The following is a brief transcript of a recent communication between the various elaborate structures that manage and maintain my trains of thought.

"Sir! We have a problem! The boredometer is in the red!"

"What?! Dammit! Engineering, what's going on down there?"

"We've got a rupture in one of the main lines! We're hemorrhaging interest at an incredible rate!"

"Dammit! And we still have forty more minutes of class to sit through!"


Going to the Notebooks

More often than not I find myself at a loss for words. In the case of this blog, I have been sort of glossing over this problem the past few days by throwing out pictures. It's an easy way to avoid writing (despite the fact that I'm still at the point where it takes me as long, if not longer, to post pictures than to just try to write something new.)

The same with tonight, I suppose.

But I have devised a way to take care of the problem. I'll just grab one of my various notebooks and try to figure out what the hell I was talking about.

I've received compliments about some of my writing. I've been told that I'm a "good writer." And I appreciate that, I do. I'm glad that some people like it and even think it's good.

But the following should be made clear: I am also a very bad writer. I'm that guy that didn't pass English 101. Granted, I dropped the class and then passed the second time I took it, but still.

English 102? I'm strongly hoping that my third time will be the charm.

So, I take great pleasure that some like the work of a bad writer.

Neil Gaiman, whom I had the pleasure of hearing speak at the Comic-Con, gave this advice for writers: "I have good days when what I'm working on seems to write itself, and then I have the bad days when nothing is sounding the way I want it. The trick is to get through those bad days and keep writing, because in the end, after I've sat down and edited and revised it, I honestly am not able to tell apart what was written on the good days from what was written on the bad."

Well, that's not precisely what he said, but it's the basic idea.

I just thought I'd give some examples of the stuff that I have never seen fit to let again see the light of day:

For instance, in an old notebook, I came across this lone sentence:

"Weakness does not storm the gates, but drips in along the eaves of comfort."

It sounds like I'm quoting something or someone, but there are revisions to it. Heh, maybe I just took an existing quote and changed it just enough that I can't be sued.

Wow, I just found a poem, I think.

In a feckless succession of
absorbed and streamlined Revolutions
You aren't the only lonely

Lying dormant in deliberation
trying to dismiss the churning
(You can always lie about your life
as soon as anyone starts asking)

Which vapor trail are you at the end of?
Your facial origami pressed against what window?
You're not the only lonely

Maybe it was from that period in my writing where I was convinced that if no one else could understand it, that meant it was good.

Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds like a song I've heard before. Maybe I was just making up new lyrics to it, as I am wont to do.

If I don't understand what a song is talking about, that means it has to be good.

Heh, here's another. I was once accused of being "cliche." Maybe I was angry about that when I wrote this:

Your recycled languages come gushing forth from
clinging mist.
Peeling off cliches that stain sticky grey
like bandages.

Shouting "seize the day!" as you slap around for the snooze button
and eight more minutes of your ideal life.

Reprint every old abrasion
large enough to attract attention.
Turn your eyes into oceans
while your quotation marks hang in the air and buzz about like angry gnats to cloud my vision.

Let that be a lesson to all who dare to mock me. I will answer in kind, and by in kind I I mean I will write an angry, almost incomprehensible, poem about it that you will most likely never even be aware exists.

Sweet, sweet, justice.