Whenever I Can Read...

Whenever I Can Read...

Began reading again, The Gunter Grass Reader, which is an encouraging sign. Whenever i CAN read, i know something is passing.

i heard on the radio, that On the Road averages 100,000 new copies sold every year... There's one of the troubles. People don't buy up the old, they don't write for themselves, they're caught up in the past. That's a lot of trees slaughtered! Lots of reading leaving us! But it goes back. He didn't make much cash, comparing it to those annual numbers, BUT he made more than many. More than Melville more than Nietzsche & more than Poe... The Raven gave him a mere $10 return & that took an entire year for him to collect from the newspaper... He made more as a journalist... But we are in a failed system. Creative types always have it bad. Bach wasn't recognized until 50 years after he died. His original manuscripts were used as scratch paper...

It confuses the mind. i now see Kerouac as lucky & as a loser! Why? He had it & gave it away, turning to booze. How many don't have his luck, didn't make his contacts, & weren't able to get published? The vast majority! Us even! And he threw it all away... Fame is no excuse... Being haunted by his dead brother isn't either... He lived with his mother & died of alcoholism in the end. Became a Rightist, throwing away anything of his past... Betraying all those young readers, who were inspired to hit The Road because of his metaphor... Maybe he saw into his true nature & became afraid, was eventually eaten alive by it after working that fire tower on Desolation Peak, but so what? We've all seen into our worse natures & hated what we've seen! It's up to us to go further, to step off into the abyss & do something... We both have done that. Not Jack. Not the loser with all those books on the bookshelves being consumed/eaten yearly by readers...

Latest Bio for UK Anthology:

Since his first pair of migraine related seizures in 2002, j.m. has had two short stories published on storySouth.com, a poem on Ululations.com, and another short prose published online at Spoiled Ink.

During this period, he has been nominated for both the Pushcart and the Million Writers Awards.

Often his writing starts on paper and pen before being transferred to the computer. A sense of immediacy comes from physically working the words either alone on his porch in the woods or in a busy coffeehouse in New Orleans.

“Privacy comes from within, not outside.”

Lynchophobia


A friend coined the term "Lynchophbia," expressing his frustration with most of David Lynch's films. Feeling on similar ground, i tossed back the words below...


Filmmaker David Lynch has always distanced himself from me in his sense of cinema. He's self-indulgent. i can't accept that. His little inner languages that fans devour is too much silliness. The weird rooms, the midgets, they return in so many films. i see that as laziness, while his base delight.

When i repeat myself, i feel i'm in trouble.

Why don't they also see that in him?

Whole without Holes

One of my teacher/firefighter friends "on the mountain" asked me if it's possible to be spiritual without being religious...

YES! There IS spirituality without religion. Much of my adult life & my wife's surrounds this truth! And Zen or Taoism are great ways to go past religion, finding something more Universal. Whole without holes -- i like to think.

Personally, i have to take from a variety of practices to make up my own sense of truth. Although, Zen is the strongest single system, then comes Taoism. i want to believe in Pagan beliefs, like Wicca, but they get caught by the thorns of a religious cycle. Worships to Gods & Goddesses. Sure, i can see the manifestation of Earth Energies into primitive structures, but then, i have to also acknowledge that they are strictly metaphors without deities. Does that make any sense? i believe in energy. Believe that there's a lot more than we understand working around us. In a way, that acceptance, somewhat humbles me. i need humbling. My writing & ego enjoy proclaiming me the Lord over all i perceive... "i" as utterly important. i can't be a socialist/communist, couldn't join a Commune, because "i" am important to me. And i want to be heard, to be understood, thus the writing & drawing. A dysfunctional childhood, thus an early adulthood, brings out many a writer. How could anyone be "well" & write, besides religious statements?

Now, does that make any sense? i, too, have a tendency to ramble, to ride the words, seeing where in hell they eventually take me.

One of my favorite "Zen stories" is about the Professor & the roshi. You've probably already heard it, but i'll tell it just in case you haven't. A professor went to meet a Zen roshi (priest/teacher). They are sitting at a table with green tea simmering in a pot. As the roshi talks, the professor interrupts him, saying that's just like this & that story from some other tradition. Whenever the roshi gets half way into a story, he is again interrupted. He stops & offers the professor tea. The professor does. The roshi fills the professor's cup & keeps pouring. The professor becomes anxious & finally says, "My cup is overflowing! STOP!" The meaning of this is the Professor was full of himself, so couldn't hear the roshi's words. First, one needs to empty one's cup before they can truly listen...

Okay, okay, i'll stop. Help me off my soapbox.

Dreams of writing...

Dreams of writing...

The night before last i was in college i think. And i was waiting to see if i'd made the top 3 of a writing contest. My teacher was rooting for me, so were my classmates, even though none of them were readers. They didn't care, they were happy for me in whatever i did. Right before i woke, i was lying in a single bed, ten feet from my teacher in her queen sized bed. Nothing sexual here. Suddenly the mailman bursts into the room with a cellphone & hands it to my teacher. By her response, it seemed like i had lost. In reality, Jojo scratched at the door to be let in. Had i cried out? Then awake, i realized my teacher might have been playing a joke on me, that i had won. That's often how my dreams come out. Some surprise. Either good or bad.

So my doubts about the writing industry invade even my slumber -- the bastards!

Waking today, i solved a part of a prose i worked way back in 2002, before the seizures. The piece is called "washersouth, downmachine." You may recall it. Funny how answers pop up 4 years later... i might work it, too. It was one of those pieces i couldn't finish. Now, i'd do it differently, so i'd entirely rewrite it from scratch.

Again, lots the "rat-bastards" of the print industry fail my writer friends. How blind-mice they play it about your piece. If only... No, Molotov Cocktailing their office building would solve nothing, except criminal time for my pals or me. BUT that might make an excellent story... Revenge of a Writer... Driven by extreme sanity to avenge serious writers everywhere against the games & stupidity of editors.

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