect the ultimate destiny of the universe. Big questions for a small (5 ft. 7 inches) man to be asking. But he is up to the fucking godforsaken task. Make no mistake about it.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
snowy morning. we trudge on
APHORISM: EVERYBODY'S WEIRD.
Not having read what I wrote yesterday, vaguely remembering it was another screed against technology, which is to say another screed against my not being able to do things that a retarded eight-year-old could do underwater. Is retarded no longer p.c. My apologies-- all insults were pointed inwards, not outwards. I was attempted to regurgitate what I had lost and may have mumbled something more about the format of the blog being the content and the audacity of thinking that what you have to say without really thinking about might be of interest to another human being with a discriminating brain. I believe I also may have promised that as this thing got itself together, like some primordial ooze, it would start to take form. The big bang. The big blog. I like the title of the blog or would change it to "I am." which is the real subject but putting the words together gives us an unfortunate similarity to a popular brand of pet food, a coincidence I would rather not go into.
I had a panic attack last night. I have these a few times a week when I think that another life, any other life, would be preferable to the one I have now (and yes, reader, I do realize you will have to be let in on some of the sordid details for this to have any meaning for you whatsoever). It is snowing is not sufficient. How about the fact that I am cooking oatmeal and attempting not to burn it as I write. Does that offer sufficient piercing insight into the soul of blogman? Panic attacks. The wanting to be someone else, be somewhere else. The talking oneself down-- lately I have been meditating with some success--more on what that means at another time-- and trying to bring oneself back to the present moment which is never really as bad as the moment you are panicking about getting away from since the imagination is such a better yarn spinner than reality. I notice that my reader count is back up to two. Welcome back aboard. It could be my daughter-- no she is too smart to waste her time reading what she had to listen to growing up.
Being an editor and sometime writer I should hold this medium in contempt but the sheer physicality of typing as fast as you can think or faster intrigues me and makes me believe that this is a medium that might be more akin to public therapy than any literary device. The trick, which I believe I said (I believe I will say I believe I said about everything I say and I probably will have since I have no intenion of re-reading-- it's against the rules as I create them) the trick is to create a character out of a disembodied typist, in my case relatively content free. Content requires the kind of thought that requires a book or a poem, revising, thinking, all the things I could be doing if I weren't doing this. It is a lazy craft that requires bursts of useless energy. I pride myself on having a low boredom threshold and that is the pretty much the only thing I will have going for me. My boredom threshhold tells me it is time to shut up for today pretty soon and also that I have done as much blog throat clearing as my two readers will tolerate. If it goes back to one tomorrow, then I will be certain. So as a cliffhanger I will promise content tomorrow, real incidents culled from a life filled with them-- the rich, the famous, the tired, the hungry yearning to breathe free, occasional four legged creatures, battles with technology that I invariably lose, probably some incidents from my legendary literary career, comments about my disintegrated relationship, hopefully polite-- all these will be yours my two friends. Stay with me. It gets lonely doing this alone.
Not having read what I wrote yesterday, vaguely remembering it was another screed against technology, which is to say another screed against my not being able to do things that a retarded eight-year-old could do underwater. Is retarded no longer p.c. My apologies-- all insults were pointed inwards, not outwards. I was attempted to regurgitate what I had lost and may have mumbled something more about the format of the blog being the content and the audacity of thinking that what you have to say without really thinking about might be of interest to another human being with a discriminating brain. I believe I also may have promised that as this thing got itself together, like some primordial ooze, it would start to take form. The big bang. The big blog. I like the title of the blog or would change it to "I am." which is the real subject but putting the words together gives us an unfortunate similarity to a popular brand of pet food, a coincidence I would rather not go into.
I had a panic attack last night. I have these a few times a week when I think that another life, any other life, would be preferable to the one I have now (and yes, reader, I do realize you will have to be let in on some of the sordid details for this to have any meaning for you whatsoever). It is snowing is not sufficient. How about the fact that I am cooking oatmeal and attempting not to burn it as I write. Does that offer sufficient piercing insight into the soul of blogman? Panic attacks. The wanting to be someone else, be somewhere else. The talking oneself down-- lately I have been meditating with some success--more on what that means at another time-- and trying to bring oneself back to the present moment which is never really as bad as the moment you are panicking about getting away from since the imagination is such a better yarn spinner than reality. I notice that my reader count is back up to two. Welcome back aboard. It could be my daughter-- no she is too smart to waste her time reading what she had to listen to growing up.
Being an editor and sometime writer I should hold this medium in contempt but the sheer physicality of typing as fast as you can think or faster intrigues me and makes me believe that this is a medium that might be more akin to public therapy than any literary device. The trick, which I believe I said (I believe I will say I believe I said about everything I say and I probably will have since I have no intenion of re-reading-- it's against the rules as I create them) the trick is to create a character out of a disembodied typist, in my case relatively content free. Content requires the kind of thought that requires a book or a poem, revising, thinking, all the things I could be doing if I weren't doing this. It is a lazy craft that requires bursts of useless energy. I pride myself on having a low boredom threshold and that is the pretty much the only thing I will have going for me. My boredom threshhold tells me it is time to shut up for today pretty soon and also that I have done as much blog throat clearing as my two readers will tolerate. If it goes back to one tomorrow, then I will be certain. So as a cliffhanger I will promise content tomorrow, real incidents culled from a life filled with them-- the rich, the famous, the tired, the hungry yearning to breathe free, occasional four legged creatures, battles with technology that I invariably lose, probably some incidents from my legendary literary career, comments about my disintegrated relationship, hopefully polite-- all these will be yours my two friends. Stay with me. It gets lonely doing this alone.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
I did it again edited
APHORISM; DIRIGIBLES ARE NOT FOR NEOPHYTES
After I had written my third brilliant post, having wiped out my first, I wiped out my third. It was good. I will not do this again. I think I know which button to hit now, the one at the bottom, not the top. If I were sane, I would be saying fuck this, especially because my followers went from 2 ot 1 while I was writing. But I am going to master this and write the blog of blogs unlike all the others out there. And my limited group of friends. (I think I've got like 50 on facebook to which I will some day have someone try to attach this) will some day read this with interest since I have on occasion been interesting. The blog I killed was about what the blog was going to be-- how a chronology of my fucked up life was uninteresting to anyone, especially me, how I was going to try to leave people's names out of it but that my family and some close friends might inadvertently get slimed a bit. Here is a near analogy that doeesn't quite work. New blogs are like feathers in a snowstorm. You have to look and listen very carefully to hear an individual saying. "Here I am."
And that is what the subject of this blog will be, "Here I am." It will be shaped around the attempt of an old media person to harness the expressive power of a new medium which he doesn't quite understand. Will it replace the well-crafted book or even memoir? Who nows? This is not an attempt at art. This is the fingers writing to the brain even though the brain is really doing the commanding to the fingers- but it doesn't feel that way. Why does it make one feel less lonely to write missives about nothing that may be read by no one. Is this a subject for therapy (this get dealt with later). Is this a substitute for therapy? (Ditto)This is so much more boring than the second blog I erased it's pathetic. But I am going to pesevere. If I am man enough to write will there be anyone dumb enough to read? I will try to do this every day. I am pretty good at establishing habits. This should send my one follower (or perhaps there are now none or I am the one) breathlessly rushing to their computer tomorrow, and tomorrow. Edit: This is the first of approximately 400,ooo times that I will warn reader and writer alike that they are wasting their time. I will try to do so entertainingly but it is unlikely I can do it differently every time. I will do the best I can.
After I had written my third brilliant post, having wiped out my first, I wiped out my third. It was good. I will not do this again. I think I know which button to hit now, the one at the bottom, not the top. If I were sane, I would be saying fuck this, especially because my followers went from 2 ot 1 while I was writing. But I am going to master this and write the blog of blogs unlike all the others out there. And my limited group of friends. (I think I've got like 50 on facebook to which I will some day have someone try to attach this) will some day read this with interest since I have on occasion been interesting. The blog I killed was about what the blog was going to be-- how a chronology of my fucked up life was uninteresting to anyone, especially me, how I was going to try to leave people's names out of it but that my family and some close friends might inadvertently get slimed a bit. Here is a near analogy that doeesn't quite work. New blogs are like feathers in a snowstorm. You have to look and listen very carefully to hear an individual saying. "Here I am."
And that is what the subject of this blog will be, "Here I am." It will be shaped around the attempt of an old media person to harness the expressive power of a new medium which he doesn't quite understand. Will it replace the well-crafted book or even memoir? Who nows? This is not an attempt at art. This is the fingers writing to the brain even though the brain is really doing the commanding to the fingers- but it doesn't feel that way. Why does it make one feel less lonely to write missives about nothing that may be read by no one. Is this a subject for therapy (this get dealt with later). Is this a substitute for therapy? (Ditto)This is so much more boring than the second blog I erased it's pathetic. But I am going to pesevere. If I am man enough to write will there be anyone dumb enough to read? I will try to do this every day. I am pretty good at establishing habits. This should send my one follower (or perhaps there are now none or I am the one) breathlessly rushing to their computer tomorrow, and tomorrow. Edit: This is the first of approximately 400,ooo times that I will warn reader and writer alike that they are wasting their time. I will try to do so entertainingly but it is unlikely I can do it differently every time. I will do the best I can.
APHORISM; DIRIGIBLES ARE NOT FOR NEOPHYTES
I have abandoned the notion of a chronological history of my fucked-up life all due to a technological glich that killed my first post. You will now be subject to ongoing repressed rage which is where my chronology would have led anyway. The g blogger button says that this is a way to let your friends what you are doing and shit like that. Friends, I am disintegrating before your eyes in a blast of public humiliation. Considering myself a some time writer (I've published books, ok?) I know that first drafts are invariably embarrassments a day later so I've got to quickly adapt to a medium that I mostly do not understand. I need to chew gum and write a blog at the same time. And it will be filled with ME, a subject I exorcise from everything I write because ME is so fucking boring in even bores me. The objective of this paragraph is to contain not one statement of any factual nature whatsoever.
This will change. I will invariably be drawn to illustrations of my encounters with the famous, the near-famous, the fools, the would-be fools who have crossed my path and tried to trip me before I tripped them. I will try to keep recognizable people out of it as much as possible. I am deeply into therapy with someone who is attempting to cure me of writing claptrap like this, as well as various other issues in my so-called personal life.. It's been five years and supposedly we are on the downside of the mountain and it has all led to a journey to the east. I meditate now for an hour a day and occasionally encounter 10 minute peaceful blasts when I am not thinking what a fucked-up mess my life is and that god (oh, come on) never gives us more than we can handle. He is an equal opportunity employer. LA may be influenced by my career in publishing but do I really have to live through it again?It's not remotely interesting unless you are an editorial assistant who still believes in Maxwell Perkins. But if I eliminate my career and my family all I am left with is anger at technology, five years of therapy and mindfulness. Wake me when it's over.This is like sending messages from your fingers to your brain without sensing that it really works the other way round. I can already feel its irresistable disorder destroying the roots of autobiography.
I edited a book about the internet that tells you that importance is what is important to the most people. LA becomes this feather in a snowstorm which you have to squint to see, white against white. One of the whites is the web and one the content. "Here I am." I see shapes. I see endless horizons. I see someone telling me to shut the fuck up.
I have abandoned the notion of a chronological history of my fucked-up life all due to a technological glich that killed my first post. You will now be subject to ongoing repressed rage which is where my chronology would have led anyway. The g blogger button says that this is a way to let your friends what you are doing and shit like that. Friends, I am disintegrating before your eyes in a blast of public humiliation. Considering myself a some time writer (I've published books, ok?) I know that first drafts are invariably embarrassments a day later so I've got to quickly adapt to a medium that I mostly do not understand. I need to chew gum and write a blog at the same time. And it will be filled with ME, a subject I exorcise from everything I write because ME is so fucking boring in even bores me. The objective of this paragraph is to contain not one statement of any factual nature whatsoever.
This will change. I will invariably be drawn to illustrations of my encounters with the famous, the near-famous, the fools, the would-be fools who have crossed my path and tried to trip me before I tripped them. I will try to keep recognizable people out of it as much as possible. I am deeply into therapy with someone who is attempting to cure me of writing claptrap like this, as well as various other issues in my so-called personal life.. It's been five years and supposedly we are on the downside of the mountain and it has all led to a journey to the east. I meditate now for an hour a day and occasionally encounter 10 minute peaceful blasts when I am not thinking what a fucked-up mess my life is and that god (oh, come on) never gives us more than we can handle. He is an equal opportunity employer. LA may be influenced by my career in publishing but do I really have to live through it again?It's not remotely interesting unless you are an editorial assistant who still believes in Maxwell Perkins. But if I eliminate my career and my family all I am left with is anger at technology, five years of therapy and mindfulness. Wake me when it's over.This is like sending messages from your fingers to your brain without sensing that it really works the other way round. I can already feel its irresistable disorder destroying the roots of autobiography.
I edited a book about the internet that tells you that importance is what is important to the most people. LA becomes this feather in a snowstorm which you have to squint to see, white against white. One of the whites is the web and one the content. "Here I am." I see shapes. I see endless horizons. I see someone telling me to shut the fuck up.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
umble beginnings
This is my second try at my first post. The first which got eaten by the computer was better and did not contain my rage at my electronic incompetence. It told, in beautiful prose, of my beginnings in publishing working for a couple of detective magazines, but now I am so pissed off because I know this whole blogging thing is going to go south because of my inability to deal with technology. I was planning to start every entry with an aphorism. The first one, which I am too frightened to move because it will probably knock me onto somebody's Twitter was PRONOUNS ARE THE KEY TO ANONYMITY, which quite frankly, is probably all you are going to get from this entry if you get anything because I am now going to try to post it and if it disappears again, my blogging days are over. But if it appears, I will have my daughter send me a photograph of me which will make it all worth it so you can picture me here typing and pissed. This will get better, I promise. I will not say what I am going to do if it disappears because it will not be relevant, your not having seen it. Okay. medium, here's your chance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)