I Don't Want to Live On This Planet Anymore

So, I have formally begun writing a science fiction book series.

Yes, the geek is strong with this one.

 When I tell people what I'm writing, the reactions are either "Way cool! Dr. Who! Star Trek! Firefly!" and they begin foaming at the mouth with pop-culture inspired suggestions, or in the opposite direction, "Oh. Well, I guess that's cool..." and then they walk away to their group of "cool" friends and make jokes about how I probably sleep with a Yoda plushy and have wet dreams about Deanna Troi. One of those may be true, but whatever.

I would like a reaction in the middle, occasionally. Something like "Oh? Which direction are you going to take it?" It is a genre among many. Like the spy novel, it can have just as many variations in tone/theme/hair color of damsel. There's your "soft" spy novel like a James Bond serial with all it's babes, gadgets, and Aston Martins with rocket launchers, and then there's you're "hard" spy novels--novels like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with a focus on things that could actually happen. No huge, metal-toothed henchmen or giant lasers in space.

This hard/soft separation also happens in sci-fi. Dr. Who, Trek, Firefly- variations on soft. Not much hard sci-fi makes it on TV or into movies because it tends to be depressing and post-apocalyptic or spends so much time screaming that its MacGuffins are based in real science that most people get annoyed unless they're they belong to the small faction who would rather read "How the Modern Laser Pistol Works" versus actually going into strange, new worlds, smooching alien babes, and punching their jealous alien boyfriends in their fleshy protuberances.

Rarely do you get a good blend of such hard logic and soft, actiony fun. I grew up on sci-fi, and can love it either way, but I don't just want to write some slight variation on a formula. Nor do I want to write what amounts to "Normal Life: WhooshLaserKapow Edition."

So, I have my work cut out for me. I already have a good start, I think, but I have a ways to go.

Science fiction will always have a place in my imagination that other genres can't approach. It's the kind of fantastic dreaming that leads people to wonder "Why can't I travel to Jupiter just to see it up close?" Then, years later, they work for NASA and design Voyager. I'm not saying anything I write will inspire future scientists to feats of engineering, but I will be a part of a tradition that does.

My Future Wife Looks Like Scarlett Johanssen

And it's awesome. She will argue against it, but I don't care. They have the same EXACT booty. Prove that I am wrong with science. Do it!

$8.25 An Hour Used To Be Awesome

I used to work for Quiktrip, I loved it. I was 17 when I was hired and 26 when I left.

In high school, I was one of two of my friends who had a job, and thus, money with which to spend ineffectively and on things I didn't really need. I bought a three THOUSAND watt stereo and woofers that I couldn't turn up too loud or the vibrations would make the trunk open instead of fixing the damn trunk and only getting a one thousand watt setup. however, I was young and dime rich and life was good. I find myself missing that right now.

I quit Quiktrip without my two weeks notice because a man in expensive shoes told me that he would pay me much more to not have to clean toilets and tell panhandlers to scram. I was let go because he meant to hire a magician instead of a technical writer.

Put your genitals here!

"You should read more," the dentist offered immediately after firing me for not getting him onto the front page of the WSJ, "that's how writers get good." 
Well, thank you for introducing me to The Legend of Writ, but I've gotten a handle on this newfangled "communication" whatsit. I knew for the entirety of my employment that the dentist's biotech side venture didn't really need a technical writer, but I stayed on, putting together presentations and writing SEO fluff. As it turns out, he didn't want any of it because all four of his writers were supposed to be working our magic and making him famous.   

Just an aside before I go on: if you find yourself thinking "I am a good communicator, but no one around me is a good listener" you probably know nothing about communication. 

He would call his 15 minute stream-of-consciousness styled infodumps "downloads." Each time he downloaded, the writers were supposed to be inspired by it--a fragment of his intellect--and mold it into... I have no clue what he thought we were supposed to utilize from it. God forbid having a question, contacting him was a Sisyphean task. 

I can deal with ridiculous bosses, but to have advice given to me from a dentist (granted he was a decent fellow and an excellent dentist) about a craft in which I am eight years educated is as heinous as... I don't know... let's say a bloody technical writer giving a dentist tips on flossing. 

I only have one regret "working" for Dr. Youmustbejoking. 

Upon being fired, I didn't answer his advice with, 

"go cuddle a table saw."

All Hail Xenu

I just had a bit of an open-eyed visual. Some scientologists might tell me that this is a "whole-track" memory fragment from a long-dead alien. 

Yes, and pineapples make excellent sexual partners.

I have only met one self-proclaimed scientologist, and I could not begin to fathom the levels of deep-seated gullibility that permeated her entire worldview. I mean, if you want to join an enriching, life-changing organization that will occupy years of your life, why not volunteer for the Peace Corps? It's cheaper, more fulfilling for you, beneficial to others, you get to keep your identity, and you don't have to read the shitty sci-fi that L Ron Hubbard pretends to be scripture. 

I earnestly tried to read some of his works just to say that I have some clue as to what is going on with the "church." Honestly, the infamous Battlefield Earth was not too bad despite some things based in science from the silly dimension. Sure, it was flat and firmly rooted in the sort of turn-your-brain-off freneticism akin to the Transformers franchise, but that's fine for pulp sci-fi written by a college dropout. (Believe it or not, I love many "uneducated" authors. Whitman, Melville, and Faulkner never completed university.)

 Dianetics, on the other hand, is pseudo-philosophical pineapple wankery at its weakest. It is at once intentionally dense and vague. Prenatal memories,  reincarnation, and a very (very) loose understanding of Freud's theories are present in the book. I can't tell you much more beyond that--I stopped paying attention after the third syllogistic fallacy ostensibly borrowed from psychoanalysis. For a "religion" that believes psychology kills, their daddy baked a ton of it in there.

In all, Dianetics reads like a middle-school kid wanted to merge philosophy, psychology, technology, and religion into a land of fantasy where he was popular and smart and no one wanted to pour rubber cement down his pants, anymore. It is a very sad, sophomoric attempt at an ideology. Hell, Whitman didn't attend school past age eleven, but his philosophical ideals are immeasurably more valuable and infinitely less convoluted. 

If Hubbard wanted the sort of "spiritual healing technology" to be real, he should have simply developed an electric enema that costs four thousand dollars.

Separation Is Difficult

I love being around my fiancee. Like tons. I think that if I didn't, I'd not have affixed my great grandmother's diamond upon her finger. However, we are both still in school and without steady/assured income (freelancing is not so stable), therefore, we have decided that we need to become a little less "things are crap and I'm going to console myself with your presence," and more "things are crap so lets fix stuff." This isn't an end to our relationship, just a step back to make sure that we're going about things the right way, fixing what we find faulty.

It's in these situations that I'm always going to end up the bad guy. Always. Until I die or invent time travel so I can coach myself when and to what degree I should express an emotion via text message to ensure her that not seeing her for an entire weekend sucks just as much on my end.

If I have to hear the "It just seems like you don't care as much as I do" line of argument again, I might actually start caring less.

I need more self-sufficiency from her. I can't work (whatever amount that might be) under those conditions. If she's out of town with family, I can only imagine her brooding in a corner alone, fuming at her cell phone because "Of course I  miss you" and  "Of course this sucks" have failed to assuage her irrationality. This is the type of stuff we should be working on, but woe unto me if I say that to her.

I know I'm not all the way in the right on this; relationships have their blind spots. All that I want is for her to believe that I can be missing her just as much as she misses me, but not dwell on it so long that neuroses creeps in and makes a permanent residence in your brain. 

I need more of the self-sufficient, confident, gorgeous Katie, and less this:

Plumbing Something Fathomless

Is all of human existence trending towards a more complex, more advanced society, or are we dead set on decaying? We seem to defy entropy, but are we really masking our descent into chaos with new, ever-increasingly intricate coats of paint? Perhaps it is just my recent read of Emerson's Nature, but I am struck blind with how bright our lies have become. Emerson (and before him, Plato) believed that language was man's translation of the essence of nature into some thin, factitious contrivance, and that we must get back to that natural essence or we cannot claim to know anything. I agree with Emerson, but not in the way that is immediately apparent.

We have a grasp of biology, physics, medicine, anthropology, and so many more things that, as we are loath to admit, seem to not have a fundament (oh that word and its uses). The more we know about the Earth, the more we are surprised--the more we know about space, the more we are surprised. I hazard to say that in all of the human record, there is less that we actually claim to know (for the moment) than all information we were damned certain were facts at the time. There is just a flat disc, there is just this one sphere, the heavens revolve around us, we are the only solar system, and it keeps continuing. What is beyond this multiverse? Are there multiverses of multiverses? Manifold, entangled, writhing strings of multiverses tied up like some bundle in a sea of other bundles? That we claim, as a race, to know anything for certain is ridiculous. Death, taxes, and now- uncertainty.

I'm sure I am not the first one to think this theory. If anything, the self-contained paradox of the field  of meta-epistemology has ensured, if anything, a half-assed attempt to say something along those lines without making us sound like the apish children we are. We still wage useless war, we still have xenophobia and prejudices deeply rooted into our cultures. Sure, some of us have sought to rise above that pettiness, but that we feel that way puts a prejudice between the "enlightened" and the rest. I don't mean to exclude myself in all this business; in no way do I presume to be up an ivory tower.

Still, all of our attempts to know things can't be discarded or we would just wallow in nihilism or hedonism; either way we'd be getting screwed. It's those outlying people--those who were driven by good (or even evil) intentions who pushed the envelope--that have truly made "progress." I feel depressed when I think that somewhere on this planet, at any given moment, someone somewhere is being punished for thinking outside that proverbial and cliched box. There is an infathomable distance between knowledge and wisdom; fact and truth. Or is there a difference at all. An educated man knows exactly how his heart will stop beating, a self-taught man simply knows that it will.

Seamus Heany is perhaps the most deft at these sorts of disparities. He, I think, sees everything in a long view, and I know it doesn't make him feel any better, because how could it? When we know everything we aim at knowing, will that satisfy what parts of us remain empty? Will we remain as Heany's fisherman, the dawn-sniffing revenant? I long for my proper haunt--well out, beyond.

 'Now, you’re supposed to be   

An educated man,’   

I hear him say. ‘Puzzle me   

The right answer to that one.’

Forget the Dreams You Don't Control

Feed them to the day. Leave your compelled actions to the day--job, bills, relationships. Take the night for your own transcendence. Tinker, write, dream sleeplessly, or just let your mind finally wander away from your obligations. Remember them in the morning, but forget about them once in a while.

I consider night to be miniature vacations.

Living In Fantasy Worlds Has Its Benefits

So, my flawless drug, delirium, has once again transformed my writing. I had endeavored to write a vignette about a man rescuing a woman. It's all I had perseverated on all damn day; the "I wish I were a hero" mentality.  Well, six pages into the original and there was hardly any progression, much less resolution, and the plot seemed to be there in proverbial theory. I was trying too hard to be "cool" and "gritty," but then I realized that a dropped ice cream can also be described as such. Delirium turned "James grimaced at the mess he had wrought with his own hand. The dying man bled covertly into the brackish water. He said something profoundly cliched. He began to feel dizzy as the plot began to die... bla de bla." into:


Thrumming through the underbrush, drumming up some gushed blood from one or three gashed and garish toes. The thunderous ineloquence of hordes of bleach white pelicans gave no favor in his dying throes. His bravery was obvious, though others were oblivious, not knowing nettles nestled in their souls. He crashed through men with no forethought, their injury by themselves wrought, while he had only one quite selfless goal. Though bullets ripped apart his limbs, last living lung did heave within, and in that heaving hurled the girl into two arms unrolled. "I'll not forget," exclaimed the dame, aboard a ship that bore her name, "I'll love him though I knew not of his role." 

It's like comparing something vomited forth from Michael Bay(splosions) with a short film from the man from Pithy Tragedy Island. It needs some polish, sure, but so does your wife. I'll probably title it "The Secretary's Daughter" or "Operative." I may even title it with an unfamiliar term. Reading the pseudo-ballad, I can't comprehend when I began to think that the original mess was acceptable. The poem version is not only lyrical and fun to read or even say, but has a beginning, middle, and end. Those three are crucial from what I remember of grade school. That and "stop putting glue on Tommy's face!"

This mania is ripe

I have strobe lights inserted in the back of my eyelids. 

Window open to the street, I let the cooling morning creep in to steal the heat from my bones. The shivering is strange in May, but this mania is ripe.

Cigarettes and tap water and other things that don't put me to sleep. Not having steady income and my insurmountable shame and other things that keep me awake. This hollowness is strange in May, but this mania is ripe.

Frost-cracked asphalt splinters in the howling sun. Too much light for the air to hold. Too much heat to share with one another, so we endeavor to blot out our days. When day is also night, perhaps I will sleep. This sleeplessness is strange in May, but this mania is ripe.

I Remember You(th)

Stepping out of the scrublands

into the heart of Austin, Texas

to our stone under our buzzing acacia

as children flew after dogs.

Could I feel as unashamed

and brave as I did then?

I- “That boy” to your mother

you- “That girl” to mine

Covered only in cool spring water,

clothes discarded by an oak.

Sun pierced the sweet air

your skin so struck with light.

Could I have the courage left

to walk my feet to the dry Texas earth?

It’s Spring again- raining in Georgia

I’m a stone under the pines.

For the Anomalies

We will find the inimitable joy of birds fighting against the sky.

Creatures in their smallness, ignorant of gravity, defy the grey

that keeps them. Bruised in the orange kaleidoscopic morning

which has followed all others. Hating the tethers of animal limits

yet knowing them intimately. It’s in the timing of stoplights,

the intoxicating fury of politics. It’s the writing of paragraphs with

four-letter words on the last line. The staccato snap of rhythmic

keys.

Imitating indifference to divide my devices from mundane

devilry. Foundries of sex filled to the brim time and time and time

again until no sensation can penetrate the shell of euphoria- lost in

that candescent haze, annihilating differences, unaware of where

your awareness sits among the close-pressed contact of skins

in blood-rush. Standing naked on our roofs, defiant of the whole of

which we are the maps. The mathematical explanations failing to

explain a single fucking thing.

Pluck egos from screaming safety- force-feed them into the pulsing

fulcrum of strange individuality, affirmed in gasps. Bask in the

dichotomous world, slave under the wheel- it carries a wrack of

pain and full measures of transcendence. See and love the cracked

Earth. Taste the blood of humanity and swallow hard. Learn to

lie to yourself and others. Buckle under the weight of hollow

contempt. Destroy your enemies or love them or never have enemies

to begin with.

A day will come when we will: no longer concern ourselves with

time, make love like summer’s breaking, find indelicate

languages in stone, revel in selfless assistances, scream across

skies and strip naked the machineries there, create empires of

incandescent turbulence, have our bolts of brilliance, find

no better science than music, climb the towers and see the path

ahead. We will undertake these, or we will have died too

soon.